Nope, her name isn’t Lou-lou. It’s Laura. Laura Mack is behind the creamy and creative goodness at lu·lu’s ice cream on Main Street in Bristol. In the summer of 2012 Mack’s sister Martha opened the small-batch, artisan ice cream shop.
“Martha was the brain child of it all,” Laura Mack said in a recent interview. “I get to play with it now,” she added, a phrase she knows well as the younger sister. Martha’s interests lead her to specialty cocktails and bartending, and Mack took over the ice cream business.
After graduating from Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., completing two years with AmeriCorps NCCC, and working a desk-job for a non-profit in New York City, 28-year-old Mack decided it was time to come home to Bristol. Both she and her sister now work full-time with their parents, Linda Harmon and Doug Mack, to also run the Inn at Baldwin Creek and Mary’s Restaurant.
When not focusing on the restaurant, the family turns to ice cream and they brainstorm and concoct new unique flavors, like Doug’s famous Slum Dog Millionaire, a curried peanut butter ice cream. “It tastes like frozen Thai food,” he said.
“My family is very supportive,” Mack acknowledged. “Technically I’m in control, but I could never do it without my sister and family.”
lu·lu’s Ice Cream uses “only the best milk,” which, of course, comes from Monument Farms Dairy in Weybridge. Their eggs come from chickens raised at Mary’s Restaurant as well as Maplewind Farm in Weybridge. Soon lu·lu’s will have a pasteurizer in the scoop shop, so that Mack will be able to make the ice cream at the Main Street location. Currently she uses the kitchen at Mary’s.
So where did the name lu·lu come from? Just look it up in the dictionary: Lulu (noun): lu·lu; ?lü-(?)lü; one that is remarkable or wonderful.
The definition fits.