Downtown Mountain Home just keeps getting better and better!
The Mountain Home Chamber of Commerce and The Dels Corp teamed up yesterday afternoon to hold a ribbon cutting ceremony for Scoop Ice Cream, Mountain Home’s latest and greatest ice cream shop.
Attending the event were members of the Chamber’s board, Chamber Ambassadors, staff from The Dels Corp and community members looking to grab a cone of ice cream before heading back to work.
“We are located at 707 South Baker Street on the downtown Mountain Home square,” said Hannah Thaxton, operations manager for The Dels Corp. “We have 12 flavors, continuously changing those out with fun new flavors, and over 15 toppings. Edible cookie dough, lots of fun mixings.”
Opening two months ago, Scoop Ice Cream was the brainchild of Thaxton, who said she thought it would be fun to have an ice cream shop near the square in downtown Mountain Home.
Thaxton took the idea to Mark Bertel, owner of The Dels Corp, who had just purchased a building across the street from Kelsey Bertel’s popular Cove Coffee. Bertel and his wife also own two other restaurants in town, Rio Burrito and Cadillac Jack’s.
“We had the opportunity to purchase this building and I had been begging Mark to let me open some kind of dessert restaurant,” Thaxton said. “Something fun that stays open a little bit later and this was the perfect opportunity down here on the square. So, we renovated, made it nice and colorful and added a fun, nice place for kids to want to come.”
Scoop Ice Cream offers 14 different flavors of nitrogen chilled ice cream that are served in either homemade cones or bowls. Cones also come in a variety of flavors, including chocolate dipped cones and “pretzel cones.”
When served, the staff of Scoop Ice Cream will mix whatever toppings you desire by “chopping” them on a cold ice cream slab in a similar manner to other popular ice cream chains around the country.
Scoop Ice Cream is staffed by two employees and is open from Wednesday through Saturday from noon to 9 p.m. and Sunday from noon until 5 p.m. The ice cream shop can hold around 10 to 15 people. Larger parties can be held at Rio Burrito or Cadillac Jack’s.
“We have vegan options. We have sherberts and sorbets. We’re always kind of switching it out with some fun ones, and when new options come available, we switch out special ones for different seasons. We do different cones with candies crushed on them, cookies, that kind of thing,” Thaxton said.
A Mountain Home native, Bertel founded The Dels Corporation in 2018. His very first project was fixing up a mobile home. Since then, his construction company has expanded to be one of the most visible in the Mountain Home area.
Bertel has also served on the Food Bank of North Central Arkansas’s board and currently serves on the board of Mountain Home’s Chamber of Commerce.
His wife, Kelsey Bertel, is the owner of Cove Coffee, downtown Mountain Home’s only sit-in coffee house. Like her husband, she is also in the process of expanding her coffee business to new locations throughout the Ozarks.
Together, the couple has become one of the major drivers in the push for the revitalization of Mountain Home, alongside other young entrepreneurs like Rapp’s Barren owners Russell Tucker, Chris Gordon, and Kyle Swallow.
The Dels Corp is this year’s winner of the Mountain Home Chamber of Commerce’s Outstanding Business of the Year Award. The Bertel’s have invested over $11 million into Mountain Home since founding The Dels Corp in 2018. They currently employ 46 people in Mountain Home, and an additional 104 jobs for independent contractors.
