Irvey’s kicks off grand opening weekend for Fountain City location
By Ken Lay
Irvey’s Ice Cream is now open in Fountain City.
The ice cream shop, located at 3000 Tazewell Pike, began a three-day grand opening celebration Friday afternoon with a ribbon-cutting, bubbles and some lawn games and some chalk art in the parking lot.
The celebration continued through the weekend despite impending inclement weather.
Owner Trent Sanders said that the rain was not going to ruin the celebration even if things had to move indoors, and Sanders said that customers had the opportunity to remain dry entering the shop.
“We have a nice indoor space and we’re going to provide umbrella service for people to get in from their cars,” Sanders said.
The Fountain City location is the second storefront location for Irvey’s, which is also located at Kerns Food Hall in South Knoxville. The company also has three food trucks and a mobile ice cream van.
The trucks and van have allowed Irvey’s to take its ice cream on the road.
“We have a great mobile service,” Sanders said. “We’ve been as far south as Georgia.
“We’ve been as far north as Johnson City, and we’ve been as far west as Cookeville, and this Halloween, we’re going to Nashville.”
Irvey’s offers 32 flavors of ice cream, including 10 non-dairy options, 18 traditional flavors and four limited flavors. Additionally, the shop will sell one-gallon and two-and-a-half-gallon tubs.
“We’ll have 32 flavors, and that’s one more than Baskin-Robbins,” Sanders said. “We have 10 non-dairy flavors, and that’s a lot. Most places offer two or three.
“We also have one-gallon and two-and-a-half gallon tubs. We already sold one today.”
Irvey’s makes all of its ice cream in-house. Sanders calls the product ‘clean.’
“We make all of our ice cream in-house,” he said. “It’s clean, and it’s heavy. We use cream, milk and cane sugar. We don’t use corn syrup or high-fructose corn syrup.”
Sanders is looking to host events at the Fountain City location.
“We’re hoping to have block parties and forums,” he said.
