She’s built an Ocean Springs ice cream shop for 15 years. Now she’s got even bigger plans

What does a Coast business owner do with a small place and a big dream?

Innovate and collaborate. That’s how Marie Garbin is extending her reach from her compact Quakes Ice Creamery on U.S. 90 in Ocean Springs across the Mississippi Coast and beyond.

Besides selling scoops, shakes and Quakes out of the shop, her frozen custard is found in unlikely places like gas station convenience stores, at Snapper’s along the boardwalk in Biloxi and on the desert menu at The Shed Barbecue & Blues Joint.

Her goal in 2022 was to get her ice cream cups and her “Quakes ice cream sold here” signs in 20 businesses.

Her dream is much more ambitious now.

“The big goal — I really am prayerful on this — is to become branded and available nationwide,” she said. She’s taking a big step this year in partnership with The Blind Tiger.

Opportunity across state lines

Quakes ice cream cups are featured at the new Blind Tiger Butcher Shop in Bay St. Louis.

“Most people over here have not been exposed to Quakes,” said owner Scott Sutherland, who reached out to Quakes in Jackson County to get its products in the Hancock County shop.

Sutherland also is managing partner for The Blind Tiger, which has restaurants on the Coast in Biloxi and Bay St. Louis, and others in Louisiana.

As The Blind Tiger expands, so does Quakes.

“We’ve got a new property opening in Fairhope,” Sutherland said. The new restaurant is on the main pier in Fairhope, Alabama, where people walk along the waterfront.

“It’s a perfect little spot for what she offers,” he said. “We’re glad to have her product there.”

The pier is listed as one of the best things to do in Fairhope, Garbin said. Those walking and fishing will be able to stop at the window and get one of the pre-made scoops of Quakes frozen custard.

She’s talked to people in the Fairhope area who eagerly await Quakes’ arrival this spring. “It’s custard. We love custard,” they told her.

“I think that’s going to be a really key step in where we’re going from here,” she said of the expansion across state lines, “because once that happens, I’m hoping to tie into a lot of really bigger opportunities, like gas stations between here and there, and hopefully move over into the Florida area.

“I want to be on the Florida beach,” she said.

The boardwalk treat

It’s taken 15 years to get here, starting in a garage painted in Scooby-Doo colors of Shaggy green and Daphne-dress purple because the original owner’s sons loved the cartoon.

She bought the equipment from the second owner after he closed following Hurricane Katrina. He didn’t have the menus, but he shared the recipe and she took it from there.

Frozen custard is famous on the boardwalks along the New Jersey shore, near where Garbin was raised.

“It’s just another kind of ice cream,” she said, “but it does have egg in it.”

While the ingredient list for a lot of ice creams contains eggs, “It is always in custard,” she said. “This tends to be more velvety,” she said.

“It really is a stand-apart product when you compare it to regular-type ice cream. It’s a higher quality.”

More flavor

When Quakes opened in April 2009, it was one of the only ice cream shops in the Ocean Springs area.

Garbin said customers wanted more than the traditional chocolate and vanilla frozen custard, so she developed new flavors like cappuccino, lemon, black raspberry, salted caramel and mint chocolate chip to have as a scoop, a cone, in a shake or float.

“We started doing all the flavors every day,” she said. “That’s how we came up with cheesecake,” which also comes in flavors like chocolate and strawberry cheesecake.

“My favorite’s cheesecake — without a doubt,” she said. It’s so good, she said, “I do think that’s going to make us famous.”

Innovation step-by-step

With a business degree from Rutgers University, long hours and support from her husband, Paul Garbin, and children, Nick and Julia, the business grew.

“When we first opened, it was only us,” she said. They added staff and feature flavors like king cake, eggnog and pumpkin cheesecake. She introduced the Quake that lets customers choose their favorite toppings, nuts, candy and syrups to stir into the ice cream.

She also created a dairy-free option using almond milk and condensed coconut cream and snowballs in regular and sugar-free.

“So, every year over the winter season, I would take that time to reinvest, whether it be construction or we tried merchandising with hoodies and T-shirts,” she said.

“I understood the concept of wholesale and distribution,” she said, and realized to grow the business and to have something to pass onto her kids, she’d have to get Quakes in more places.

Building a brand

She started selling Quakes at The Shed in 2011, and over time the product evolved into the specialty scoops she sells now, with layers of ice cream and toppings rather than all mixed together.

More collaborations and innovations followed. Shed owner Brad Orrison suggested she look at the packaging in the grocery stores, which is how she came to put ice cream cups in clear containers so customers can see the layers of strawberries and the cookies and caramel in the Mississippi Mud cups.

Jim Dodge at Greer’s Tiger grocery store in Vancleave store encouraged her to get her Universal Product Code that she’d need to go into manufacturing, and gave her another place to sell her ice cream.

“Thank goodness for my mom,” she said, who invested in packaging, UPC labels and manufacturing. Garbin got the Health Department permit, then her manufacturing permit. As a woman-owned business, she qualified for a grant from Balch & Bingham that she’s using to get her trademark for her original products.

A big year

“This year is going to be, hopefully, a huge growth year, which means I’m going to need a lot of people,” Garbin said.

Her experience as a top salesperson for Mary Kay got her a couple of shiny cars and two principles of business: “You can’t take ‘no’ personally,” she said, and “You have to keep going because it takes a very long time to build a very strong business.”

Now she’s trying to figure out where are the most profitable places to sell her products.

“It’s also a matter of growing at a pace that you can support,” she said. “I’m wanting to make sure as we go into this next season, we can support what we already have in place because we’re still hand packing,” she said. “We’re still manufacturing and labeling and filling — all right here,” at the Ocean Springs shop where the business began.

An open mind

She’s partnered with Snapper’s Seafood on the beach in Biloxi to sell ice cream scoops rather than the cups, realizing what a huge opportunity it was for her company.

She never thought gas stations would be a good fit — “But the gas stations are doing amazing,” she said. Coastal Chevron on Ocean Springs Road gave her the opportunity and put up banners to let the community know they could get Quakes there instead of driving through the traffic to the ice cream shop.

Quakes also is available at Treasure Oaks club in Ocean Springs and Gulf Hills Hotel & Resort, where The Elvis ice cream cup will be available by the pool where Elvis Presley once swam.

She’s partnered with local bakeries for special flavors of the day and sells The Shed’s pulled pork sandwich as her ice cream shop.

“If you partner up with local businesses, even if it’s just for a short time or for a limited edition, then you’re able to promote each other’s products and hopefully grow your own,” she said.