ST. CLOUD — There's a new artisan ice cream shop in St. Cloud.
Jupiter Moon Ice Cream of St. Joseph, which serves hand-crafted ice cream, opened a second location in June in the old gift shop in Munsinger Gardens.
The shop experiments with roughly 100 flavors, rotating them across the company's two locations. Currently, 25 flavors are offered in St. Joseph, which opened in the summer of 2020, and 12 at St. Cloud’s Munsinger Gardens location.
Flavors range from mocha caramel latte to root beer to key lime coconut. Honey lavender and cherry vanilla cola are also on the ice cream menu. The store tries to incorporate local flavors to honor the company’s Central Minnesota roots. These flavors can be served in a dish or a waffle cone.
“One of the flavors we make is Minnesota cosmic twilight, which includes blueberries and aronia berries, both local and native to the state,” said David Boyer, the owner of the St. Cloud-area ice cream empire.
Along with dairy-based ice cream, the store has vegan options as well. These include pina colada, pink grapefruit sorbet and strawberry lemon sorbet.
Jupiter Moon Ice Cream began in 2019 as a solo bike enterprise, according to Boyer. Boyer, who leads a corporate user experience design team, said he started the enterprise as a creative outlet, something he doesn't get from his nine-to-five job.
“Some coworkers and I were talking one day while working on a project that was the opposite of joyful,” Boyer said. “We discussed what is inherently happy and ice cream quickly bubbled up to the top.”
After initial success, primarily serving customers with its mobile bike on Wednesday night concerts at Lake George, Boyer decided to open his first shop in St. Joseph. The St. Joseph location, at 15 E. Minnesota St., is where the hard-served ice cream is made.
This summer, the business expanded to St. Cloud.
“I thought this is the perfect place for ice cream and coffee,” Boyer said. “It's a beautiful place and I'm happy to be part of it because it supports the community.”
Pairing ice cream with coffee in St. Cloud
For early risers who might not want ice cream but still want a treat while walking around the gardens, Boyer suggests trying Juniper Moon's coffee options. The shop offers lattes, tea, cappuccinos and affogato, which is espresso over ice cream.
The beans come from Central Minnesota's Kinder Coffee Lab and Eminent Roasters.
“Most people don't do coffee in the afternoon and most people don't do ice cream in the mornings,” Boyer said. “It allows us to extend our operating hours as well.”
The St. Cloud Mungsinger Gardens location is open daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and the St. Joseph location is from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m., according to its website.
Corey Schmidt covers local government for the St. Cloud Times. He can be reached at cschmidt@gannett.com.
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