Those who visited the most recent Perry farmers market were treated to a sneak preview of the next offering from Tom Maxwell and Aaron Lenz, the Owner and General Manager of Hotel Pattee.

There was a freezer set up in Souma’s Court, filled with different types of ice cream, giving the public a taste of the Frio Ice Cream Shop. Lenz says they’ve been working hard the last two months to get the shop up and running, and now it’s just two weeks away from officially opening to the public. The original plan was to open by the end of July, and since that didn’t come to fruition, Lenz felt bringing ice cream to the farmers market was a reasonable substitute. Additionally, those that missed it will still have opportunities to sample the ice cream in the coming weeks. “We should be out here again next week at farmers market. We’ll be set up also on Saturday and Sunday outside of Frio, just kind of as a ‘Hey, come and check us out!’ We might be doing tours of the space inside if anybody wants to see what’s done so far. Just a little intro to what things are to come.”

Lenz says nearly all of the work on the inside of the Frio building is now complete, and all that’s left is some decoration and permits. He says they’ve earmarked their official opening for sometime between August 14-16, though they won’t host a grand opening celebration right away. “The idea is we want to start a little bit slower. We’ll have kinks we work out, so everybody be patient with us! But inherently as our crew learns and figures out what they’re doing, then we’ll throw our grand opening. We’ll have a big party for everybody to come out and join, and serve a lot of ice cream!”

Perry has been without a dedicated ice cream shop for around a year, since the closures of the Mars Dairy Bar and the Firehouse Ice Cream Shop.