The award-winning family-owned Joe’s Ice Cream celebrates 100 years in Sheffield
If you happen to be taking a walk through Rother Valley on a particularly hot summer’s day and decide to buy an ice-cream, the chances are you will get it from a Joe’s Ice Cream van.
It has been a staple for those in the area with a sweet tooth for 100 years and the company’s popularity shows no signs of thawing out any time soon.
“This year, we’re celebrating 100-years,” owner Joseph McNeil says. “My great grandfather, Joe Molinari, came over from northern Italy and arrived in Sheffield of all places.”
It was Joe who decided to start making ice cream, as a lot of Italian immigrants did at the time. He started out in Beighton and the family carried on ever since.
“Originally they used to sell from a horse and cart,“ Joseph explains. “The ice cream would have been made fresh in the morning and then delivered across the local area.
"We started out on Queen’s Road in Beighton originally, but shortly after that we moved to the corner of Woodhouse Lane.” The factory and shop remains on the same spot to this day.
Over the years much changed, Joseph says, including the introduction of the modern ice cream van.
A fleet of 12 vehicles now serve up the family’s delicious frozen treat to a number of local areas, including Aston, Beighton, Handsworth and Woodhouse.
Joseph says: “We also supply independently to other ice cream vans, restaurants, wholesalers, shops and ice cream parlours. The majority of our scoop ice-cream is sold out of our factory shop in Beighton.
"We also sell our own whippy mix through our vans at Rother Valley and Clifton Park. And we operate in Derby, Leicestershire, the Derbyshire Dales and Rotherham, as well as at events throughout the country.”
As for Joseph’s favourite ice cream, “It’s probably the mint choc-chip, it’s a stalwart and probably the third biggest-selling flavour that we do,” he says.
Vanilla remains the best selling staple and the company also recently introduced flavours such as cookie dough and Kinder Bueno.
Like the generation before him, Joseph is passionate about the product, the business, and retaining the original ethos and recipes.
”It is still the original recipe’,” Joseph says about the much-loved vanilla scoops. “But with a few modern tweaks as ingredients have progressed.”
A strong passion for ice cream curation has been passed down each generation, with the fifth generation now imminent.
As for Joseph, he is president of the Ice-Cream Alliance - the only UK trade association for ice cream manufacturers and retailers – and was also the youngest president in its history, too.
More new flavours are on the way, he says, but his lips remain frozen shut when he’s asked for a tease on what.
You can find Joe’s Ice Cream at 107 Woodhouse Lane, Beighton, Sheffield. Visit joes-ices.co.uk