With summer temperatures on the rise, one of the city’s longest running ice cream shops is coming back to help cool things down.
Sweet Dreams of Gainesville will be serving their local homemade ice cream after nearly half a year of COVID-19 pandemic closure. Known for its wacky flavors and strong community involvement, the ice cream shop plans to reopen its doors once Alachua County public schools let out for summer break in June.
Since 2004, Sweet Dreams has served the most unique flavors of ice cream Gainesville has ever seen. From flavors like Malaysian Chocolate and Mint Coffee Chip, to rarities like Pineapple Upside-Down Cake and Pear Brandy, owner Michael (Mike) Manfredi blends classics with creativity in his batches, which are made fresh every week.
“Before the pandemic, we would do things like Chocolate Night, Wacky Flavors Night and a ton of fundraisers,” he said, “and we would serve up to a thousand people in a single day.“We used to have a lot of special events that could bring together as many people as we wanted to.”
Maya Levy, a 20-year-old biology major at Santa Fe who used to work for Sweet Dreams, recalls the liveliness of the shop’s events pre-covid.
“On Holiday Flavor Days, Mike would dress up as an elf and cook up a surprisingly tasty fruit cake ice cream,” Levy said. “On those days, all of the workers were called in. It was non-stop serving ice cream from open to close, and it would get pretty crazy, but it was also quite festive and fun.”
Being open for nearly two decades, Sweet Dreams has seen countless nights of gameday rushes and new semester sell-outs. Former worker Harmony Hillman, a 21-year-old mathematics senior at UF, worked at Sweet Dreams from August 2017 right until its pandemic induced closure.
“One of the busiest nights I remember working was one of my first weekend shifts in 2017,” Hillman said. “It was right around when the fall semester started, so there were a lot of college students and families back in town, and there was a line out the door for hours.”
Sweet Dreams was not only a popular place for a sweet treat, but over the years, the shop has formed many successful partnerships with the local community. Sweet Dreams partnered with businesses and service organizations such as the American Cancer Society, the Gainesville Police Department’s Community Outreach, the Rotary Club and the Children's Miracle Network.
If customers could not make it into the shop, the shop would bring the ice cream to them. One of the events owner Manfredi misses the most from before the pandemic is their regular gathering at UF Shands Pediatrics.
“We used to have a monthly ice cream party with the kids on the fourth floor at Shands Hospital, and that’s been hard to see disappear since COVID started,” Manfredi said.
Sweet Dreams made a name for itself as a steady-income, active business in the Gainesville community. Unfortunately, dedicated Gainesvilian customers were no match for the financial burden the pandemic placed on the shop. In November 2020, the small business had to close for the first time in its history.
Aubrey Mowery, a 23-year-old former server at Sweet Dreams, witnessed the decline in business for Sweet Dreams.
“There were a handful of days I had maybe 1-5 people come in all day, so it did start to get a bit lonely towards the end,” Mowery said. “Once things shut down, it took a huge toll on Sweet Dreams.”
Florida’s economy is home to more than 2.7 million small businesses, with 41.5% of Alachua County’s economy being small businesses. In Florida, the food services industry faced a devastating 64.5% revenue loss due to the pandemic, with 40% of small businesses being forced into closure.
“I think it’s really sad that small businesses seem to have taken the hardest hits from the pandemic,” Hillman said. “It was just kind of a depressing change to go from having really busy and exciting shifts to spending half of my time at Sweet Dreams reading a book because there were so few customers.”
Since its closure, Sweet Dreams has been serving ice cream and selling T-shirts during occasional limited weekend hours. Starting last month, the shop also began its neighborhood ice cream truck tours in hopes of spreading the word about fully reopening again.
“The weekend partial-opens have been really spotty, and people aren’t coming out in the numbers that they were before, not quite yet,” Manfredi said. “It’s hard when you’ve had a business for so long, and you can’t do anything about it. You watch your business kind of go away, and it’s rough.”
As the nation approaches the vaccination era of COVID-19, Sweet Dreams hopes to bounce back from its closure and eventually return to the state it was in before the pandemic.
“I’m really grateful we were able to be open even for a few weekends, and I hope Sweet Dreams will be able to stay open consistently again now that vaccines are available,” Hillman said.
Sweet Dreams is located at 3437 W University Ave. The shop’s limited weekend hours, reopening date and future hours can be found through its Facebook page.
Follow Brenna Sheets on Twitter @BrennaMarieShe1.
