The Jones family (left to right, front to back) Everhett Jones, 3; Luke Glista, 6; Chrisse Jones; Meredith Glista; Janice Smith; Marcia Anderson, Mary Beth Jones; Bill Jones; Tracy Hyatt; Jason Glista and Bill Sr., will all be helping Bill and Marybeth Jones run their newly opened, family operated business, Crockery City Creamery and Confectionery, located on Fifth Street in downtown East Liverpool. (Photo by Kristi R. Garabrandt)

EAST LIVERPOOL – Crockery City Creamery and Confectionery held a soft opening for family and friends Friday night to celebrate today’s opening to the public of the new ice cream shop on Fifth Street in downtown East Liverpool.

An official grand opening will be held in the summer with an ice cream social to coincide with the America 250 celebration.

Crockery City Creamery and Confectionery is a family business run by East Liverpool Safety Service Director Bill Jones, his wife Mary Beth, their children and grandchildren, Mary Beth’s sister Tracey Hyatt and Bill’s sister Marcia Anderson. Jones is also looking for some part-time employees.

Winter hours for the shop will be 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Jones said those times could be adjusted as he works to find employees for the shop.

In addition to ice cream, the shop will sell chocolates from two Ohio-based chocolatiers: Waggoner Chocolates out of North Canton and Coblentz Chocolate Company out of Walnut Creek.

The family has made the conscientious decision to be as locally sourced as possible while opening the business and is planning to continually be locally sourced and partner with downtown businesses.

Jones said that supplies have been obtained from a local restaurant supply company – Riverside Restaurant Supplies and Equipment in East Liverpool – and Tri-State Supplies. Local downtown vendor the Hat Foundry is the supplier for the aprons and the store sign, once approved by the city. All the shop’s furniture was purchased through the Pottery City Antique Mall.

“Anything we could purchase locally,” Jones said. “We are trying to keep everything we can local. Our ice cream and chocolates are coming from outside of the area. For our cones, we are using Joy Cones out of Hermitage, Pennsylvania, so they are close.”

The shop will sell Perry’s Ice Cream, which Jones said is a well-known ice cream that has been around for about 106 years, and they are based in Akron, New York, but service Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.

Crockery City Creamery and Confectionery are starting with 16 flavors of ice cream, including a dairy free ice cream, a sherbet and seasonal flavors which will rotate. Jones said the first round of flavors were decided based on response to a social media survey along with suggestions from the distributor.

The shop will also offer specialty shakes with seasonal extra flavors, sundaes, and chocolate available for purchase by the box or the pound. There will also be seasonal chocolates for the holidays and specialty hot chocolates with Ghirardelli syrups. They will also offer hot chocolate floats, which will be hot chocolate with a scoop of ice cream in it.

“We are going to do specialty things like that, things you can’t get elsewhere,” Jones said.

The idea for the family run ice cream shop came from a desire Jones had to start an ice cream shop for his teenage twin granddaughters when they were younger to introduce them to business with the thought they could take the ice cream cart to fairs and events.

Jones said he was always looking for a vintage trailer that he could retrofit into a mobile ice cream shop for his granddaughters.

“But that never came to fruition. Life gets in the way, and I wasn’t able to make that idea come to life,” Jones said. “They wanted to do it; they wanted to sell ice cream.”

With Fresh on Fifth moving to the True North building, the family finally said, “let’s do this. We are not getting any younger, so let’s do it,” Jones said.

Jones noted that he realizes they will never become millionaires selling ice cream, so his main goal is to bring foot traffic downtown, and the family is doing something no one else does locally, which is hand-dipped ice cream and specialty chocolates.

Jones said the biggest goal for the business is to simply bring people downtown.

Jones said he came up with the name Crockery City Creamery and Confectionery to honor East Liverpool’s past, which used to be known as Crockery City and was once home to the Crockery City Dairy and Crockery City Brewery.

The shop has received donations of old Crockery City items that will be on display in the shop.

“I just wanted to pay homage to our roots, to East Liverpool, so that’s why I came up with the name the Crockery City Creamery and Confectionery,” Jones said. “It’s to honor our roots and move forward.”

kgarabrandt@mojonews.com