Where to find vegan ice cream in Maine
A summer favorite goes plant-based
By Avery Yale Kamila
Whenever Sticky Sweet in Portland opens the scoop shop window, it always attracts a crowd. Photo: Avery Yale Kamila
Two hot, humid summers ago, plant-based ice cream maker Sticky Sweet was selling so much ice cream out of its Portland scoop shop it had to temporarily stop supplying retailers. Then co-founder Ashley Dow learned she was pregnant.
“We were unsure about the future,” says Dow, who founded the artisanal vegan ice cream company with her sister Kelley Dow in 2017. “I didn’t see how I was going to be able to keep up with production with a new baby in tow. But our brother dropped everything last spring to come and take over production so that I could spend time with my new baby. And then over the summer our dad and stepmom also dropped everything to come help and work at our scoop shop.”
Now the family-run shop on Cumberland Avenue is cranking out enough ice cream to supply pints to 15 stores in southern Maine and cones to its steady line of customers. Even through the winter months, flavors such as peanut butter cookie, lemon chip, red velvet brownie and coffee always draw lines of customers.
Sticky Sweet began by chance when the Dow sisters founded a Thai-style sticky rice stall in the Public Market House in Monument Square. But come a July heat wave, the rice was not moving as swiftly, and a customer said the vegan rice needed vegan ice cream.
Inspired by the chance remark, the sisters soon mixed up a few batches of sea salted maple ice cream made from cashews and coconut milk and offered it as a special over the weekend. The demand was immediate and overwhelming, and soon it was obvious Sticky Sweet needed to pivot from from sticky rice to plant-based ice cream. Maine’s best-known vegan ice cream brand was born.
Sticky Sweet is part of a growing group of Maine scoop shops offering plant-based flavors. Like Sticky Sweet, some craft their own house blends.
Vegan chocolate ice cream sandwich at Bresca & The Honeybee in New Gloucester. Courtesy photo.
In 2015, pastry chef Krista Kern Desjarlais began making vegan ice cream alongside the traditional cow’s milk varieties at her beach cafe Bresca & The Honeybee located on Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester. This season, Desjarlais, who is lactose intolerant, is whipping up vegan ice cream flavors like rhubarb with strawberry swirl, coffee with chocolate cookie crumble and caramel swirl, and toasted hazelnut praline swirl with devil’s food cake.
Back on the coast, the two Downeast Ice Cream Factory locations in Boothbay Harbor (on the Pier and at Meadow Mall) began making vegan ice creams in 2020. The shops serve at least three house-made flavors a day, rotating through a menu that includes mocha chip, black raspberry, birthday cake, midnight moose tracks and strawberry chocolate crunch.
“Our customers are excited to see options other than sorbets and Italian ice,” says Downeast Ice Cream Factory manager Toni Facciponti. “Last year, we had a lot of fun trying to recreate vegan alternatives to some of our regular menu favorites like coconut almond chocolate chip and grasshopper. We continue to experiment as well as bringing back some old favorites, like our Linekin lemon poppyseed that sold out in record speed.”
Further south, but still on the coast, a Midcoast bed & breakfast is serving up vegan ice cream amidst a welcoming vibe and stunning ocean views. Located at Spruce Head, the Causeway Restaurant at the Craignair Inn consistently offers a wealth of plant-based options. (Vegan "lobster" wrap anyone?) Enjoy homemade coconut ice cream in the restaurant, or walk up to the outside ice cream window for Bixby Dark Chocolate with a raspberry swirl or Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream or one of their rotating flavors. Owners Lauren and Greg Soutiea are vegans themselves, and Chef Fernando Ferreira creates every dish with a dedication to quality, sustainability, and fresh ingredients.
New this season is Veggie Life’s vegan ice creams, being sold from the Mainely Custard scoop shop in Freeport. Until this summer, Veggie Life exclusively made vegan veggie burgers and jackfruit chili for wholesale restaurant customers. But the company’s recent move to the Mainely Custard building presented an opportunity for Veggie Life to create its own line of vegan ice creams and sell them directly to customers.
Using an oat-based mix, Veggie Life is creating hard serve flavors. Once its soft serve machine is working, Veggie Life intends to make vanilla and chocolate vegan soft serve, too.
“Two that I’m experimenting with now are lemon blueberry sugar cookie and rainbow chip birthday cake,” says Veggie Life owner Jaime Shaw. The shop also carries an extensive selection of vegan toppings, including hot fudge and caramel (made in-house), rainbow chips, peanut butter cups and vegan gummy bears.
North of Bangor in the small town of Corinth, plant-based ice cream can be found at the all-vegan Little Lad’s. Down the street from its popcorn factory, Little Lad’s operates an outlet store selling the company’s more than 100 vegan food products. These include pints of Nice Creme in 20 flavors, such as raspberry cookies and creme, Maine wild blueberry pie, mocha almond fudge, very strawberry and pumpkin pie. The ice cream is also sold by the scoop in gluten-free waffle cones. This year, Little Lad’s is experimenting with making its own Nice Creme sandwiches.
Sticky Sweet bakes their vegan, gluten-free waffle cones from scratch every day. Photo courtesy of Sticky Sweet.
Last summer, the vegetarian restaurant Boja’s Bungalow opened in Greenville across the street from Moosehead Lake and next to Jamo’s Pizza, wowing diners with its oat milk vegan soft serve for dessert. And it’s back this summer. (Editor’s note: Boja’s Bungalow is temporarily closed as of May 2023.)
“The customers just love it,” says Boja’s Bungalow owner Angela Higgins. “Soft serve lands as one of my favorites, too.”
Higgins said customers often take the cones over to a small park with benches on the Moosehead Lake side of the road. The flavors on offer are usually chocolate and vanilla, but sometimes a fruit flavor is swapped into the machine that can do two flavors at a time. The vegan, gluten-free cones, along with sprinkles, vegan chocolate sauce and dark chocolate chips, are also customer favorites.
In 2021, the vegan food truck Curbside Comforts rolled into action with a menu that included vegan soft serve. This year the truck graduated to a brick-and-mortar location in a former ice cream shop in Gorham. In addition to offering their full vegan menu of burgers, chicken sandwiches and mac and cheese, Curbside Comforts sells vegan soft serve, shakes, sundaes and root beer floats.
“Our goal is to be a northern New England destination for vegan, plant-based deliciousness,” says owner Suzanne Grace.
Frinklepod Farm in Arundel is home to Snagglebites Cafe, where you can find vegan oat milk soft serve alongside farm-fresh lunches. Courtesy photo.
Farther south, at the certified organic Frinklepod Farm in Arundel, the farm store carries a wide selection of vegetables and vegan foods, and in the summer, it expands outdoors to the Snagglebites cafe. This summer, the cafe is selling vegan oat milk soft serve alongside its farm-fresh lunches. The soft serve can be enhanced with Maine-made granola or house-made fruit sauces.
Those craving hard serve can head to the Jefferson Scoop in Jefferson, which added vegan hard serve flavors in 2020 and experienced an uptick in business as a result. Last summer the shop offered three vegan flavors of Hershey’s ice cream (vanilla, chocolate chunk and classic cookie), and this year the business is doing the same.
Jefferson Scoop owner Joe Holland says he’d like to add more flavors this season. However, despite the high level of customer demand, Holland says not all major ice cream distributors and manufacturers have caught on to the plant-based trend yet, making sourcing a bit of a challenge for small shops like his.
Everyone deserves a sweet treat once in a while and eating vegan ice cream sure is a delicious way to celebrate summer in Maine.
Vegan ice cream by town in Maine
Arundel - Snagglebites Cafe
Boothbay Harbor - Downeast Ice Cream Factory
Corinth - Little Lad’s
Freeport - Mainely Custard
Gorham - Curbside Comforts
Greenville - Boja’s Bungalow
Jefferson - Jefferson Scoop
New Gloucester - Bresca & The Honeybee
Portland - Sticky Sweet
Spruce Head - Causeway Restaurant at Craignair Inn
Do you know other places serving vegan ice cream? Contact us: info@thesunriseguide.com
Read more about eating plant-based in Maine
Plus over a dozen more Vacationland eateries serving all plant-based dishes.