Concord has a new dessert shop serving up a hearty scoop of nostalgia alongside ice cream, sodas, pies and cookies.
The shop was cofounded by Michele Iseri and Amparo Sevilla-Merryfield, two longtime Concord residents who met years ago in corporate jobs at Verizon Wireless. Between them, they also raised six active kids in town — Iseri has two and Sevilla-Merryfield has four — and they’d longed for a community-focused shop for families to visit after school, walk in and sit down to enjoy a treat.
They’ve made that goal into a reality, complete with old-school flourishes like checkered tiles, Shirley Temple sodas and sundaes served in tall glasses.
The shop held its grand opening July 6 and 7, but Iseri had been thinking about the concept for about 15 years, she says — thinking someday, she’d do something more fun than corporate work, like own an ice cream parlor. After the pandemic, she and Sevilla-Merryfield started talking about the idea in earnest.
The duo signed their lease last October and began remodeling. Their corporate backgrounds proved helpful, as they pivoted into entrepreneurship, Iseri says. “I think it provided us a sense that we could do this. It’s just doing it on a much smaller scale and doing it all yourself.
“When people walk in the door now, they’ll say, ‘Oh my goodness, this reminds me of an old-fashioned ice cream parlor when I was a kid.’ That was exactly the emotional reaction I was working towards.”
The shop specializes in small pies in the 3- to-5-inch range. “There’s nobody in town that just bakes pies anymore,” Iseri says.
They also make six different types of cookies, plus pastries, such as muffins and cinnamon rolls. And they’re one of the only East Bay purveyors of San Francisco-based Mitchell’s Ice Cream, so you’ll find ice cream-based desserts and sundaes, including a caramel apple pie sundae made with the bakery’s mini apple pies.
Details: Open from 7 to 10 a.m. and 3 to 8 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday, until 9 p.m. Thursday-Friday, and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekends at 5100 Clayton Road, A18, in Concord; www.instagram.com/thekreameryshoppe/.