Homemade Ice Cream Moves Fun to Sun Mountain
Rob and Lisa Brown, with friends, employees, and members of the Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce, cut the giant ribbon during their grand opening in the Sun Mountain Plaza in Wasilla.
Photo Credit: Alopex Interaction Design
As the saying goes, you can’t buy happiness, but you can buy ice cream—and that’s pretty much the same thing. Rob and Lisa Brown, owners of Big Dipper Homemade Ice Cream, are striving to provide a scoop of happiness along with their tasty concoctions.
That dual mission is proving a sweet success. With a line of customers out the door and down the block, Big Dipper cut a giant red ribbon to mark the opening of its new Wasilla location at the Shoppes at Sun Mountain June 18.
Alaska-Grown Happiness
The Browns’ venture into ice cream began as a birthday celebration, Rob says. For his birthday in 2019, Lisa made German chocolate ice cream instead of cake. It was so delicious that they joked about going into business. A year later, they decided to do it. Another year of planning, preparing, and creating followed and the couple opened Big Dipper in Palmer in May 2021.
“It was quite the time to open a business, in the middle of COVID,” Rob says. But they felt the Mat-Su could use a celebration spot. “We wanted to provide a fun atmosphere in the Valley,” he says, “a place to celebrate the wins, big and small.”
Three years later, the Browns opened a location in Wasilla, in the Clock Tower mall. Last year they opened a Lazy Landing location, just across the Matanuska River from Palmer proper. The new Wasilla location moves the business from the Clock Tower mall to a busier location on the same block as Tacos Cancun Mexican Grill—which Big Dipper partnered with during the opening, offering customers gift certificates to the new neighbor.
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Partnerships, and boosting other Alaska businesses, are a big part of Big Dipper’s business model. Carrot Cake ice cream uses carrots from Rempel Family Farm. Fireweed & Honey uses honey from Wasilla-based Tattletale Honey. Many of the jams used in Big Dipper flavors come from Alaska Wild Berry Products in Anchorage. The rhubarb for Rhubarb Rhapsody comes from Bushes Bunches.
Last year’s Fair Day ice cream used apple fritters from Holy-Moley Donuts and was based on an idea dreamed up by Houston High School ProStart students. ProStart is a two-year career and technical education program focused on teaching culinary and restaurant management skills to Alaska students. The Houston students were declared winners in a competition against other high school groups to create the best ice cream flavor.
Another collaboration puts an exclusive Big Dipper flavor for sale in Big Lake. Big Dipper partnered with Common Ground Alaska farm to create Common Ground Honeyberry Ice Cream, flavored with honeyberries (similar to an elongated blueberry) grown at Common Ground.
“Big Dipper took a bunch of our berries from the farm and customized an ice cream for us, so we sell our custom honeyberry ice cream,” says Tandy Hogate, co-owner of Common Ground Alaska and organizer of the new Big Lake farmers market. “We have it exclusive. Next year they’ll sell it, too, but this year it’s exclusively ours. So, even though it’s not really the season, we’re still able to sell some farm stuff while we’re waiting.”
Rob adds, “It’s our goal someday to have an Alaska ingredient in every flavor.” And the Browns are well on their way.
Patrons line up at Big Dipper Homemade Ice Cream’s new Wasilla location on June 18.
Photo Credit: Alopex Interaction Design
Big Dipper sources birch syrup for Birch Brittle from Kahiltna Birchworks, along with blueberries used for its Alaska Wild Berry flavor and salmonberries used in its newest flavor, Reds Are Running, released in the last week of June.
That flavor, a nod to one of the joys of summer in Alaska, is made by swirling salmonberry juice with sweet cream ice cream and a touch of Alder Smoked Spit Salt made by Alaska Salt Company in Homer, then adding a swirl of Big Dipper-made salmonberry jelly swirled in.
“We’ve been talking about it for well over a year,” Rob says. “We wanted to do a salmonberry flavor, and we wanted to do something around the red salmon season.”
The team initially thought about putting Swedish Fish gummy candy into ice cream, but the texture wasn’t what they hoped for. Back to the drawing board. It’s all part of the process, Rob says.
“We can get to 80 percent of the flavor we want with an ice cream, but we really want 100 percent. Sometimes it takes multiple tries to get there,” he says. Reds Are Running took eight or ten tries to get just right, he says, but the end result is worth it.
In five years, Big Dipper has created more than seventy-five flavors, Rob says. Nine of the original ten flavors Big Dipper launched with are still in rotation. Some flavors are always on the menu, and others rotate out and become seasonal offerings or flavors that reappear once every couple of years.
Success Shared, Success Squared
Partnerships have turned into a profitable venture. Although Big Dipper operates three locations, a growing fourth component of the business is nearly as important: wholesale ice cream sales. The Ice Cream Shop at the Speedway Express mall at the intersection of Seward and Alyeska highways in Girdwood offers several Big Dipper flavors. Rob notes that it was the company’s first wholesale customer. Big Dipper sells ice cream to two dozen other businesses—restaurants, other ice cream shops, et cetera—from Ketchikan to McCarthy to Nome and everywhere in between, he says. Wholesale orders have doubled this year over last.
“It’s bonkers right now. And on these really sunny days, it’s great because our retail shops are busy, but that means all the other places are busy too,” Rob says.
Ketchicones, a new ice cream shop that opened on the dock in Ketchikan this spring, has been partly responsible for that doubling. Rob says a pallet with sixty tubs of ice cream is headed to Alaska’s First City in the final week of June. That’s 180 gallons of Big Dipper Homemade Ice Cream, ready for scooping. Ketchicones is the second Ketchikan customer; Big Dipper sent a pallet of ice cream to The Mill at Ward Cove earlier this year.
“What’s really cool about that is we work with other vendors here in the state, and other Alaska companies. When we succeed, other people succeed as well,” Rob says.
