HISTORIC TRIANGLE — I scream, you scream, we all scream for Papi’s Creamery, a locally owned Yorktown ice cream shop.
“I am an ice cream aficionado that turned a love into a business,” says owner Diego Diaz Infante. “I started reviewing ice cream on Instagram in 2018, and over the years I got the itch to start making ice cream, so I started making different flavors and experimenting with recipes and creating my own.”
Infante worked at an ice cream shop as a production manager and said that experience gave him a lot of insight into the ice cream-making world, especially from a business standpoint.
“I am Mexican American, born in Mexico, and lived there most of my life. I like to incorporate my heritage into our flavors,” he explained. “I love both comfort flavors and experimenting while pushing the boundaries of ice cream.”
Papi’s Creamery started in August of 2023 out of the kitchen at Circa 1918 in Newport News.
Business has gone very well, said Infante, and they were able to move into their current location in Shady Banks Shopping Center in September.
The shop specializes in small-batch, high-quality ice cream where flavors vary greatly.
Selling everything from a “more typical and common vanilla ice cream with cookie dough and a fudge swirl, to more unique creations like a popcorn ice cream with a peanut butter caramel and peanut butter cookies — we even go as weird as to make potato and gravy ice cream,” explained Infante.
Operating in a less traditional way, Papi’s Creamery is not a scoop shop. Ice cream pints ($12.50 each) are sold online and customers choose their pick-up day and time.
Every week, the business posts its “flavors for the week” on both Facebook and Instagram. Those flavors go on sale through Hotplate every Thursday at 7 p.m. when customers can choose the flavors they want, and select a pickup option.
And, every pint of rich, dense ice cream is made from scratch weekly.
“We add a lot less air into our ice cream when making it, and we use a higher percentage of butterfat, making our ice cream creamier and richer, “Infante said.
The rotation of menu flavors changes weekly, “so every week you have a chance to try something new, or if one week there’s not something appealing, next week you might find something you do like.”
“We bring our Hispanic heritage into our flavors. We’ve made flavors like chocolate abuelita ice cream, mangonada, Fresa tres leches, etc. but, coffee flavors or flavors that have our caramel tend to be very popular,” explained Infante.
He continued, “We do a ‘drop’ style of sales, meaning we make a limited amount of a flavor (usually as much as we can), ‘drop it/open it for sale’ online on Thursdays. Once the flavor is sold, it will not make it back in rotation for at least four months.”
More often than not, Papi’s sells out weekly.
