HERE’S THE
Murrysville native finds
sweet success with
Millie’s Homemade Ice Cream.
— BY JENNIFER BROZAK —
I
n July of 2014, Chad Townsend and his wife
Lauren were out after dinner one evening
when they decided to stop for ice cream.
“The place we stopped at was serving
Hershey’s ice cream, and we were a little
disappointed that we were paying to buy
ice cream that we could essentially buy
anywhere,” he says. “So we thought it would
be fun to drive around and try to find local
places that made their own ice cream.”
To their disappointment, they discovered
that the majority of locations serving ice
cream in Pittsburgh were, in fact, serving
highly processed pre-made products.
At the time, Townsend had just left his job
as the executive chef of Salt of the Earth in
Garfield to “get his thoughts together” and
focus on developing his own restaurant. That’s
when inspiration struck.
“We have such a great food scene in this
city and only a handful of places are making
their own ice cream. That’s pretty terrible,” he
says. “So, I decided that I would do it. I would
make ice cream.”
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A Murrysville native who lives in
Edgewood, Townsend had always made ice
cream as part of his job as a chef. He says he
knew he could serve a better product than
what other scoop shops were selling.
And so, Millie’s Homemade Ice Cream,
named after Townsend’s grandmother, was
born.
Townsend convinced his wife to purchase a
commercial-grade freezer and began sourcing
the freshest, most natural ingredients he could
find. He makes it a point to use no stabilizers,
artificial flavorings or colorings.
“All of our flavors are made with real foods,”
he explains. “There’s nothing fake.”
Peach ice cream, for example, is made with
roasted and pureed peaches, and strawberry
ice cream is flavored with fresh, local
strawberries. As a result, the menu changes
seasonally and weekly, depending on what
produce is in season.
“We’re not trying to be elitist or exclusive.
We just want to serve the best product that
we can,” Townsend, 32, says. “Under-ripe
strawberries that are shipped in from halfway
across the country don’t taste the same as
strawberries that are purchased locally. Our
customers appreciate this, a