Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Big crowds are a common sight at Big Dipper Ice Cream in Missoula. Downtown Billings will soon have its own Big Dipper.
Big Dipper Ice Cream, a popular Missoula ice cream parlor that was featured on “Good Morning America,” is coming to downtown Billings.
The store will be jointly owned by Big Dipper founder Charlie Beaton and Bryan and Sarah Hickey. Bryan Hickey said they hope to start renovating their downtown location in October and open “ideally by Valentine’s Day 2015.”
Late winter or early spring is a good time to open an ice cream store, so the kinks can be worked out before the crowds swell with warmer weather, Hickey said.
“We want to make sure we’re rock solid for spring in Billings,” he said.
Hickey said the store will definitely be in downtown Billings, near the Northern Hotel, but that he couldn’t divulge the exact location until a few final details are worked out.
Sarah Hickey’s parents are Jim and Sheila Downs, who owned the Spoke Shop, at 1910 Broadwater Ave., for 38 years before retiring three years ago.
Bryan Hickey said he and Sarah, an accountant, often go to Billings to see her parents, and though they considered moving to Billings to run the store themselves, they decided to stay in Missoula, where both of Bryan’s brothers live.
The Billings Big Dipper will be run by Lia Munson, who manages Coneboy, Big Dipper’s ice cream truck in Missoula.
Big Dipper Ice Cream was founded by Beaton in 1995. The walk-up ice cream parlor is located at 631 S. Higgins, a few blocks south of the Clark Fork River.
The store is open year-round and has always been quite popular. In the Missoula Independent’s Best of Missoula readers poll, Big Dipper has been rated the best ice cream/frozen yogurt store 18 times.
Four and a half years ago, Anna Doran opened a Big Dipper franchise in Helena’s Last Chance Gulch. Four years ago, Beaton and Hickey partnered to launch the ice cream truck. Two years after that, Big Dipper became the ice cream vendor for the University of Montana. They have a kiosk in UM’s Adams Center and use their truck to sell ice cream at events like this Tuesday’s Paul McCartney concert at Washington-Grizzly Stadium.
The cardamom is featured in the August issue of Bon Appetit Magazine, and last summer Big Dipper was one of three ice cream stores in the United States featured on “Good Morning America.”
The store also experiments with special flavors, allowing its employees to come up with exotic concoctions like cayenne caramel and mango habanero sorbet. Big Dipper has also partnered with nearly every microbrewery in Missoula to make special beer-based ice creams.
“We’re big believers in teaming up with other local businesses and getting involved with the community as much as possible,” Hickey said.
Hickey started working as a scooper for Big Dipper in 2000. It was a good job at the time because he could work the late shift at the ice cream store and then play at night with his band, Volumen, a popular group described by the Independent as “a sci-fi, heavy rock, new-wave band.”
Playing bass for Volumen is what landed him a job at Big Dipper. Beaton had seen Volumen perform and thought Hickey looked a lot like his best friend, so he offered him a job
“That’s kind of how things happened back then. … It’s all word of mouth in Missoula,” Hickey said.
In 2002, Beaton bought out the co-owner of the Big Dipper and “found out pretty quickly he couldn’t do it all,” Hickey said. That’s when he made Hickey his first general manager.
Hickey said he was “really curious about the whole business from Day 1” and learned every aspect of running the store.
He and Sarah, who have a 2½-year-old daughter and 11-month-old twins, had been thinking about opening a store in Billings for years, to support their growing family. Last July, Bryan Hickey drove all over Billings with real estate agent Ken Kunkel, “not looking at any particular spots, just parts of Billings to see what fit.”
The downtown seemed like the best fit, and everything came together nine months ago when a property owner there called to say he had a location.
“We’re big believers in downtowns,” Hickey said. Hickey said the Helena store showed them that the Missoula location “wasn’t just a fluke,” that their unique offerings and homemade flavors could be a success elsewhere.
“We had this strong feeling that if we build it they will come, and they did,” he said.
