A Place to Chill
Sean Mallard and Chantelle Heeney-Mallard began their ice cream business as a side hustle. Both have worked in the foodservice industry. Heeney-Mallard has a diploma of pâtisserie from Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa, with plenty of experience in ice-cream making. Mallard has a background in brewing with a degree from Heriot-Watt University in Scotland.
During the pandemic, they moved to the Ottawa Valley, where Heeney-Mallard grew up. That’s when the ideas started churning about opening their own shop.
“We were still in COVID, so [we weren’t] ready to open anything and we knew we wanted to buy our house first,” Heeney-Mallard says. So, they put their dream on ice for a while.
Fast forward to 2022, Heeney-Mallard was working as a chocolatier and head of gelato at Hummingbird Chocolate, but, she still had a yearning to make ice cream.
“So, then we started Mallard's Milk Bar as a side gig, doing markets,” she says. They launched their small batch brand that summer, with Heeney-Mallard as the production lead and Mallard focusing on marketing and administration.
At first, there were a lot of late nights and long hours.
“We would be at work all week and we would do production in the evenings in the Arnprior Curling Club,” Mallard says.
They’d make ice cream until 10:00 p.m., sometimes later. The churning would happen the following day, late into the night, to get things ready for the Sunday farmers’ market. “So, that was pretty go, go, go for a while.
From farmers’ market to storefront
In December, they made the leap from part-time ice cream cart to full-time business with a brick-and-mortar operation, taking over a space on John Street in Arnprior. The space needed a lot of work — installing a commercial kitchen and proper bathrooms and knocking down walls — but it was theirs to transform.
“The history of places and the character means a lot to us,” Heeney-Mallard says. She explains that they wanted to make it feel as though “you're at your grandmother's house and she's treating you to ice cream. Just feel the warmth while you're in the space, while having an enjoyable time, whether it's ice cream or baked goods or drinks.
Serving up a sense of belonging
Mallard and Heeney-Mallard want Mallard’s Milk Bar to be a community space where everyone feels welcome. “[It’s] a local hangout spot, just like a brewery or a coffee shop. It brings people in,” Heeney-Mallard says. With that in mind, they started an Ice Cream Social Club to help create that sense of connection.
“As an adult, it’s really hard to meet people when you first move to a new town, which I have felt a whole lot in my career, moving around,” Heeney-Mallard says. “It was so hard to make friends.”
Much like a Founder’s Club or a Mug Club popular in the brewing industry, an annual subscription to their Ice Cream Social Club includes perks such as a custom T-shirt, a freezer tote bag so members can travel with their pints, a members-only flavour each quarter and their name on the shop wall.
But, it’s the personal touches that really set this club apart. Members’ names aren’t just on a plaque. Heeney-Mallard personally hammers the names of each member/family on thrifted spoons.
“[Members] are coming in now and [saying] ‘Oh, there’s our spoon!’ They’re all pumped,” Mallard says. Although the club is currently full, some new spots will open up in the winter.
Inspired by community, family and travel
From its countertops, which are sourced from Arnprior’s Steelheads & Strikes bowling alley, to its ingredients, there’s a true love of local at Mallard’s Milk Bar.
“From the beginning though, we wanted to do a big emphasis on using a lot of local products, so we started creating relationships with McGregor's Produce, Hugli’s [Blueberry Ranch], Hedgerow Orchard for sea buckthorn, Stonetable Haskaps, stuff like that,” Mallard says.
Heeney-Mallard adds that Arnprior has “a community-over- competition mentality, where there's room for all of us, but we need to support each other, whatever way we can because it's a full circle.”
While Heeney-Mallard loves to showcase what’s in season, she’ll also draw inspiration from travels and family flavours. For example, you’ll notice Newfoundland Salt Company’s sea salt in many of her ice creams as a base ingredient.
“All ice cream needs a little bit of salt,” says Mallard, whose paternal side is from Newfoundland. “We happened to do trips in Newfoundland twice [within a year of opening] the shop... A lot of the other flavours that we do are inspired by our travels. It's a big part of who we are.”
The sea salt base was a “game changer” for Heeney-Mallard: “There's a lot of ice creams that are really sweet. And so to be able to flip it and turn it salty, because I do love sweet and salty together, was really neat. I haven't seen it many places before.”
Favourite flavours
Mallard’s Milk Bar swaps out flavours weekly and Heeney-Mallard keeps a running spreadsheet of ideas. As for her favourite? It's a tricky question to answer because it changes weekly. If she had to choose, strawberry basil sorbet is a go-to for summer. Cucumber and gin sorbet is also on the brainstorm list. And there are some unusual flavour pairings that could come back by popular demand, such as rhubarb and black peppercorn, goat cheese or sweet corn and blueberries.
Vegan and gluten-free options are also regularly in the rotation, so everyone can find something they’ll enjoy. Mallard and Heeney- Mallard recognized that vegan ice cream was a niche not being served in the Ottawa Valley. When they were at the farmers’ market, “it ended up being one of our first flavours almost every week to sell out,” Heeney-Mallard says.
Even if you’re a dairy die-hard, they urge you to give their vegan options a try. When it comes to highlighting local fruit in a sorbet, Mallard says, “It lets that product shine more… It’s not just doing it because it's vegan. It's doing it because it tastes good that way.”
‘We’ve grown up a lot with each other’
Co-owning this business has been a new adventure for the couple. The two met through friends in university in 2015, and have been together nine years and married for five. Reflecting on what they’ve built so far, Heeney-Mallard says, “We've grown up a lot with each other. [We’ve] allowed each other to grow where needed and push each other, which definitely I think has helped with our business.”
Mallard says, “It was a big leap to do [this]… As of June, we [said], okay, this is it, let's go. And it was like trying to do the best possible job to make it so each other's kind of dreams can really work.”
Planning for the future, they hope to make Mallard’s Milk Bar much more than an ice cream shop. They want to host more live music, offer some craft beer and wine selections, work with community groups and contribute to social causes.
“[We’re] looking forward to being better stewards of local ingredients and community. Overall, I guess this sounds kind of corny to say, but a more chill place with an ice cream shop,” Mallard says.
Mallard’s Milk Bar
55 John St North, Arnprior, Ont.
mallardsmilkbar.com | @mallardsmilkbar
