Two Roosters ready to open, just in time for National Ice Cream Day

Two Roosters Ice Cream is opening its first brick-and-mortar location Sunday – just in time for National Ice Cream Day – in Greystone Village in North Raleigh.

Since March 2015, Two Roosters, owned by Jared and Kelsey Plummer, has operated out of a turquoise and white camper attached to an old Ford F-100 truck to sell homemade ice cream, including many with unique flavors, such as grilled cheese and pizza. They announced in April they would open a storefront. They also have been scooping ice cream at Durham Bulls games.

Owner Jared Plummer said that as a businessperson, he thinks the most important question to ask is, “How are you different?” Two Roosters aspires to be different, in part, by offering its unusual flavors.

“To me, it’s like, ‘How can we take these classic things that people are used to and tweak them just slightly, so they’re still familiar, but yet different from the next person down the street?’ ” said Plummer, an NC State graduate. “One of my favorite moments of this whole thing is when people try a flavor, and it’s unlike anything they’ve ever had.”

Ten of their “Forever Flavors” that “people know and love” will be available Sunday, including double vanilla honey, milk chocolate, blackberry hibiscus tea and strawberry and creamed honey. They will also have butterscotch haystack and a fresh peach crumble ice cream flavors, as well as milkshakes, seasonal sundaes, non-dairy options and to-go pints. On Sunday, Two Roosters will be serving coffee and tea affogatos in addition to their ice cream.

As a child, Plummer made rock-salt ice cream at his grandmother’s house while two wooden roosters looked on, resulting in the name of the ice cream shop.

Two Roosters no longer uses rock salt machines and instead outsources the dairy mix to N.C. State’s Howling Cow and Homeland Creamery in Julian, N.C.

“So we use their unflavored, sweet cream base. So we get that base and then I take it from there, and that’s where all of our flavors come from,” he said. “I take that flavor base and transform it into all of our flavors.”

Plummer gets ideas for his flavors from books about cooking and ice cream making, other local chefs, The Parlour in Durham and his family tradition of making ice cream.

“When I need inspiration, I oftentimes just crack open some of my granny’s cookbooks and thumb through there and see what they did two or three generations ago without all the processed stuff we have now,” he said.

The decor at Two Roosters will have what Plummer describes as “a modern twist on a country store,” complete with reclaimed wood from a chicken farm in Asheboro and a muted landscape painted on one wall of the store.

On Sunday, the store will have have a Snapchat filter for customers to use on opening day.

The shopping center is home to Food Lion, Gonza Tacos y Tequila, Sola Coffee Cafe, Papa’s Pizza and Subs and Bottle Revolution bottle shop. The North Raleigh Arts and Creative Theatre is also in the plaza.

Info: 7713 Lead Mine Road, Raleigh. tworoosters.com, facebook.com/TwoRoostersIce/

This story was originally published July 11, 2017 at 5:06 PM with the headline "Two Roosters ready to open, just in time for National Ice Cream Day."