Pinkie's Ice Cream brings splash of color to Wealthy Street

When the owners of the new Pinkie’s Ice Cream and Desserts in East Hills decided they wanted to sell ice cream in the corner storefront of 1127 Wealthy St. SE, it was because ice cream is the kind of thing that makes people happy and they wanted to be in the business of making people happy, too. 

“It’s playful, it’s uplifting, it’s inviting and it’s very, very pink,” says Pam Dolan, general manager and co-owner of Pinkie’s, which opened its doors for business on July 22. 

The space is located across from Wealthy Theatre, and shares a building strip with the Wealthy Street Tattoo studio and the soup shop, Uncle Cheetah’s. It used to be overflow space for Uncle Cheetah’s before they leased the space in April and lightened its mood. 

“It was real dark,” she says. “The walls were dark, the décor was very dark, and now it’s very bright.”

She and her two business partners signed the lease on the space in April after realizing their collective talents – Dolan's penchant for customer service, Mary Jo Pult’s instinct for tasteful interior design, and Gosia Walker’s social-media-savvy communication skills – made for a “magic combination.” 

With 30 flavors of Sherman’s Ice Cream, made in South Haven, Dolan says it has been important to the Pinkie’s ownership team from the beginning to show commitment not only to the East Hills business community, but also to quality Michigan businesses as a whole. 

“We did a field trip to Sherman's and we probably tasted too many of their ice cream flavors, but I think their ice cream is superior,” she says. 

With 14 employees – all high school or early college-aged – the quality of the ice cream is only rivaled by the quality of the location, which Dolan says was perfect for the kind of old-fashioned neighborhood feel they wanted to create with Pinkie’s. 

“Before we even came up with the concept for an ice cream shop, I was watching the TV and they had a segment on the news about Wealthy Street and how it was growing in popularity and how it's becoming more and more friendly to merchants as well as consumers,” Dolan says. “It’s another piece of further evidence that Wealthy Street is an exciting place to have a business but also an exciting place to meet people.” 

Pinkie’s is open Monday through Saturday from 12:30 to 9 p.m., or about when it gets dark, and on Sundays from 12:30 to 6 p.m. 

Writer: Anya Zentmeyer, Development News Editor
Images courtesy of Pinkie’s Ice Cream and Desserts