When Katie Heldstab and her wife Christa Puskarich, co-owners of Leona’s Ice Cream, were designing its Garfield scoop shop, they knew the feeling they were after: warm, sunny, and welcoming year-round. “I knew I wanted teal,” Heldstab tells Pittsburgh City Paper inside the shop, gesturing to a wall matching one of Leona’s signature colors, featured on the packaging of its famously lactose-free pints. “I knew I wanted some kind of checker[ed] floor and a warm [wood]. I wanted it to be comfortable.” Another “ice cream wall,” designed by artist Kim Fox of Worker Bird, displays cones pieced together from snippets of Heldstab’s and Puskarich’s own photo collection, incorporating dress patterns, a blanket at their home, and snapshots of berries picked up from Triple B Farms for Leona’s fall flavors. Facing Penn Avenue, a colorful scalloped awning on the shop’s window (painted in anticipation of a three-dimensional sign) evokes an old ice cream parlor or a soda fountain, with a sidewalk sign inviting passersby to “Come on in! It’s always ice cream season.” “It’s neighborhood Sesame Street vibes. I love it so much,” Heldstab says. Katie Heldstab and Christa Puskarich celebrate the soft opening of Leona’s Scoop Shop in Garfield Credit: Leona's Ice Cream Leona’s evolution into a standalone brick-and-mortar shop, opened Nov. 12, has been 12 years in the making. After Heldstab, who has a lactose-free diet, and Puskarich received a home ice cream maker as a wedding gift, they launched Leona’s in 2013. The business quickly garnered praise for its giant, artisanal ice cream sandwiches known for needing two hands to eat — winning, among other accolades, Best LGBTQ-owned Business in City Paper‘s 2020 Best of PGH Readers’ Poll. Producing all ingredients in-house out of its longtime sustainable kitchen and garden in Wilkinsburg, Leona’s has sold its lactose-free sandwiches, ice cream scoops, and packaged pints wholesale for more than decade, touting gourmet flavors like Lavender Honeycomb and Black Sesame on Salted Tahini Chocolate Chunk. Their first foray into brick-and-mortar came in 2023, when the ice cream maker opened a scoop shop for a year-long stint inside Lawrence Hall. Selling a seasonal product like ice cream, “we [were] hoping to kind of level that bell curve into more of a light hill,” Heldstab says. “And it did flatten … We learned basically how to run a scoop shop. We got an entire year of data.” “Most importantly, we learned that if we opened up a Leona’s Scoop Shop, people would be excited to come visit us,” the shop told CP earlier this year. Katie Heldstab, co-owner of Leona’s Ice Cream, points out the custom wallpaper in their new scoop shop. Credit: Mars Johnson For the community-focused ice cream maker, it also created an opportunity to see customers year-round. “We would go months without hearing from anyone who actually ate our ice cream,” Heldstab recalls, “which is kind of a lonely place to be when you make something that is [supposed to] directly give joy to others.” Setting up shop in Garfield, Leona’s wasted no time reaching out, and, only weeks after securing space on a busy block of Penn Avenue in May, it began to hold pop-ups during the neighborhood’s monthly Unblurred: First Friday gallery crawls. “We ordered [a] freezer, kept it in the construction site … filled it with ice cream for the night, sold … and unplugged it,” Heldstab says. “So we’ve been kind of been teasing [the shop] in the neighborhood for a long time.” Since opening the scoop shop, the neighborhood — which, to Heldstab’s knowledge, has not seen a standalone ice cream spot for decades — has responded enthusiastically, with residents stopping in to welcome the newcomer on the block. “[Garfield] is super walkable. So every third person is like, ‘Oh, I live six houses that way,’” Heldstab tells CP. “Or, ‘I can see the back of the shop from my porch.’ Everyone is really lovely and local.” Pints of assorted ice cream at Leona’s new scoop shop in Garfield Credit: Mars Johnson The new Leona’s location also joins something of a foodie corridor along Penn Avenue, opening on a stretch that now includes neighborhood staples such as People’s Indian, along with Spak Brothers pizza and Soju, and newbies like Third Space Bakery and The Open Road’s non-alcoholic bottle shop. “I desperately hope that we can be a dessert hub for the food here,” Heldstab says. “Obviously, places have their own desserts, but as part of a stroll down [Penn Ave.] patronizing different places, we’re kind of right in the middle, which I love, and I hope that it does draw people.” A particularly good pairing, Heldstab believes, might be a plant-based dinner at Apteka, followed by Leona’s selection of dairy-free desserts. (The Leona’s team has been dreaming up the perfect day in the neighborhood, which could include a stop at Workshop PGH or a walk to Allegheny Cemetery’s beloved Titty Sphinx.) In addition a foodie hub, “we’re also secretly not-so-secretly trying to make it the gayborhood,” Heldstab says, adding to Garfield’s growing LGBTQ scene that includes the recently opened Mary’s bar, Two Frays (whom Leona’s frequently partners with), Kindred Spirit Tattoo, and the Mr. Roboto Project. Heldstab says she’s especially excited for the soon-to-be-launched The Soft Spot, a late-night sapphic cafe opening down the block, with programming planned for LGBTQ people of all ages. Katie Heldstab, co-owner of Leona’s Ice Cream in Garfield Credit: Mars Johnson As for the new Leona’s ice cream lineup — where to begin? Beyond its signature sandwiches, scoops, and pints, the new shop offers floats made with locally-sourced Reb Ribbon soda, “Krispwiches,” a square gluten-friendly sandwich option modeled after a Rice Krispies Treat, and “Dippies,” a chocolate-covered treat à la the Dairy Queen Dilly Bar.Scoops will be nine rotating flavors. When CP visited, these include a revamped, coconut-based vegan cookies and cream, a coffee flavor, and a maple nut offering. Guests can order scoops in two sizes — a golf ball-sized “mini” (“I don’t want to call it ‘kids’ because adults want minis, too,” Heldstab says) and a tennis ball-sized regular, with a new option for a six-scoop ice cream flight.Another novel element to the scoop shop, Heldstab tells CP, is that extra baked goods from Leona’s kitchen will no longer be consigned to a “cookie graveyard.” “[When] we make too much of something, and previously we couldn’t use it, now we can package it up and bring it here,” she explains. “We’ll have bags … a couple bucks, you can grab cookies.”In its first weeks, the shop has stayed occupied kicking around new concepts like hot chocolate with marshmallow fluff, build-your-own ice cream sandwiches, and ice cream cakes for maximum millennial nostalgia. Look out for a louder, more official opening party around Valentine’s Day, says Heldstab (which might include the return of last year’s Ice Cream bonbons paired with Two Frays honey beer).Rather than being daunted by a winter opening, the time has allowed Leona’s to ramp up for a busy summer season.“It’s freezing outside, but it’s really toasty and cozy in here,” Heldstab says. “That was the goal.” The post Leona’s sandwiched into Garfield’s growing food scene appeared first on Pittsburgh City Paper | News, Dining, Music, Best Of, Arts, Film. ...read more read less