Hannah Mestel was a busy executive working 50-60 hours per week — away from her family for significant periods of time — and she decided that it was time to make a change. Her son was trying to convince her to open a kosher restaurant but a traditional restaurant wasn’t exactly what she had in mind. She was perusing the COR website to see if that would help her come up with any ideas when she came across an article that described the kashrut challenges involved with visiting unsupervised frozen yogurt and ice cream shops. That’s when she had her light bulb moment, “I’ve always loved ice cream,” admits Hannah, “And I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be great if I could open a place that would be entirely kosher certified, open to the entire community.” And the “Inside Scoop” was born.
The Inside Scoop is opening on Father’s Day, Sunday June 19th and will be located at 3041 Bathurst Street (in the old Kosher Grocer location). They will serve a variety of premium hard ice creams as well as soft serve ice creams with plenty of toppings to make ice cream sundaes. The hard ice creams will be “chalav stam” but there will be chalav yisrael soft serve and toppings available as well as some pareve options.
Even though Hannah’s motivation to open the Inside Scoop was related to slowing down, she knows that running a retail ice cream shop is going to require long hours. But what will make this different for her is that the Inside Scoop will be a family affair. “My husband is going to work some nights, and my 16 year old son is going to work at the store, and my daughter is involved as she’s painting a mural on the wall. So we’re hoping that this will bring us all together.”
Hannah is hoping that the Inside Scoop will bring the entire community together as well, because after all, everyone loves ice cream. “We just want to be a place where everyone can come and have fun, and that’s what ice cream is – fun!”