Aaron Barker making ice cream. (SMU/Domenica Fuller)
Late on a Tuesday night, Main Street in Deep Ellum is pitch black. There is, however, light coming out of two tiny windows of a small catering kitchen. When you look in the window, there is a young couple, tattoos and all, working feverishly to make homemade ice cream.
“Label the next cartons with banana pudding please,” says Aaron Barker, co-founder of the ice cream company Carnival Barker’s.
“I already did,” shouts Sarah Miller, the other co-founder, as she carries boxes of vanilla wafers from the back of the kitchen. In their first year of business, this unlikely duo has been recognized in over eight publications for making one Dallas’ best brands of ice cream. Even though Miller and Barker have not opened up their first store yet, Carnival Barker’s has been put on the map for all ice cream connoisseurs. This astonishing success in their short time in business is a true testament to their heavenly ice cream.
However, initially starting a business is not easy. Taylor Reed, a current SMU senior, reflected on starting her own social media business, “the hardest part is having the guts to do it and taking the initial steps. ”
For Barker and Miller, they took initiative on a hot summer’s day two years ago in Austin after watching the Food Network inside in order to avoid the scorching Texas heat. Then all of a sudden there was a program that discussed an ice cream college located at University of Pennsylvania
“Why would you turn down ice cream college?” Barker said, shrugging his shoulders and smiling. “The most important thing it taught us was that major ice cream companies put fillers in their ice cream to make a shit load of money off of bad ice cream.”
At this point, Miller had just graduated from SMU with an English major and was having trouble finding a job she enjoyed. When she realized she did not want to work in an office, starting her own ice cream company was a great alternative.
“After two months we came up with our base recipe for all of our ice creams. We then just kind of just made [our flavors] up,” Miller said. “We aren’t trying to create weird flavors, but if it happens to be weird we just want it to taste good.”
With 15 regular flavors, which include rum raison, banana pudding, Nutella vodka, and hatch chili chocolate, there is nothing your palette will not experience. These flavors were a success when Carnival Barker’s started catering at events. Now, the company has their ice cream on shelves at four stores in Dallas and three stores in Austin.
The best part is that this organic, non-filler ice cream will not burn a hole in your pocket.
“When we started Carnival Barker’s we wanted our ice cream to be accessible to everyone who loved ice cream… I love seeing elderly people and young kids smile as they eat our ice cream,” Barker said.
Customers and store owners realized the amazing, wholesome taste of this ice cream and keep coming back for more.
“(Customers) love it all. They are all good flavors, and Carnival Barkers has a really good following,” said Mike Dicarlo, an employee at Jimmy’s Food Store.
SMU student Tyler Troutman agrees that this ice cream is better than any other ice cream he has tasted.
“It is the creamiest ice cream I have ever had,” he said. “When I ate the banana pudding flavor, it tasted like I really had just had a fresh banana.”
