Don’t Cry: Denver’s hottest ice cream brand announces new brick-and-mortar location

Three years ago, chef and recipe developer Michael Kimball sold fourteen pints of ice cream, “mostly just to our friends and family members,” recalls his husband, Austin Walker. “Now we do over 700 pints a week, every week.”

Yet even that isn’t enough to satisfy the many fans of Sadboy Creamery, which has been operating with an order-ahead online model since its inception, churning out nostalgia-driven flavors like Cloudy Day Cotton Candy, Cookie Circus, Cosmic Frownie Batter, Teary-misu, Dirty Earl, and Raspberry Pretzel Pie. Flavors are dropped every Monday at 10 a.m. for pick-up in a space above City ‘o City Thursday through Saturday — and pints sell out fast, leaving some ice cream enthusiasts feeling, well, sad, when they miss out.

But Sadboy has some happy news in the works: construction is underway at its new brick-and-mortar location at 1502 Marion Street, in the former French for Sugar space just off East Colfax Avenue. Right now, Kimball and his team are aiming for a September grand opening.

In the meantime, flavors will continue to drop online weekly. While Walker declines to offer any insider tips on how to score a pint, “I’ll say this: there is an elderly gentleman, his name is Bob. He gets ice cream every single week. And if Bob can do it, I think that other people can.”

Pint shop in progress

“The full space is like three or four times bigger than where we’re currently operating, so we’re pretty confident we’re going to be able to do three- or four-times production very quickly,” says Walker, who is a co-owner along with business partner Adam Yala.

Walker has watched his husband build this business from the ground up, and jumps in to meet with Westword while Kimball deals with a Monday morning “pint emergency.” In between looking at blueprints and answering questions from the contractor, he reflects on Sadboy’s steady growth so far.

“We’re really clear on our mission, which is to make the best ice cream in the Milky Way — which is very on brand for us, a little whimsical — but it’s all about the quality,” he explains. “We know that we could have scaled faster. There are a lot of things we could have done to cut corners and grow our production faster. But the number one priority has always been maintaining the quality of the product. … I know that sometimes it gets the folks on Reddit up in arms, but that’s our North Star, and that’s what we’re always constantly moving towards.”

Beyond the quality of the ice cream, Sadboy also has a deeper, emotional meaning for Kimball. “I see Michael as an artist, and ice cream is his medium. What he’s trying to say is (that) sometimes life is really hard, and maybe it feels like it’s not worth it. But a pint of ice cream can be the difference between someone deciding to stay,” Walker shares with tears in his eyes.

The shop will include a large production area. “It was really most important to us to have as much room in the back to make ice cream as possible, because right now, our problem is not being able to make enough,” Walker notes. There will be a window built-in “specifically because we want people to be able to see people actually making ice cream — like a Krispy Kreme situation. One of the things that we feel sets us apart is that we’re hand-packing and making everything from scratch, so we want to be able to let people see a little bit of the magic.”

It’s been a pretty magical endeavor so far. Sadboy Creamery now has nine employees and continues to grow as the new location comes together. But even with big changes coming for the business, its mission remains steady.

The new Sadboy won’t be a scoop shop. Instead, “We are going to continue to do pints — coming back to that mission statement, pints are the best way to maintain the quality of the product,” Walker notes. “When you bring out ice cream to scoop it, it has to soften a little bit, and it degrades the product just a little bit, and that’s not what we’re about. So we are calling it a pint shop.”

There will be pints readily available, but limited time offers and seasonal flavors will still be available via online drops as well. “I’ve gotten messages recently on Instagram from people being like, ‘I kind of like the ice cream hunger games every Monday,'” Walker shares with a laugh. “So we’ll continue to do drops for that, but the goal is to have our core flavors always available.”

Alongside pints, Kimball is developing an expanded selection of novelty products such as push pops, freezer pops and ice cream sandwiches, something he’s been working to perfect for a couple of years already. There are also plans to offer cones, sprinkles and other ice cream essentials, “to make it very much a one-stop ice cream shop,” Walker notes. “So you can take it home and eat it in the dark on your couch, like a good old sad boy should.”

Community comes first

The search for a long-term home for Sadboy Creamery included some must-haves, like ample production space paired with room for pint-pickups. But “another thing that was really important to us was staying as close as possible to the current pickup spot,” Walker says. “This neighborhood built us. Most of our early customers were Cap Hill locals, and so we didn’t want to move too far away from those folks. … We love this neighborhood. We love this city.”

And though the ongoing BRT construction is currently blocking Marion Street completely, “we’re very optimistic that when it is functional, it’ll be a good thing for Colfax, and it’ll be a good thing for us,” Walker adds. Plus, “there are lots of amazing businesses right here. We’re so excited to be neighbors with Good Bones, and there are other businesses right here that we really look up to, and that we really respect. Voodoo Doughnuts is just down here, so you know, if they can make it work, we’re pretty confident we can.”

As Kimball and Walker work toward this next step, “the number one feeling is gratitude, and such a sense of community,” Walker says. “The Sadboy community identifies so strongly with this idea — the nostalgia, the leaning into the sadness, not being afraid to talk about hard stuff and say, sometimes life is hard, and you just need a little ice cream.”

He concludes, “We’re planning to be here for a while. Our hope and our goal is to be a part of the Denver community for years to come.”

For more information about Sadboy Creamery, visit sadboycreamery.com and follow it on Instagram @sadboycreamery for weekly pint drops and and updates about the new brick-and-mortar shop.