Festive flavours delivered by Mather's Ice Cream

A LOCAL business is celebrating Christmas and a year like no other by releasing some festive flavours.

Mather’s Ice Cream at the kiosk in Grant Park was forced to close during the coronavirus lockdown but re-opened as soon as it could.

Now closed again for Christmas and New Year, owners Brett Mather and Anna Henderson hope the community will continue to support them by ordering home delivery of their new special range.

Anna said: “We’ve had to adapt this year but we’ve had great support. We’re fortunate that we can continue to trade from Grant Park. We’re closed for a few weeks (unless it snows then we’ll open up to offer hot chocolate) but will be back early January, opening Thursday, Friday, Saturday every week to sell our home-made burgers, ice creams and hot drinks.”

She added: “We’ve put together Christmas ice creams for home delivery including chocolate orange, Christmas pudding, mince pie, marzipan stollen, salted cinnamon toffee, Irish cream liqueur, strawberry and sherry trifle, raspberry pavlova, gingerbread, butterscotch rum, sticky toffee pudding, cranberry and orange punch sorbet, as well as mango and pineapple sorbet.

“We also had a special request from a customer, which we thought we’d give a try – Bucky ice cream! We use Buckfast to make the ice cream and we’ve had quite a reaction so far

“We’ve also got quite a keen following for our vegan ice creams (normally oat based) and sorbets. We always try to have at least five flavours to choose from.”

Mather’s make their ice creams from scratch and hope to team up with a local milk producer soon. They also make their burgers and buns using local produce including locally reared beef from Macbeth’s Butchers.

During lockdown they offered a home delivery service of their ice creams.

“We had a fantastic response,” said Anna, “especially from people shielding, or otherwise unable to get out. Once restrictions eased and childcare became available (thanks Granny and Grandpa), we opened the kiosk again with a few changes.”

Brett and Anna opened up the side access to the kiosk to facilitate a one-way system to reduce queues. They also moved their display freezer inside and offered a takeaway service only.

Anna said: “Although it was eerily quiet during lockdown, people have been keen to use the park again, and with other options not available, have been more accepting of the changeable weather than normal!

“We’ll be spending Christmas with granny and grandpa this year, taking a few weeks off to prepare for 2021.”