Amy's Ice Creams

Amy Simmons was a premedical student at Tufts, working at Steve's Ice Cream in Boston, when Steve's was bought by a larger company. She left, and in 1984 she and Scott Shaw signed a lease on Guadalupe Street in Austin. The house has stayed in Texas since: around fifteen shops across Austin, Houston and San Antonio, a production plant on Northland Drive that runs a short free tour on weekday mornings, and a rotating book of roughly 350 flavours and fruit ices from which a handful are out on any given day. Mexican vanilla is the constant. Orders are finished with crush'ns worked into the scoop at the counter, and the Texas-specific flavours run to Shiner Bock. The Austin Chronicle has described it as an institution wholly characteristic of the city and as the dominant name in local ice cream, and its readers have voted it their favourite for eight consecutive years. None of that reach extends past the state line, and that is a decision rather than a limit. Simmons told Forbes in 2019 that the company had grown by staying hyperlocal, and framed the ambition as "a hundred years, not a hundred stores".