Salem Valley Farms, a popular southeastern Connecticut ice cream stand in the town of Salem, is expanding to Rocky Hill.
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The new location, at 2229 Silas Deane Highway, will take over the former Scoops & Sprinkles space, said owner Matt Viens, officially opened Aug. 9.
The opportunity came up quickly, Viens said. He had been looking to expand the Salem Valley brand, and "it kind of just worked in our favor," he said.
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"We've been looking around for different areas where it would be good for us, and it was just meant to be," he said. He was also able to purchase some of the former business's equipment.
The Salem original, off Route 11, is in a quiet and rural setting, its scoops and sweets served out of a red barn-style structure. While "the barn," as Viens calls it, has the nostalgia factor, he said he's planned a more clean, modern and upscale look for the Rocky Hill space.
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The Rocky Hill outpost will also have a smaller flavor list, Viens said, offering about 30 different options. In Salem, the team crafts more than 80 rotating flavors of its own ice cream, organized online by “top 10,” “signature,” “scoop shop favorites” and seasonal and small-batch varieties.
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"We'll have the top 10, your vanilla, your chocolate chip cookie dough, that kind of stuff, and then the other 20 will rotate," he said. Signature batches have included key "Lyme" pie, cappuccino fudge crunch, blueberry cheesecake, s'mores, brownie explosion and salty caramel chip, and Salem Valley has even experimented with a small-batch basil flavor.
Salem Valley Farms has been in business since 1988, but Viens and his wife, Tara, have been the owners since 2018. He is originally from Pennsylvania, but his family has a generations-old house on Lake Hayward in East Haddam, he said.
"We'd been coming up here every summer since I was a little kid," he said. "It's a cool spot, and it's right up the road from the ice cream shop. So we'd come for ice cream while we were up here. ... I always just loved the product and was fascinated by it."
When he found out the then-owners were looking to retire in 2018, he jumped at the chance to buy it, he said — literally, jumped off a treadmill at the gym to immediately call his wife about the opportunity. Three months later, the business was theirs.
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"We had to learn everything," he said. "It wasn't that it was necessarily hard, but we wanted to make sure we kept the quality and integrity of the product. We didn't change anything; we kept everything the same."
The Rocky Hill scoop shop will offer most of the Salem menu, including cups, cones, sundaes, banana splits, milkshakes and floats. Salem Valley also offers ice cream samplers for guests who want to try multiple flavors.
Salem Valley Farms Scoop Shop will be open daily from noon to 9 p.m. for the rest of the summer, and hours will change in the fall, Viens said.
Aug 8, 2023|Updated Aug 15, 2023 6:02 p.m.
By Leeanne Griffin
Leeanne Griffin is a senior food reporter for CT Insider, handling coverage of restaurant openings and closings, trends, events and general news about Connecticut food and beverage businesses. She covers statewide food happenings, with a focus on Hartford County, and curates CT Insider’s weekly Taste of Connecticut food newsletter.
Leeanne joined Hearst Connecticut in 2021, but has been working in Connecticut news since 2006. Before joining Hearst, she was the food and dining reporter for the Hartford Courant for a decade.
She has earned several awards over the years from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists and the New England Newspaper & Press Association, including a recent first-place SPJ honor for a story about lobster rolls. She has also served as a past Northeast regional panelist on the James Beard Foundation Restaurant and Chef Awards Committee.
Leeanne lives in Hartford County with her husband and their three-pound Holland lop rabbit. A native of Worcester, Massachusetts, she holds a master's degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University, where she first learned about the magic of New Haven apizza.
Reach Leeanne at [email protected].