An old fashion ice cream parlor located in the heart of the Village of Hamburg is celebrating its one year anniversary.

The party will take place this Saturday, May 22 as Main Street Ice Cream hosts a day-long celebration that will begin at 11 a.m. and run until 10 p.m. to celebrate their first year of doing business at 35 Main St. in Hamburg’s central business district.

Owners Randy and Denise Fenton opened for business on May 12, 2009.

“We always wanted to open up an ice cream store,” said Denise, a 1980 graduate of Hamburg High School.

Working with dairy products comes naturally to Denise, whose father, Dennison “Denny” Heuer, and her grandfather owned Heuer’s Dairy, a dairy processing plant located in Medina.

“My father has a milk bottle collection with between 3,000 to 4,000 bottles from dairies all over,” she said, pointing out that some of the bottles are on display in various places inside Main Street Ice Cream.

As part of the one year anniversary celebration this weekend, Heuer is going to share his knowledge of milk bottle history with a presentation starting at approximately 3 p.m.

That will then be followed by a butter churning demonstration by the Hamburg Historical Society.

According to Randy, their dream of opening an old fashioned ice cream parlor fit in with what has happened the past few years with the revitalization of Hamburg’s central business district.

“There is so much excitement in the village and everyone has been very supportive,” said Randy, who is originally from farm country in the Batavia area.

The couple lived in Batavia for three years before moving to Hamburg in 1997. Their family consists of Bobby Becker, age 23, Brian Becker, age 21 and Sara Fenton, age 14.

The couple originally purchased the building almost six years ago, leasing the storefront to Larry’s Hair Fashions.

“When he was ready to retire, that is when we decided we would now follow through on our dream of the ice cream store,” said Denise, who worked as a teacher’s aide at Hamburg Middle School.

It took the couple almost a year to convert the structure from a hair salon into an ice cream shop with tables for about 20 customers inside and a canopied patio outside which can handle about 18 people, in addition to benches outside along the sidewalk.

During the time the building was being remodeled, both Randy and Denise trained in Syracuse with the man who sold them their ice cream machines.

“He was a wealth of information and ideas,” said Denise.

One of the things they brought back from their training was the idea of the “Two-Berry Twist,” a special blend of black raspberry yogurt and red raspberry sherbet twisted together in either a freshly made waffle cone or bowl or a regular ice cream cone.

Along with the above mentioned two-berry twist, they also have soft serve custard in vanilla, chocolate or a vanilla/chocolate twist.

They serve the Turkey Hill brand name of hard ice cream, which includes flavors such as coffee, cotton candy, cookie dough, chocolate peanut butter, maple walnut, rainbow sherbet, lemon ice, fat-free cherry, and fireball.

They also make sundaes, banana splits, whirlwinds (soft serve custard with candy or cookie bits such as Oreo, M&Ms and Snickers), slushies, the popular slushie slider (a slushie slid between swirls of vanilla soft serve ice cream), floats and milkshakes.

Denise is the talent behind the homemade frozen desserts that they offer as carryout orders.

“Many of our frozen desserts, like the cakes, are made with custard instead of ice cream, which makes it so much easier to cut,” said Denise. “I make these fresh every day and will do them to order.”

They also offer fudge peanut bars, ice cream sandwiches, “the tempting taco” (a homemade waffle shell wrapped around vanilla custard, fudge and sprinkles), ice cream bars and ice cream pies.

Denise also likes to use her creativity to come up with different kinds of specials at the store, which usually run for two weeks.

For April’s Fools Day she came up “spaghetti and meatballs” and “pizza” specials, which were made with vanilla custard, chocolate and other goodies.

“There wasn’t a bit of pasta, tomato sauce or meat in it. It was all sweet and delicious,” Denise said.

They also offer a wide selection of sprinkles in just about every color you can think of, including the popular purple and white colors of Hamburg High School. Also available for purchase are candles, celebration cards and gift certificates.

Being actively involved with their community doesn’t end with the couple just owning a business on Main Street. Along with hiring local high school and college students to work for them, the Fentons sponsor a local baseball team, helped sponsor last year’s successful “Theatre Under the Stars” event, helped with the recent “Purple Goes Green Community Day” celebration at Hamburg High School and the upcoming “Character Chase” at this year’s Burgerfest celebration.

In addition, they are members of Hamburg’s Village Business Advisory Council, volunteer with the Hamburgh Holidays organization’s annual “Breakfast With Santa” event and Randy serves as the president of the Hamburg Swim Club.

“We really believe in this area,” said Randy. “This is an exciting time to be here and we are committed to this.”

To celebrate the first year of success, they will be offering a special $1.10 small cone special this Saturday, May 22 from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. and customers will also have an oppotunity to meet “Moo” the Main Street Cow for the very first time.

Turkey Hill is going to have their 13-foot-long cow at the store from 2 to 9 p.m. People are encouraged to bring their camera to have their photograph taken with the famous bovine.

At 2 p.m. the Main Street Ice Cream anniversary cake will be distributed for free to all those in attendance while supplies last and then from 3 to 4 p.m. will be the milk bottle history presentation followed by the butter churning demonstration. The evening hours will feature music by the French Quarter Jazz Band from 6 to 9 p.m. with plenty of dixieland music.

The store hours are currently Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Those hours will expand in the summer so that the business is open until 10 p.m. on weekdays and 10:30 p.m. on weekends.

To place an order or for more information, call 649-2970.

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