[title subtitle=”words: Marla Cantrell
images: courtesy Ryan Burton via Eugene Grace Photography, and Kaitlyn Burnham Photography “][/title]
“My favorite food is ice cream.” That’s one of the first things Ryan Burton says. He is standing near his food truck, Burton’s Comfort Creamery, on Dickson Street in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It is a Saturday, just after noon, and on Saturdays, he and his wife Chelsey typically sell 600 cones.
But dark clouds have rolled in, and rain is not far behind. The blinding heat that made this week nearly unbearable is gone for now—a welcome relief—but those clouds look sinister. Ryan looks to the sky and shrugs. It is Arkansas after all, a state famous for its unruly weather.
A couple waits as the rain slowly begins, and they stay until they each have a cone. The two duck underneath an awning, he with the Salty Dog, which is vanilla ice cream drizzled with salted caramel, rolled in crushed pretzels. She has Snap! Crackle!, vanilla ice cream drizzled with marshmallow creme, and then rolled in Rice Krispies.
In a few minutes, a jagged bolt of lightning crosses the sky, the boom of thunder following. The final customer, a man who’s come to get a cone and a cup of ice cream for his dog, picks up his dog’s half-eaten container from the pavement and the two jog away.
Ryan shuts up shop for the time being. At a nearby table that’s shielded from the rain, he tells the story of how a hobby he loved became the career of his dreams. The road is not a straight one, but none of the interesting ones are. When Ryan was in college at the University of Arkansas, his major was in the science field, but after he graduated in 2011, he moved to Nashville to try his hand at music.
There, he worked with Christian bands, and then with fellow U of A alum, Ben Rector, who’s a pop singer/songwriter from Tulsa. Ryan stayed two and a half years, logging two hundred shows, doing everything from running the lights to playing guitar to managing tours. “I learned really quickly while all that was fun, the traveling just wasn’t for me. I was getting serious with my girlfriend at the time who’s now my wife, and I was looking for something that would keep me at home,” Ryan says.
Enter ice cream. When Ryan wasn’t on the road, he was experimenting with new recipes. “I’d be in Seattle, Portland, L.A., and instead of thinking about being in those awesome cities, I’d be wishing I was back at home making ice cream.”
Ryan loved everything about the process. “Since my degree is in kinesiology, I had a strong background in science, and there’s so much science in sustaining this product between freezing and a liquid state. That was interesting to me, and then all the creativity you get to bring in with flavors. I was intrigued by it. I was learning how to change texture and consistency. I fell in love with that.”
In January 2014, Ryan attended Penn State’s Ice Cream Short Course. “It was intense. All math and science. There were representatives from Kroger. People from Ben & Jerry’s had been there in the past, and Blue Bell. Major companies. We didn’t get to taste ice cream until halfway through the course. You go through the protein make-up of milk, for example. You learn about what happens when you add emulsifiers. I learned a ton about ice cream production.”
In March of that year, a friend from Fayetteville called to tell him that Shulertown Food Truck Court was going to open on Dickson Street.
He called the owner of the court to pitch his idea. The only problem was that Ryan didn’t have a food truck. He had one month to get one. After scrambling to find what he needed, he came across a Miami company that could build a custom truck in four weeks. Ryan took the plunge.
Which then created another problem. Ryan was in love with Chelsey, who was an Arkansas girl living in Nashville. He didn’t want to lose her, and she didn’t want to lose him, so she decided to move to Fayetteville, and transfer to the U of A. She found a roommate. Ryan found a place, and the following October they married.
When Burton’s Comfort Creamery opened in June 2014, they were thrilled by the response. Customers were returning and bringing friends along with them. Burton’s started spiking on social media. Today, it has the largest following on Instagram for any ice cream shop/business based out of Arkansas.
So, what’s the secret? It has a lot to do with the number ten. “Most soft-serve ice cream is around two to three percent milk fat. A premium ice cream might be five percent. But we wanted to push it even more. We’re in the South, for goodness sake!” Ryan says and smiles wide. “So we wanted to blow it out of the water. We were able to find a dairy that was able to make one for us that’s ten percent milk fat. It makes a really rich, creamy product.”
The first year they were open, they made so much ice cream they wore out their ice cream maker. “We now have a custom-made machine that works much faster. The faster you can go from liquid to ice cream, the smaller the ice crystals and the creamier the texture. From there, we were able to get creative with sauces and toppings. We’ve created our own little niche.”
A big part of that niche is understanding how people look at ice cream. “The reason we went with the name Comfort Creamery is because growing up ice cream was always a comfort food for me. We wanted that to be the same experience for our customers, so we include toppings such as Fruity Pebbles, graham crackers, Oreos, Rice Krispies, and other foods that bring back childhood memories and are fun, familiar foods for children.”
Ice cream, he says, is nostalgia on a cone. Close your eyes and you can probably hear the sound of an ice cream truck, its melody like something from a fairy tale.
Ryan even created a cone called Ben’s Beloved, named for his friend, Ben Rector. “When I was making ice cream at home in Nashville, I’d make ice cream for him and his wife. He’d worked at a frozen custard shop growing up in Tulsa, and he told me he used to make an Oreo Blizzard-type custard. And he’d add a little sea salt. So, now it’s part of the menu. Vanilla ice cream drizzled with fudge sauce with a little sea salt, rolled in Oreos.”
As Ryan is describing the cone, the storm picks up, tossing a metal trash can into the street. Rain falls like ammunition, and the awning above us pops in the wind. Later, I will come back for ice cream. And later, after standing in a line that forms quickly, I will discover why Burton’s has gotten so much buzz. Even without the toppings, this is the best ice cream I’ve ever had. When I tell Ryan this, he smiles.
“That’s humbling,” he says. “I had a woman who was visiting from Chicago tell me the same thing the other day. I love to hear that.”
In sixteen months, Burton’s has sold 90,000 cones. They’ve
won three awards. And Ryan says that one day they’ll expand, adding a second location that will be a brick and mortar shop. But they’re moving slowly and carefully.
Burton’s shuts down from November to April. When that happens, he’ll have more time to think about his future. As he’s talking about what lies ahead, he works his way back to the past. Ice cream, he says, is nostalgia on a cone. Close your eyes and you can probably hear the sound of an ice cream truck, its melody like something from a fairy tale. The sun is a bright dot in the sky, and you are as happy as you’ve ever been. “There’s power in those memories,” Ryan says, and you realize he’s right. This man who owns an ice cream truck gets how much we rely on those memories, and how great it is to relive them every time we order a cone.\
Burton’s Comfort Creamery
Shulertown Food Truck Court
372 West Dickson Street
Fayetteville, Arkansas
burtonscreamery.com
Tuesday & Wednesday: Noon – 10pm
Thursday, Friday, Saturday: Noon – 11pm
Open from April to November
