Chris Reynolds has owned and operated numerous Cold Stones in Reno since February 2003, but the one in the former Shoppers Square, now the Reno Public Market, has been his most successful. He hopes the new space will bring in new customers without losing the regulars.
After a lengthy construction process and tough adjustments during the pandemic, he finally moved into the shiny new location across from the Sprouts supermarket, a few hundred feet from his previous location.
The new location has more space for employees and an area for families to enjoy their ice cream on site, something Reynolds prefers to their previous location which primarily did grab-and-go orders.
The ice cream and waffle cones are made in-house using restaurant-grade waffle irons and an industrial ice cream churner. The process to make ice cream and waffle cones often takes all morning and an employee is dedicated to each task. Multiple batches must be made to avoid running out during the post-dinner rush.
“Who wouldn’t want to go home smelling like a waffle cone?”said Reynolds, tongue in cheek.
In the back room a community board is filled with doodles, drawings, and flyers promoting an employee's radio shows.
Despite the difficulties of the pandemic, Reynolds appreciated how it forced him to lean into his entrepreneurial spirit while he came up with plans to rearrange the store and created new ordering methods, including a specialized phone order system and the use of delivery apps, that minimized contact between workers and customers.
“Pizza shops and ice cream shops really flourished,” said Reynolds who suspected an increase in their sales was partly due to parents trying to calm down their cooped up kids during lockdowns.
Reno’s ice cream habit stuck, and the last two years have been some of the busiest this Cold Stone has experienced.
Staffing was a struggle for Reynolds until just recently when people became more comfortable working in close proximity with one another again, and he looks forward to the world settling back into more normal times.
On the morning of Our Town Reno’s visit Reynolds was seen setting up chairs in the dining area and running across the parking lot to Sprouts to buy an armful of bananas to get employees through the day.