Gerri Moen, Mayor of Howell, Michigan, accepts a cone from one of the servers at Sweet Temptations.
We used to have an ice cream shop here in Luna Pier, Michigan. The shop was called Sweet Temptations and they served Hershey ice cream, along with pizzas, gyros and a number of other goodies. The shop was rather seasonal and ended up closing. While we do have another shop in town now that serves Hershey ice cream, I always thought the name “Sweet Temptations” was a great name for an ice cream shop.
Last week during the Michigan Association of Mayors Summer Workshop in Grand Haven, Grand Haven Mayor Roger Bergmann and City Manager Pat McGinnis took city leaders from across the state to one of four of Sweet Temptations locations in Grand Haven. I had found another of their locations down at the waterfront earlier in the day, but this one seemed a bit more interesting.
The main point of this location is what goes on next door. Sweet Temptations in Grand Haven doesn’t serve Hershey ice cream. Nor do they serve Stroh’s or any other brand from larger manufacturers. The fact is, next door to this location is a milk manufacturing plant.
That’s right. This Sweet Temptations makes their own ice cream.
This location also has a candy manufacturing facility inside the store. While they make a lot of excellent chocolates, caramels, specialty popcorns and other goodies, they also make the waffle cones that are offered with the handmade ice creams. These waffle cones can be plain, dipped in chocolate, or dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with chopped nuts or even … sprinkles.
I know one other shop which manufactures its own ice cream, that being Independent Dairy just north of us in Monroe, Michigan. And while I like the ice creams at Independent Dairy and used them as my ice cream novelty supplier for the beachhouse in the summer of 2008, I have to say there was something about the ice creams at Sweet Temptations in Grand Haven that made it better than the ice creams made at Independent.
And that’s saying a lot.
You know, the more I write about Grand Haven, the more I want to go back …