{"id":3185,"date":"2014-07-31T00:01:47","date_gmt":"2014-07-31T06:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=3185"},"modified":"2014-07-31T18:34:21","modified_gmt":"2014-08-01T00:34:21","slug":"big-dipper-ice-cream-coming-to-downtown-billings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2014\/07\/big-dipper-ice-cream-coming-to-downtown-billings\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Dipper Ice Cream coming to downtown Billings"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dipper\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Big crowds are a common sight at Big Dipper Ice Cream in Missoula. Downtown Billings will soon have its own Big Dipper.<\/p><\/div>\n

Big Dipper Ice Cream<\/a>, a popular Missoula ice cream parlor that was featured on \u201cGood Morning America<\/a>,\u201d is coming to downtown Billings.<\/p>\n

The store will be jointly owned by Big Dipper founder Charlie Beaton and Bryan and Sarah Hickey.\u00a0Bryan Hickey\u00a0said they hope to start renovating their downtown location in October and open \u201cideally by Valentine\u2019s Day 2015.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to make sure we\u2019re rock solid for spring in Billings,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hickey said the store will definitely be in downtown Billings, near the Northern Hotel, but that he couldn\u2019t divulge the exact location until a few final details are worked out.<\/p>\n

Sarah Hickey\u2019s parents are Jim and Sheila Downs, who owned the Spoke Shop, at 1910 Broadwater Ave., for 38 years before retiring three years ago.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s brothers live.<\/p>\n

The Billings Big Dipper will be run by Lia Munson, who manages Coneboy, Big Dipper\u2019s ice cream truck in Missoula.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The store is open year-round and has always been quite popular. In the Missoula Independent\u2019s Best of Missoula readers poll, Big Dipper has been rated the best ice cream\/frozen yogurt store 18 times.<\/p>\n

Four and a half years ago, Anna Doran opened a Big Dipper franchise in Helena\u2019s 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\u2019s Adams Center and use their truck to sell ice cream at events like this Tuesday\u2019s Paul McCartney concert at Washington-Grizzly Stadium.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Big Dipper, which makes all its own ice cream, has 16 flavors that are always on the menu \u2014 standards like vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, with more exotic flavors like El Salvador coffee, green tea, white mint Oreo and cardamom.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cGood Morning America.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re big believers in teaming up with other local businesses and getting involved with the community as much as possible,\u201d Hickey said.<\/p>\n

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 \u201ca sci-fi, heavy rock, new-wave band.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s kind of how things happened back then. \u2026 It\u2019s all word of mouth in Missoula,\u201d Hickey said.<\/p>\n

In 2002, Beaton bought out the co-owner of the Big Dipper and \u201cfound out pretty quickly he couldn\u2019t do it all,\u201d Hickey said. That\u2019s when he made Hickey his first general manager.<\/p>\n

Hickey said he was \u201creally curious about the whole business from Day 1\u201d and learned every aspect of running the store.<\/p>\n

He and Sarah, who have a 2\u00bd-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, \u201cnot looking at any particular spots, just parts of Billings to see what fit.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re big believers in downtowns,\u201d Hickey said. Hickey said the Helena store showed them that the Missoula location \u201cwasn\u2019t just a fluke,\u201d that their unique offerings and homemade flavors could be a success elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had this strong feeling that if we build it they will come, and they did,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Big Dipper Ice Cream, a popular Missoula ice cream parlor that was featured on \u201cGood Morning America,\u201d is coming to downtown Billings. The store will be jointly owned by Big Dipper founder Charlie Beaton and Bryan and Sarah Hickey.\u00a0Bryan Hickey\u00a0said they hope to start renovating their downtown location in October and open \u201cideally by Valentine\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,14],"tags":[1099,1100,1102,1107,705,1101,1104,1103,1105,1106,63],"class_list":["post-3185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-billings","category-news","tag-big-dipper-ice-cream","tag-bryan-and-sarah-hickey","tag-charlie-beaton","tag-coneboy","tag-helena","tag-jim-and-sheila-downs","tag-ken-kunkel","tag-last-chance-gulch","tag-norther-hotel","tag-spoke-shop","tag-university-of-montana","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}