Takeaways

• The best ice cream flavors, whether it's a six-year-old's Doritos-topped vanilla or a Ritz cracker flavor that won a national contest, usually come from a sweet and salty instinct, not a polished plan.
• Real community can't be built to chase an instant return. When it's authentic, it becomes an experience; when it's commercial, it's just a transaction, and that version eventually fails.
• A single well-hosted, well-curated visit, like the one Bruno Press owner Mary Bruno put together for a local influencer, can do more for a town's reputation than a planned marketing campaign, because people can tell when the excitement is real.

In Part 1 of this conversation on Ice Cream Social, host David Boyer sits down with Mary Bruno, owner of Bruno Press in St. Joseph, Minnesota, and starts with his usual opener: favorite ice cream flavor. Mary is a matcha person through and through, but the flavor stealing her attention that day was Jupiter Moon's lavender matcha, made on an oat milk base instead of a traditional cream base. David explains why the oat milk version works so well (light, icy texture, a faint graham cracker finish that pairs naturally with pie-adjacent flavors like the shop's vanilla cardamom, blueberry cardamom, and peach cobbler), and reveals that the lavender matcha itself started as a customer recommendation.

Then David asks the harder question: what was Mary's favorite flavor at six years old? Vanilla, she says, but only as a base for whatever she and her brother could find in the kitchen. Doritos, M&Ms, Tang, Nestle Quik, and peanut butter all made it onto the ice cream, and her go-to combo landed on salty and sweet: peanuts, peanut butter, vanilla, and a little chocolate. It's enough to get David proposing an official Mary Bruno Ice Cream Day, Doritos included.

The conversation turns to David's own ice cream confession: Jupiter Moon has never entered the annual traveling ice cream contest (Palm Springs this year, Palm Beach the year before, Savannah before that) because the shop can't spare the production capacity for the special packaging it requires. But one winning flavor still lives in his head: Ritzy AF, a Ritz cracker ice cream from Holy Cow Ice Cream in Massachusetts, built with caramel, chocolate, and a sweet salty crunch. It's on David's list to steal one day.

The back half of the episode gets more personal. David explains why community matters so much to Jupiter Moon and to St. Joseph (St. Joe, or Jo Town to locals), and calls Mary out as one of the people quietly building the town's core memories through her own work. Mary backs that up with a story about curating a recent visit for a social media influencer that ended up going viral, not because it was scripted, but because everyone hosting was excited to be there. The two land on a shared philosophy: community building that's chasing an instant return always turns into a transaction, but done with real heart, it becomes an experience worth having. This episode ran long, so David promises a Part 2.

https://www.jupitermoonicecream.com/

Takeaways

• David and Donella both wrestle with finding the right event size. Too big and you lose the craft and the community, too small and it is not sustainable, so the sweet spot sits somewhere in between.
• Jupiter Moon skipped cookie dough ice cream and Jules' Bistro skips fully organic produce for the same reason: sometimes doing it "right" is not financially viable, and both owners have made peace with that trade-off.
• David recently reversed a longstanding no-samples policy at Jupiter Moon after realizing it was creating friction with a ritual customers expect, and one of his two shop locations still hides the ice cream from view entirely, a deliberate design choice from his user experience background.

Summary of the Episode

In the final part of this conversation on Ice Cream Social, host David Boyer and Donella Westphal, owner of Jules' Bistro, get into the decisions that shape a small business behind the scenes. David talks about the event side of Jupiter Moon, which now ranges from small weddings to massive festivals, including one where Jupiter Moon shares vendor space with Ben & Jerry's and ends up as the cheapest option almost by accident. Donella relates immediately. Jules' Bistro has catered for as few as eight people around a dining room table and as many as 700 vegans at once, and she has spent years figuring out where her own sweet spot sits between those extremes, since going too big means losing the craft that makes the food special in the first place.

That leads into a conversation about trade-offs. David explains why Jupiter Moon does not sell cookie dough ice cream: made properly, it is prohibitively expensive, and the one time he tried it, he lost money on every scoop. Donella shares a similar trade-off at Jules', where she would love to serve fully organic produce but cannot make it financially viable, so she focuses instead on sourcing and handling fruit with enough care that more people can afford to enjoy it.

David then turns the tables with a hot take question: how does Donella feel about sampling ice cream before you order? Her answer is refreshingly direct. She believes in committing to your order, and if you truly do not like it, she will make it right with a full double of something else, no questions asked. That launches David into his own sample story. Jupiter Moon was designed during COVID to keep six feet of distance between the counter and the customer, which made offering samples nearly impossible, so for years the shop simply did not offer them. He recently changed that policy after realizing that sampling had become its own kind of core memory ritual for customers, and refusing to offer it was adding friction to an experience he wants people to remember fondly.

The episode closes on an even bigger reveal about how David designs his shops. Drawing on his day job background in user experience, he explains why Jupiter Moon's St. Joseph location deliberately hides the ice cream from view, forcing customers to make an entrance, read a carefully designed menu board of 20 flavors, and talk to the "ice cream tour guide" behind the counter, while the Munsinger Gardens shop in St. Cloud keeps the ice cream visible for practical reasons, including built-in sneeze guard protection and eco-friendly packaging. It is a fitting close to a three-part conversation about how much intention goes into running a small business that people love.

https://www.jupitermoonicecream.com/

Takeaways

• Donella's ice cream story traces back to Grandma Dorothy, who worked all year at a thrift store so she could tuck cash gifts, including a hidden $100 bill, into Christmas trinkets for every grandkid.
• Successful small businesses become part of people's core memories, proms, dates, engagements, weddings, and that is exactly why David and Donella keep doing this work, even on the hard days.
• When small business ownership starts to feel like a grind, getting back on the floor and talking to people is often the fastest way back to remembering why you started.

Summary of the Episode

In Part 2 of this conversation on Ice Cream Social, host David Boyer and Donella Westphal, owner of Jules' Bistro, pick up right where the ice cream memories left off. David asks Donella's ice cream story one more time, and the answer is the same as always: Grandma Dorothy. This time, Donella goes deeper into who her grandma was. The family is from North Dakota, with Grandma Dorothy living in Bismarck and later Elgin, where Donella's aunt and uncle ran a dairy farm and brought warm milk straight to the table. Grandma Dorothy worked at a thrift store and spent the whole year saving her earnings so that every grandkid got a $20 or $50 bill tucked into a Christmas tree trinket, and she always kept a hidden $100 bill somewhere in the house. Donella once found it inside a Bible, tucked between the pages of the Christmas story.

From there, the conversation turns to something bigger: how memory, community, and small business are tied together. David points out that Jules' Bistro has become part of people's biggest life moments, proms, dates, first anniversaries, the same way Jupiter Moon has become part of engagements and weddings. Both David and Donella admit that running a small business still gets hard, even nine years in for Donella, and that the fastest way out of a funk is getting back out on the floor, talking to people, and remembering what the business actually means to the community it serves. They also talk about the value of a peer community of other small business owners who understand the muck and the mire that comes with it.

The episode lightens up with a flavor conversation: Donella's childhood love of vanilla, her current favorites (mint chip, salted caramel, lemon), and an ice cream philosophy David shares, that people generally fall into two camps, those who like "stuff" mixed into their ice cream and those who do not. Donella is firmly in the no stuff camp, though she makes an exception for a salted brownie, sparking talk of a possible collaboration flavor between the two businesses. The conversation closes on catering, and how it lets Jules' Bistro bring the same comfort and surprise people feel in the dining room out into the wider community, and how good it feels when people notice the care behind the food, even if they cannot name exactly what makes it different.

https://www.jupitermoonicecream.com/

Takeaways

• Comfort flavors like vanilla often trace back to one specific memory or family tradition, not just taste. For Donella Westphal, that memory is her Grandma Dorothy's homemade hot fudge.
• Adventurous flavors, like a Mexican street corn ice cream made with real corn liquid and lime cotija, can be some of the most creative work a shop does, even if only a small group of people order it.
• A full toppings bar, not just the ice cream itself, is often what turns dessert into a lasting memory.

Summary of the Episode

In Part 1 of this conversation on Ice Cream Social, host David Boyer sits down with Donella Westphal, owner of Jules' Bistro in St. Cloud, to talk about the ice cream choices we actually make and why we make them. The episode opens with a simple question that turns out not to be simple at all: do you go classic and simple, or do you get adventurous? Donella admits she has never met an ice cream flavor she did not like, but the conversation quickly lands on something deeper than flavor preference. For her, vanilla ice cream is not really about vanilla. It goes back to her Grandma Dorothy's freezer, always stocked, and a homemade hot fudge that the whole family asked for the second they walked in the door. Vanilla carried her through the hardest parts of both pregnancies, and it still makes her happy today.

That same instinct for pushing past the expected shows up in some of the boldest ice cream Donella has ever made, including a Mexican street corn ice cream built with real corn liquid, lime cotija, and a touch of cayenne. It came out closer to a sherbet than traditional ice cream, and by her own account, it may have been some of the best ice cream she has ever created. Not many people were willing to try it. David and Donella talk through why: most people are creatures of habit, drawn to the flavor they already know, which is exactly why a limited-run flavor, like a raspberry ice cream studded with a one-year-only Girl Scout cookie, or a salted black licorice ice cream headed to an ice cream event at the Lake Superior Zoo in Duluth, still matters.

The episode closes on something less about flavor and more about how ice cream gets served. Donella shares the story of her son Wilson turning leftover vanilla ice cream and Jules' Bistro chocolate chip cookies into his own ice cream sandwich, no instructions needed, and how a recent catering event's toppings bar, with salted caramel brownies, molasses cookies, and canned cherries, was a direct nod to Grandma Dorothy's own table. Because that is really what the ice cream is for: a reason to put everything out on the table and let people go at it together.

Key Topics Covered

• Choosing between a simple, classic flavor and something more adventurous
• Why vanilla ice cream is tied to childhood memory and comfort through both of Donella's pregnancies
• The Mexican street corn ice cream experiment: corn liquid, lime cotija, and cayenne pepper
• A limited-run raspberry ice cream made with a one-year-only Girl Scout cookie
• A salted black licorice ice cream headed to an ice cream event at the Lake Superior Zoo in Duluth
• The ice cream sandwich Donella's son Wilson invented on his own with Jules' Bistro cookies
• Building a catering toppings bar inspired by Grandma Dorothy's own table
• Remembering Grandma Dorothy: her garden, her canning, and her peach cobbler and bread pudding with ice cream

https://www.jupitermoonicecream.com/

Takeaways

• David's real motivation for Jupiter Moon isn't the ice cream itself. It's wanting the shop to be iconic and important to the St. Cloud community, which is also why he prioritizes showing up at local events.
• David asks every job applicant to share their own "ice cream story" during the hiring process, because he's found that almost everyone has one, and it's almost always a happy memory.
• Jupiter Moon studies other ice cream shops' social media for inspiration, including a Canadian shop called Elle's Cafe whose owner has built a whole memorable bit around riding a scooter into frame with a cone.

Summary of the Episode

In Part 2 of this two-part conversation on Ice Cream Social, host David Boyer and guest Ava Peters pick back up on the theme of memories, this time turning it toward the why behind Jupiter Moon itself. David shares that his real motivation for running an ice cream shop isn't really about the ice cream. It's wanting Jupiter Moon to be iconic, something that actually matters to the community, which is also why showing up at local events means so much to him. He even asks every job applicant the same question during the hiring process: what's your ice cream story? In his experience, almost everyone has one, and it's almost always happy.

Ava shares her own: her dad blending mint Oreos into vanilla ice cream milkshakes after dinner, a ritual made sweeter by being an only child with no siblings around to complain about the mint. The two agree it might make a good future podcast topic on its own. The conversation also touches on how ice cream has shifted for some people from a celebration treat to a coping mechanism, with Ava sharing a coworker's plan to have her husband pick up her favorite flavor after a rough day.

From there, Ava talks about the ice cream shop social media accounts she personally studies for inspiration, including Elle's Cafe, a Canadian shop whose owner has built a signature bit around riding in on a scooter with a cone and a chant that's intentionally hard to make out. David and Ava agree that becoming memorable, in a truly positive way, is its own form of marketing.

The episode closes with a rundown of where to catch Jupiter Moon's ice cream truck and trailer this summer, including the Minnesota Yacht Club, Minnesota Country Club, the Raspberry Festival in Hopkins, Summertime by George, a concert series in Plymouth, and the St. Cloud Air Show, plus one of Ava's favorite awkward wedding stories about setting up the ice cream bike on a dance floor. David wraps with a memorably disgusting story about a Buckwheat Zydeco show at First Avenue, where the venue's uncleaned rafters once rained dust bunnies onto the crowd from the heat and humidity, a story that loops right back to the Purple Fuzzy Space Monster bit from earlier in the series.

Key Topics Covered

• Why David really started Jupiter Moon: wanting the shop to be iconic and important to the community
• The "what's your ice cream story" question David asks every job applicant
• Ava's personal ice cream story: mint Oreo milkshakes with her dad
• Ice cream as a coping mechanism versus a celebration treat
• Studying other ice cream shops' social media for inspiration, including Elle's Cafe's scooter bit
• Ice cream at events: baseball games, concerts, weddings, and why First Ave would be a bad venue

https://www.jupitermoonicecream.com/

Takeaways

• Jupiter Moon is exploring a whiskey and spirit infused ice cream collaboration with Redhead Creamery, the Brooten, Minnesota, creamery that distills spirits from its own cheese making whey byproduct.
• The shop's candy truffle ice cream traces back to Kernel's Creamery in Covington, Kentucky, whose owner personally drove his equipment and recipes up to Minnesota when he stepped away from the business.
• Jupiter Moon sometimes sells the exact same ice cream flavor under two different names on the menu to A/B test which one customers actually order, including a grape flavor once sold as both Purple Reign and Purple Fuzzy Space Monster.

Summary of the Episode

In Part 1 of this two-part conversation on Ice Cream Social, host David Boyer sits down with Ava Peters, the freelance social media manager who has spent the summer running Jupiter Moon's Instagram while also working as a client service representative at Jacobs Financial. The conversation opens with ice cream: Ava's flavor evolution from mint chip as a kid to the salted caramel truffle now, a flavor she describes as reminding her of whiskey thanks to its bitter caramel and espresso notes.

That comparison leads to an interesting idea in the works: ice cream with real spirits in it. David shares that Redhead Creamery, the Brooten, Minnesota, creamery already distilling spirits from its own cheese making whey, has floated the idea of Jupiter Moon using their spirits in a seasonal flavor, possibly a peppermint schnapps ice cream for winter. It is still just an idea, but the relationship between the two local businesses is already there.

From there, David tells the origin story behind Jupiter Moon's candy truffles: recipes and equipment inherited from Kernel's Creamery, an ice cream shop in Covington, Kentucky, whose owner personally drove everything up to Minnesota, with his grandson, when he stepped away from the business for health reasons. He has since gone back to making ice cream himself. David also walks through his habit of A/B testing flavor names on the menu, using the same grape ice cream sold at different times as Purple Reign (spelled to sidestep any issues with the Prince estate) and, originally, Purple Fuzzy Space Monster, a name he still loves despite it barely selling.

The second half of the episode turns to Ava's own story: how she went from being unsure about being on camera and directing other people to running content that has become some of Jupiter Moon's highest performing social posts, including a "which one's vegan" bar joke and a "Minnesota nice, I'll pay" bit. She also opens up about how managing a business's social media, instead of her own, became a healthier relationship with the same platforms that felt unhealthy to her growing up.

Key Topics Covered

• Ava Peters's role managing Jupiter Moon's social media as a freelancer, plus her day job at Jacobs Financial
• Flavor evolution from childhood mint chip to salted caramel truffle
• A potential whiskey and spirit infused ice cream collaboration with Redhead Creamery in Brooten, Minnesota
• The origin of Jupiter Moon's candy truffles, traced back to Kernel's Creamery in Covington, Kentucky
• A/B testing flavor names on the menu: Purple Reign versus Purple Fuzzy Space Monster
• Jupiter Moon's vegan ice cream option and how it inspired one of the shop's top performing posts
• Ava's personal history with social media and how managing a business account changed her relationship with it
• A shoutout to Jupiter Moon team member Isaac, headed to college in Ithaca, New York

https://www.jupitermoonicecream.com/

Takeaways

• Jupiter Moon is completely nut-free — no tree nuts, no peanuts — and David Boyer made that call partly because he has a tree nut allergy himself. The decision he didn't fully anticipate was how many families it would free up: people who couldn't walk into a Twins game, couldn't walk into most ice cream shops, now have somewhere they can go without fear.
• Jupiter Moon started in a rented kitchen in Sauk Rapids, selling hand-packed cups from an ice cream bicycle at art fairs. David chose the bicycle not because he needed a bike, but because it was cute as all get out and fit the "rolling bubble of joy" experience he was trying to create. Today the shop makes around 15,000 gallons a month in the summer.
• A second Jupiter Moon location is coming to St. Anthony Park in St. Paul — a small space that used to be a tearoom, with a kitchen already in place and a neighborhood that fits the community-first model David has always built around.

In the third and final installment of this conversation on The Ice Cream Social, host David Boyer and Liz Fiedler Mergen of Sunny Mary Meadow dig into the side of Jupiter Moon that most customers never see — and a few pieces of news that listeners might want to pay attention to.

The episode opens with a look at what's coming next in the Jupiter Moon scoop case: a raspberry with chocolate flakes, a potential return of the white chocolate beta from last year, a banana cream pie that would actually work beautifully in oat milk (oat milk already has a graham-like flavor going for it, which Liz may or may not react to on camera), and the ongoing development of the Rainbow Nerds Space Rox flavor from the last episode. There are also early conversations happening about a flower ice cream made with freeze-dried edible petals from Sunny Mary Meadow. Nothing is confirmed, but the rose flavoring is in the building.

From there, David explains what makes Jupiter Moon genuinely rare in the ice cream world: it is completely nut-free. No tree nuts, no peanut butter, no peanut ice cream. The decision started with David's own tree nut allergy — he wasn't going to make ice cream he couldn't eat — and a choice not to do peanuts either so customers wouldn't have to keep track of which category applied to them. What he didn't expect was the size of the community that decision would create. Liz shares a story about a physician friend whose college-age son has a tree nut allergy; Jupiter Moon is one of the only places the whole family can just go. People who couldn't walk into a Twins game without anxiety have a shop now.

The origin story of Jupiter Moon comes up for the first time: the name came from friends at NASA who worked on a probe that has been circling Jupiter since 2016, discovering somewhere around 100 moons. David's crew has been assured that one of those moons is made of ice cream. That settled it. From there, he rented a kitchen by the hour from a gluten-free bakery in Sauk Rapids, made ice cream in the evenings, hand-packed the cups, and sold them out of an ice cream bicycle at Summertime by George and local art fairs. He chose the bicycle purely because it was, in his words, cute as all get out — and because the form factor fit the "rolling bubble of joy" experience he was already trying to design. His background is in UX: user experience design and front-end development. The psychology of how people interact with spaces has always shaped how he thinks about the shop.

https://www.jupitermoonicecream.com/

Takeaways

• The most intentional business decisions sometimes look accidental from the outside. Liz schedules her Friday farm tours at 1:00 PM specifically so visitors are hungry for lunch before and primed for ice cream after — she's building traffic to her neighbors on purpose.
• "Deeper, not wider" is the customer strategy behind Sunny Mary Meadow. Liz turns flower subscribers into wedding clients, wedding clients into Bloom Room renters, and Bloom Room couples into lifelong regulars who bring their baby showers back to the farm.
• Building a business that matters means being willing to share the hardest parts of your story. Liz was widowed in 2020, had 300 Instagram followers, and kept showing up in her stories every single day anyway — and by the end of that summer, she had 700. The community showed up because she did.

Summary of the Episode

In Part 2 of this multi-part conversation on The Ice Cream Social, host David Boyer continues his sit-down with Liz Fiedler Mergen, owner of Sunny Mary Meadow Flower Farm, inside Jupiter Moon Ice Cream. The episode opens with what a summer looks like when you live in a town with two ice cream shops and a husband who grew up on a dairy farm: you help them both out. You go twice a week. You do what you have to do.

From there, the conversation moves into what Liz has built at Sunny Mary Meadow, which started as a cut flower farm north of St. Joseph and has evolved into something considerably bigger: a farm store, an on-farm event venue called the Bloom Room, and a thriving wedding florals business she never planned to be in. The Bloom Room is now booked 10 to 12 times a month when Liz originally planned for four to six. A third of those bookings are showers, a third are corporate events, and a third is everything else — retirement parties, anniversary dinners, the stuff that doesn't fit a clean category but fills a real need.

David shares the moment that stopped him cold at a hockey game last year: eavesdropping on a family who didn't know he owned Jupiter Moon, talking about how that place had been part of their love story and would be part of their wedding. He turned around and introduced himself. Liz knows exactly what that moment feels like, because her business runs on the same current — people who've been Sunny Mary Meadow flower subscribers for four years who don't ask whether she does their daughter's wedding, they just inform her that she is.

The Bloom Room, by design, is an everything-but-wedding venue. Liz explains exactly why: a 60-person wedding sounds simple until you count the emails. She's built a half-day rental model that works precisely because she's drawn a clear line. But book your wedding flowers through her and you get a discount on your bridal shower at the farm. Come for the shower and you start thinking about the rehearsal dinner. Have the rehearsal dinner and you'll be back for the baby shower. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a flower subscription and a lifetime of reasons to return.

https://www.jupitermoonicecream.com/