BUSINESS

from Gilbert Sun News - 1.16.2022

by Times Media Group

COMMUNITY

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Agritopia ice cream shop champions freshness

BY MONIQUE SELEEN

GSN Contributor

What started as a friendship between Gilbert residents James Johnston and Matt Celaya has since blossomed into a sweet business idea now known as Cream of the Crop.

The unique ice cream parlor, located inside of Gilbert’s Barnone in Agritopia at 3000 E. Ray Road, Building 6, opened in February 2021 but the idea starting churning years ago when Johnston bought Celaya an ice cream maker for his birthday.

“He started making ice cream and was really good at it,” said Johnston.

The two had worked together for some time at other local Gilbert restaurants but when space became available inside Barnone, they said they jumped at the opportunity to start their own ice cream business.

“There’s kind of a missing market for homemade ice cream in Gilbert,” said Johnston. “We thought we can do that and we can do it well and we have a good location for it.”

After some brainstorming, the name ‘Cream of the Crop’ was decided upon as a way to represent their use of fresh ingredients from the Agritopia Farm in the ice cream flavors.

All of the ice cream is made on site in small batches and Celaya said it took reading several books about ice cream to develop the perfect ratios of ingredients to use.

“Once we found our base recipe it was

see CREAM page 27

Cream of the Crop ice cream shop is located inside Barnone in Agritopia. (Special to GSN)

State’s first candyland-bar opens in Chandler

BY KEN SAIN

GSN Staff Writer

Zabdi Hess said it wasn’t hard coming up with the inspiration for a new kind of tap room. She and her husband Kyle have a threeyear-old child.

“We wanted something different,” Zabdi said. “There’s lots of tap rooms in the area, but we wanted to stand out, and offer different pairings with candy and beer.”

So that’s how she came up with the idea to open The Sugar Bar at Warner and McQueen roads in Chandler. It’s Arizona’s first bar and candy store.

It’s a family-friendly place where a couple can bring their children. While they are sampling craft beers, the kids can eat candy or select one of the board games to play.

“Outside of downtown Chandler and downtown Gilbert, between them there’s not much in terms of craft beer availability,” Kyle said. “We did our demographic research too, and around here there’s a ton of that 30-to-45 year range, … one or two kids, so that family demographic that we’re looking for.”

The Sugar Bar opened in early December and Kyle said they’ve been very happy with the turnout.

“It’s been awesome man,” Kyle said. “We’ve been busy pretty much every day. Mondays and Tuesdays are a little slower, per the usual, but every weekend is busy.”

Before opening their combination bar and candy shop, Kyle worked

Zabdi and Kyle Hess have opened The Sugar Bar at Warner and McQueen roads in Chandler. It’s Arizona’s first bar and candy store. (David Minton/GSN Staff Photographer) see SUGAR page 27

kind of like a building block. Our ice cream has a higher butter fat and that gives it more of a rich feel to it,” said Celaya.

One of the things Johnston and Celaya pride themselves on is creating flavors that you won’t find in other ice cream shops. “We didn’t want to make anything that was super traditional,” said Celaya. “It’s such a fun product because you can do so many things with it. We have our standard flavors but we try to make it a little more interesting and spark some curiosity in our rotating flavors.” Some past flavors have included cheese and caramel, maple buttermilk pancake, shake and fries, strawberries and cornbread, and cucumber lime sorbet. New flavors are rotated about every three weeks with standard flavors that are always available, including Cream of the Crop and Mythical Coffee.

SUGAR from page 26 in digital marketing and Zabdi was a teacher. They admit changing fields during a pandemic and with a young child was a challenge. “It was definitely a risk, for sure,” Kyle said. “But we felt confident enough in a lot of the research we had done, and the overall market for it.”

They began forming the company at the start of 2021, when hopes were high that the vaccine would soon allow people to socialize again. By summer they had selected the location and began getting their shop ready to open.

And just a few weeks after the Dec. 2 opening, COVID cases are hitting record highs as the Omicron variant spread.

“Everything was looking like it would be OK,” Kyle said. “Obviously, that’s taken a weird turn.”

Patrons can bring their own food to The Sugar Bar. That’s because the food options inside are limited, mostly to the candy, some popcorn and maybe “We love doing the funky flavors,” said Johnston. “Whenever something is season on the farm, we like to do that as well.”

Mint chocolate chip utilizes fresh lavender mint from the Agritopia Farm Johnston and Celaya hand-selected and that is grown exclusively for their use. Other farm ingredients have included using dates, peaches, apples, orange blossoms, and even smoked hay in their ice cream.

As business continues, Johnston says they have some new ideas coming that they hope people can look forward to.

“We’re talking about adding some pastries and homemade sodas to the mix and of course we’ll be adding plenty of new flavors,” he said. “We’d like to do wholesale as well. We hope to expand in a good way and not overextend ourselves.”

Information: creamofthecrop-az.com.

nachos on the weekends.

Finding beers that pair with candies is part of the fun.

“There are a lot of new beers that pair really well with candies,” Kyle said. “Obviously our dark beers pair really well with chocolate, we have a lot of sour beers that pair well with our gummies and sour candies.”

Above all, however, was Kyle and Zabdi wanted a place for families.

“We wanted it to be a place where people could take their kids too,” Kyle said. “We have a three-year-old, and he goes with us everywhere. It’s nice to find a place that’s kid friendly.”

Information: thesugarbar.co

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