Photo by Erin Nelson.
Layers of cherry and blueberry Italian ice and vanilla soft serve ice cream at Jeremiah's Italian Ice in Vestavia Hills.
Sit outside Jeremiah’s Italian Ice, and you might hear a lot of people comparing their gelati combinations and talking about why they like them.
The new Jeremiah’s Italian Ice opened at 790 Montgomery Highway in the Publix shopping center in August. It’s known for its gelati — a swirled mixture of Italian ice and soft-serve ice cream, though you can also get either of those items separately.
Ricky McKnight, managing partner of the Vestavia location, said the soft serve — which comes in vanilla, chocolate and swirl — is “a lot more dense than most ice cream you get, which makes it creamier.”
The dozens of flavors of Italian ice — like Bahama freeze, sea salted caramel and cookies and cream — are made fresh, he said, and “are just a real vibrant color and have great flavor.”
They also have rotating flavors and sugar-free options, like sugar-free sour green apple and cherry.
To order a gelati, you could, for example, combine chocolate soft serve with the P-Nutty Italian ice, or combine vanilla soft serve with cake batter Italian ice. Or you could mix one of the Flavorites like the S’more, which has cookie butter and chocolate Italian ice combined with swirl soft serve and cookie butter crumbles.
And for those with four-legged friends, free pup cups are always available.
McKnight said he was excited to open the franchise and be a part of a company that makes people happy.
“I love the culture of it, and the product is great,” he said. “I love how the business is run.”
The Orlando-based ice cream endeavor was started by Jeremiah Litwack, who sold Italian ice in front of the Philadelphia Mint as a high schooler. In college, he grew it into a successful pushcart and ice cream truck business. Now there are more than 150 locations nationwide.
“He’s a cool guy,” McKnight said of Litwack.
The business motto is “Live life to the coolest.”
“He kind of pushed that into everything else,” McKnight said. “The goal of Jeremiah’s is to be cool, bold, genuine, vibrant, generous and strategic.”
Both the shop decor and the ice cream flavors embody the “vibrant.” And McKnight said he’s looking forward to more of the “generous” part, too.
“We’re excited to be a part of the community,” he said. “We’ve gotten to meet a lot of good people, and it’s a really nice place. We’re looking forward to getting involved in all the local schools.”
McKnight hinted that there might be more locations to come as well.
“We have a territory to franchise, and this is our first store to open,” he said.
Jeremiah’s Italian Ice is open noon to 10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and noon to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. For more information, visit jeremiahsice.com or @JeremiahsIceofVestaviaHillsAL on Facebook.
