Sweet, savory, or something to cool you off in the Texas heat, J & M Sweet Shop in Abilene offers soft serve ice cream in a variety of flavors and combinations, bringing flavor and fun to the Abilene community.
Located at 3365 S. 14th St. across from the River Oaks Shopping Center, J & M Sweet Shop opened its doors on March 28 and is owned and operated by local Abilene husband and wife Craig and Tiffany Gilliam.
“We’ve been here seven years, and we just felt like God was calling us to do this,” said Tiffany. “So we decided we were going to do it, and we’ve been extremely happy and blessed so far with it.”
Aside from being new ice cream entrepreneurs, Tiffany is also a real estate agent and works in technology with Wylie ISD while Craig works in financial planning. The couple is also parents to two children, Joshua and Malley, which the ice cream shop is named after.
“That’s J&M. We wanted to incorporate them somehow,” said Craig.
Becoming ice cream moguls wasn’t always the goal for the Gilliam family, but after making a trip to a cousin’s soft serve ice cream shop and seeing all the flavor possibilities, the couple knew they needed to bring it to Abilene.
“We started looking around, seeing if there was anything like this? I mean, you have Dairy Queen, you have McDonald’s, and so on, but it’s vanilla,” said Craig. “As far as individual flavors, there wasn’t an ice cream place.”
And so the couple began looking at potential locations before settling on the space outside the River Oaks Shopping Center.
“It’s fantastic because it’s big, and it has a drive-through window, which, when we open that, that’ll be a plus because mamas with little kiddos, they don’t have to get them out of the car seat,” said Craig. “They can just drive through.”
The ice cream shop features a wide variety of soft serve ice cream flavors, including classics like chocolate and vanilla, to more unique flavors like butterscotch, cookie dough and cinnamon red hot, Craig’s own signature recipe.
“He’s had everybody sample it if they like red hots,” said Tiffany. “And they’re like, ‘I don’t know about this.’ And then they eat it, and they’re like, ‘Wait a second. I’m going to do that right now because that’s delicious.'”
Customers have the option of small, medium, and large sizes, and for those who can’t make up their mind, the ice cream shop offers a soft serve flight with your choice of three flavors.
“We have a good product, and we do it at a good price,” said Craig. “We’re a family of four, and I don’t want to go spend $40 for me and my two kiddos to get ice cream. And so we tried to cut that number almost in half.”
J & M Sweet Shop is open Tuesday through Thursday from noon to 7 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from noon to 8 p.m. During the month of April, the shop will close early at 6 p.m. on Wednesdays.
This article originally appeared on Abilene Reporter-News: Abilene’s new sweet shop offers flavor and fun
Reporting by Lauren Dossey, Abilene Reporter-News / Abilene Reporter-News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
