New owners of a local ice cream shop, Timothy Coleman and Ileyana Mabone, are not only dreaming of new ice cream desserts and combinations, but a safe place for kids and adults to hang out.
Coleman and Madone took over Dreamer Ice Cream at 622 S. Sprague Avenue in January, and reopened the doors under new management in February.
Coleman said one of their goals for Dreamer is to be a safe place for kids and adults.
“You never know what someone may be going through and there is a lot of stuff that’s always happening in Tacoma, good or bad, and just having one more safe place for people to go is just something we all need,” Coleman said.
The key to creating a safe space is the way their team interacts with customers, according to Mabone.
“We want everyone that comes into the shop to feel at home and we bring that by how we interact with the customers, but we also bring that when we hire employees,” Mabone said. “We make sure that they know that it’s a safe place for them but it’s a safe space for the customers as well.”
Along with friendly staff, Coleman said the new pink and blue walls in the ice cream shop help create an inviting atmosphere.
The paint job is not the only new aspect of the restaurant. Coleman said Dreamer is now offering customizable milkshakes.
“Our signature shakes are just something you can’t find anywhere else, whether that be our banana pudding milkshake or our strawberry shortcake milkshake,” Coleman said. “We have a whole bunch of other stuff coming as well, but that’s one thing you are going to notice when you walk in.”
Coleman said they want to bring a creative play to ice cream at Dreamer.
“Essentially we are like the Build-A-Bear of ice cream. You come in, you pick your scoops and you also pick your cones, like our fancy dipped cones. We have the most toppings of probably any ice cream shop in the area,” Coleman said. “We have 22 toppings, not including our syrups, which all together is 26 different toppings you can put on to your ice cream.”
The new ice cream nachos are their most sold item, Coleman said.
“It’s very unique. It’s like you are going to a Mexican restaurant and getting nachos, but it’s going to come with chocolate or any other topping you would like as well,” Coleman said. “That’s something that’s different and is not in the local area. I think places are just lacking creativity, so we want to come in and bring some creativity to the game.”
The couple said they are new to the restaurant business, but are bringing their experiences in customer service to their new endeavor.
“I think we both bring peculiar but different perspectives to the food industry, but also customer service. We both worked in customer service on different realms, my husband working in office spaces and me working in retail and grocery stores in the past,” Mabone said. “We know what the typical customer service is like and we know what we want to strive for.”
Mabone said they want Dreamer to be active in the community.
“We are just super excited as people that are in their early 20s to see where we are going,” Mabone said. “We have a lot of goals for the business, just wanting to expand but also creating community events such as the back to school events of the backpack giveaways.”
One way they plan to help out is to give incentives to kids who meet their goals in school.
“Sometimes kids, especially now a days, they just need a little motivation to push themselves through school because school can get tough, especially if they have a lot of things going on in their background life,” Mabone said.
One example Mabone gave was to reward kids for hitting a goal of reading five books.
“That’s something to reward because maybe you’re not motivated to read five books,” Mabone said. “It’s just a goal of pushing kids and everyone to be their best selves and we believe that we bring that at Dreamer.”
