Ball’s Softee Creme to Become Frosty Boy of Lowell
Frosty Boy of Cascade owners, Chad and Kristen Kremer, have purchased Ball’s Softee Creme and intend to open a second Frosty Boy location in Lowell this spring.
By Justin Tiemeyer || contributing writer
2/13/2024
On Monday, September 4, 2023, Ball’s Softee Creme posted on Facebook that they were running out of large soda cups, cashews, cherry, blueberry, butterscotch, and raspberry topping, waffle cones, heath bars, and potato salad. This fact would not typically be newsworthy, but this time around, the Ball family, who had owned and operated the ice cream store for 52 years in the same location, had no intention of restocking the pantry, as September 4 was their last day in business before permanently closing a beloved Lowell institution. In November, Ball’s Softee Creme was placed on the market. Chad and Kristen Kremer, the proprietors for Frosty Boy of Cascade, purchased the shop and intend to reopen its doors — or window blinds, rather — as a second Frosty Boy location this spring. “We really never expected Ball’s to come up for sale,” Kristen said.
For the Kremers, the idea of expanding and adding a second Frosty Boy location, after so many years of success in Cascade, was always in the back of their minds, and the location could not be better, as the family lives right between Cascade and Lowell. These were only a couple of the ways in which purchasing Ball’s Softee Creme seemed like a perfect storm of experiences and circumstances. Kristen comes from an ice cream family, after all. Her parents owned and ran a Frosty Boy in the small town of Ortonville, Michigan, for 13 years, and that was Kristen’s first job. Chad, on the other hand, grew up in Lowell, so he knew, firsthand, just how important Ball’s was to the community. “Ball’s was an institution,” Chad said. “It was this mecca for so long. We don’t want to say that we’re replacing it, but we hope to live up to it.”
While there is no shortage of locations across the state, Kristen made it clear that Frosty Boy is not an ice cream chain. The name Frosty Boy is owned by Taylor Freezer of Michigan, a manufacturer of soft serve ice cream machines, and anyone who uses Taylor Freezer equipment may use the name Frosty Boy for their business. In other words, no two locations are alike, unless, of course, you run into a situation like the Kremers are about to find themselves in, where one family owns two shops.
There are a number of challenges that anyone purchasing Ball’s Softee Creme would face, following half a century of success, and the first and most difficult challenge is that Frosty Boy can never be Ball’s, even if the Kremers family followed their blueprint to a T. “It is going to look different,” Kristen said.
A number of people have already asked, and the Kremers are happy to announce, that they will serve chili dogs. However, they will not be using the Ball family recipe for chili. “The way that we look at it is that’s a Ball family thing,” Kristen said. Chili dogs at Frosty Boy of Lowell will feature Detroit-style chili from Southfield served on Koegel hotdogs from Flint. Moreover, where chili dogs were the mainstay of the Ball’s lunch menu, Frosty Boy is best known for its Broaster Chicken. Also, in addition to soft-serve ice cream, Hudsonville hand-dipped ice cream will be available, as well.
While the menu will look different, the Kremers claim that the values are the same. Like Ball’s, Frosty Boy is family-owned, the owners care about the community, and they care about being a place where memories can be made. This is not just an ambition; this is something the Kremers family has had experience with. Before it was Frosty Boy of Cascade, their original location was beloved by the community as Sundaes at the Cottage and Sundaes at Cascade Pointe.
Another challenge that comes with purchasing an ice cream shop, during the off-season, is that there are months of labor and capital investments before there’s even the smallest opportunity to turn a profit. Some businesses operate from January through December, but an ice cream shop is not likely to even begin recouping investment costs until March, at the earliest. Fortunately, the Kremers will have the profits and years of irreplaceable experience from the Cascade location, to help with this. In fact, Chad and Kristen feel fortunate to have a few off-season months before opening shop. “It’s kind of a blessing, to be honest,” Kristen said. “There’s a lot to do, prepping for the spring and the summer seasons at an ice cream store. We have the time here in the next couple of months, before we open, to make sure we’re starting out in a good way and not just throwing everything together in a fast way.”
The Kremers’ main source of calm, going into the opening of their second location, comes from the experienced, high-quality staff, who will run the Cascade location, while they are working on opening in Lowell. Some of their employees have been with the company for up to seven years. Additionally, Chad intends to step up and take on more responsibilities, putting some of his video production work on the backburner to assure that the launch goes off without a hitch. The final component the Kremers hope will lead them to success is hiring high-quality individuals in Lowell, possibly even bringing back some employees who have worked at Ball’s in the past.
It is difficult to talk of a family business, especially in reference to the Ball family, without talking about the next generation, and Chad and Kristen do have a nine-year-old daughter. Though the Kremers family expects their daughter to choose her own path, she has always said that she wants to be a chef, and the restaurant business to her is as normal as playing at the park. Regulars in Cascade know her, and she’s not afraid to get in there, stocking candies, putting deliveries away, and pitching in, however she can.
There are too many moving parts for the Kremer family to forecast a grand opening date, and “forecast” is the operative word here, because Michigan weather, especially in light of increased variance in global weather trends, is going to play a big part. They could have all of their licenses and inspections and everything in order and find that the sun never shines in April and there are more snow days than not. “We’ve sort of learned not to say too soon,” Kristen said.
The Kremer family believes their status as a family-owned business, with a history in the ice cream profession, will make for a good transition. “When we purchased it,” Chad said, “We wrote a letter to the Ball family about how much we respected their business and how long it’s been there. We wanted to let them know about our plans to continue the ice cream shop, and they chose us. We know that we weren’t the only ones, but we’re just really thankful to them for choosing us and giving us this opportunity. It is kind of one of those dreams come true.”
