JACKSON COUNTY, Miss. (WLOX) – One popular ice cream business on the Coast is now expanding facilities, hoping to cater to businesses all over South Mississippi.
A new construction site off Highway 57 in Vancleave is home to Quakes Ice Creamery’s newest facility, serving as an employee-only distribution center.
This comes after the popular ice cream spot has outgrown its current building as far as production goes.
It’s in a small backroom of Quakes where owner Marie Garbin and employees hand-scoop and hand-sticker individual frozen treats for coast businesses to sell.
Garbin says, “We don’t have the square footage here to be able to support what we’re doing everywhere else, and it was great to be able to level off of this and to be able to build off of what we had here, so we had one overhead and one electric bill. Now, we’re reaching a point where we can’t keep up with capacity to be able to service more.”
This idea to sell grab-and-go ice cream started fourteen years ago.
Garbin says once businesses started agreeing to sell Quakes, she wondered where else it could go.
Garbin says, “All of a sudden, I had three or four accounts saying yes. I said, ‘What if I put all of my energy into this?’ If I just said, Let’s figure this out, let’s do whatever it takes to get the manufacturing in place.’ So, here we are.”
While this is a major development for Garbin’s business and Quakes’ family, regulars of the ice cream shop have nothing to worry about.
The Ocean Springs location will stay up and running.
Garbin says, “In Ocean Springs, this is not going anywhere. This is really our platform. This is how we will figure out what a franchise looks like as we get into this next layer of Quakes, but we’re not there yet. But, it’s coming.”
The slab for the distribution center will be laid this week, and Garbin says they’re hoping to move into the facility in the fall.
Garbin says that all this is possible due to the $400,000 South Mississippi Planning and Development District loan, along with the help of all the South Mississippi customers.
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