It's All in the Family: From Maggie's Ice Cream to The Ice Cream Cottage

Back in the summer of 1986, Maggie and John Sweeney opened up a tiny homemade ice cream shop in the village of Osterville on Cape Cod.  John was a custom builder and Maggie was a nurse, but they traded in their hammers and stethoscopes for scoops and took the leap of faith in starting their own family business.  Their six children, aged 19, 16, 15, 13, 7, and 5 at the time, were either working as the crew or happy to be taste testers until they were old enough to work.  It didn't take long to realize that even a 5 and 7 year old could wipe down a table and fill napkins and spoon holders.  Maggie's Ice Cream was born!

With great success in that first small shop, the family moved the business to Mashpee Commons and business doubled overnight.  Many more teenagers were hired as crew members and there were many nights with lines out the door.  Eventually John and Maggie decided to buy a building on Main Street, Hyannis and make that the central location where the ice cream was made.  Many Irish college students used to travel to the Cape each summer for work, and quite a few were hired by the Irish born and raised Sweeney family.  The work was hard but so fun and fulfilling.

John fixed up his pickup truck into a makeshift cooler to transport ice cream to the other shops and the children were divided up as managers at the various locations.  In the Sweeney family, one started scooping at age 12 and was a manager at age 16.  Before officially working on payroll, you could find a Sweeney kid making waffle cones, chopping candy for toppings, zesting lemons for the lemon meringue ice cream and being paid for their labor in ice cream cones.

Maggie's Ice Cream stayed open for twenty successful years and was then sold since Maggie and John were ready to retire and all of the children had careers and families of their own and were unable to keep the business going.  

One of those children, named Colleen and the self-declared favorite of the bunch, was sad that she wasn't able to continue the business but she was busy raising little ones and working as an accountant.  She dreamed with her husband Phil Martin about the day when they could open an ice cream shop with their own crew of children.  The years went by and the oldest three children of the Martin family worked at an ice cream shop about twenty minutes from their house, with the fourth child planning on starting there this summer.  Phil, a high school teacher, had actually worked for a couple summers at Maggie's Ice Cream before it was sold.  With all the experience of running and working in an ice cream shop between Phil, Colleen and the three oldest boys, it felt like they were at a point when it was time to open their own shop soon.

When Colleen heard last fall that there was a property in their town that was looking for new owners to take over the two restaurants and ice cream shop on the property, she reached out to the developer.  Funny enough, she had reached out to the old owners of this location a few years back asking if they would be interested in selling or renting the vacant ice cream shop in between the two restaurants.  At the time, one of the owners explained that her husband, who was the chef for the restaurants, had been in a serious accident and she wasn't sure what the future of the restaurants was going to be and wasn't in a good place to sell the ice cream shop.  Fast forward about four years and now both restaurants and the ice cream shop were up for sale.

After months of meetings, making decisions and praying about what to do, Phil and Colleen Martin signed the lease to open The Ice Cream Cottage this summer.  Their seven children, aged 20, 18, 16, 15, 11, 9 and 6 are very excited to have a family ice cream shop.  The Cottage Crew will start out with family and a few friends and will hire more employees as they grow.  

The menu will include ice cream from a homemade ice cream shop located in the next town over, soft serve ice cream, Hawaiian shave ice made from fresh fruit puree, homemade waffle cones and cookies and brownies.  The Ice Cream Cottage will also make their own hot fudge, whipped cream, and coffee drinks.  There will be a few food items like hot dogs and quahogs and homemade chowder.  Phil will manage the store all summer with his kids working beside him, as Colleen will take more of a behind-the-scenes role, using her business degrees to keep The Cottage running.  They are currently working on getting the building renovated and ordering equipment and the million other steps required to open an ice cream shop.   It's been busy but it will be so rewarding to see a line of happy customers this May.