Sam's Flying Scoops serves up fun

By Randy Capps

SMITHFIELD — Thomas Wolfe once wrote that “you can’t go home again.”

But one family has helped transform a little patch of grass and a few picnic tables at Johnston County Airport into a new community.

All thanks to the power of ice cream.

Sam’s Flying Scoops, owned by Shannon Hugel and named for her daughter, opened in Sept. 2016, and has been serving up heaping helpings of tasty treats ever since.

“My husband is an avid aviator, and 20-plus years ago when we met in Pennsylvania, we were really active with the pilots at our airport,” she said. “Pilots love to fly for the $100 hamburger. It’s a thing. Pilots fly for food. They call it the $100 hamburger, because your $5 hamburger turns into $100 once you pay for gas.

“We loved going on dates with other pilots and their wives, and we would all fly for food. When we moved to North Carolina, we didn’t have that camaraderie here at the Johnston County Airport. We didn’t know

anybody. Nobody talked to each other. They just came and went … which was weird to us, because we were used to having a tight knit community at the airport.

“So, Bob has always wanted to open a restaurant at the airport. I, myself, do not want to own a restaurant. We love ice cream, so we thought, ‘let’s bring ice cream to the airport because everybody loves ice cream.’”

That has turned out to be true.

“It’s affordable for the family,” she said. “People can see the airplanes, get close to the airplanes and watch them take off and land. It’s super exciting. We’ve met so many people now. We’ve formed friendships, and it’s kind of cool. Some pilots don’t even get ice cream. They just come to hang out.”

Not everyone has that sort of self control, however. With a long list of flavors available, including favorites like salted caramel, butter pecan and cookie dough, the ice cream from Simply Natural Creamery is a strong selling point.

“All of our ice cream is homemade in Ayden, North

Carolina,” she said. “It’s all made with a2 beta-casein protein milk, so it’s safe for lactose intolerant people. It’s higher in protein, higher in calcium, higher in phosphorus — so as far as ice cream goes, it’s probably the best for you.

“It’s also the richest, creamiest ice cream you’ll ever taste.”

You might find Shannon and Sam working in the trailer, which Bob pretty much built from the ground up, on a hot summer day. But the family dynamic extends beyond the Hugels.

“Samantha and I work some, and it’s fun,” she said. “I kind of feel like our customers are family, too. Because we get here and we know them. We know their names, and they know our names. We know what kind of ice cream they like, and we know that this one lady likes extra chocolate sprinkles on the bottom and extra on the top. She likes it in a chocolate waffle cone, and we remember.”

There aren’t many eighth graders with companies named after them, after all, and Sam is enjoying the experience.

“I’ve made a lot of new friends through it,” she said. “It’s just cool to be working and experiencing everything.”

Some of those friends are the other teenagers the Hugels employ.

“We actually employ four local teenagers,” Shannon said. “One just left, but lucky for us, the first two we hired we’ve known since they were little kids. So, they’re like family to us and their families are family as well. And the girls that we’ve hired since then have been kind of their friends that they’ve referred. It just seems to keep on trickling down.”

That communal spirit extends to the airport itself, and its director, Phil Lanier.

“Our first season and a half, there was a different airport director,” she said. “A new one came in, so we were a little worried about that. But he’s been great with accepting it. … Having us here brings more people in. We do have a small community of planes that fly in just for ice cream. That $100 hamburger.

“And he likes his coffee ice cream.”

Shannon balances Sam’s Flying Scoops with her family life and a full-time job with Renaissance Dental in Raleigh.

“I think it’s cool being a female-owned business,” she said. “We love it. … It’s kind of like a small family.”

For more information on Sam’s Flying Scoops, visit their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ Samsflyingscoops.