A Gainesville ice cream shop that for nearly two decades hosted fun and flavorful events announced on Friday a bittersweet treat for its customers: Farewell Flavor Night.
Sweet Dreams, 1614 NW 13th St., will close on Dec. 30 after 19 years in business, owner Mike Manfredi confirmed to The Sun on Sunday morning.
“This has truly been 20 years out of my 50-year life. I lived, breathed and thought about not much else but ice cream,” he said.
Manfredi was open on social media as to his reason for closing, writing that soaring costs and debts incurred as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic have been too much to overcome.
“It is just not worth it anymore,” he wrote on Facebook.
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Manfredi said that as he has had to increase prices to offset rising costs, business as waned, including for special events, such as Sunday’s Winter Flavor Night, which included such concoctions as eggnog, candy cane, pumpkin spice and fruit cake.
“The cost really outpaced people’s ability to come out,” he said.
For his Farewell Flavor Night, which runs Dec. 30 from 1 to 10 p.m., Manfredi said he plans to make as many of the “favorites” as he can, and that he also will be offering pre-made pints for sale.
Of the hundreds of flavors Manfredi has made over the years, he said Turkish delight — honey ice cream with pistachios and a pomegranate swirl — remains his favorite.
“Probably the best ice cream I think I’ve ever made,” he said, while also noting his love for brown sugar toffee.
Sweet Dreams first opened in September 2004 at 3437 W. University Ave. It moved last year to a larger and more prominent location at the corner of Northwest 13th Street and Northwest 16th Avenue. Manfredi dismissed the idea that the move to his “dream location” played any role in his business’s downfall.
“We’d be in worse shape if I had stayed in the other location,” he said.
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Among the things Manfredi said he will remember most fondly about his time in business, is bringing the annual Touch-a-Truck event to Gainesville, and his monthly trips to UF Health Shands Hospital where he would serve ice cream to children and their families.
“First they hired me to come there and do it, and then I just stopped billing them,” he said of the hospital where he’s visited hundreds of times and served thousands of cups of ice cream.
Manfredi said he’s still deciding on his plans for the future.
“I picked this job on purpose,” he said of Sweet Dreams. “It’s a happy place to be. Ice cream is a happy business. I have to go find some other happy business now.”
