Takeaways

• David's real motivation for Jupiter Moon isn't the ice cream itself. It's wanting the shop to be iconic and important to the St. Cloud community, which is also why he prioritizes showing up at local events.
• David asks every job applicant to share their own "ice cream story" during the hiring process, because he's found that almost everyone has one, and it's almost always a happy memory.
• Jupiter Moon studies other ice cream shops' social media for inspiration, including a Canadian shop called Elle's Cafe whose owner has built a whole memorable bit around riding a scooter into frame with a cone.

Summary of the Episode

In Part 2 of this two-part conversation on Ice Cream Social, host David Boyer and guest Ava Peters pick back up on the theme of memories, this time turning it toward the why behind Jupiter Moon itself. David shares that his real motivation for running an ice cream shop isn't really about the ice cream. It's wanting Jupiter Moon to be iconic, something that actually matters to the community, which is also why showing up at local events means so much to him. He even asks every job applicant the same question during the hiring process: what's your ice cream story? In his experience, almost everyone has one, and it's almost always happy.

Ava shares her own: her dad blending mint Oreos into vanilla ice cream milkshakes after dinner, a ritual made sweeter by being an only child with no siblings around to complain about the mint. The two agree it might make a good future podcast topic on its own. The conversation also touches on how ice cream has shifted for some people from a celebration treat to a coping mechanism, with Ava sharing a coworker's plan to have her husband pick up her favorite flavor after a rough day.

From there, Ava talks about the ice cream shop social media accounts she personally studies for inspiration, including Elle's Cafe, a Canadian shop whose owner has built a signature bit around riding in on a scooter with a cone and a chant that's intentionally hard to make out. David and Ava agree that becoming memorable, in a truly positive way, is its own form of marketing.

The episode closes with a rundown of where to catch Jupiter Moon's ice cream truck and trailer this summer, including the Minnesota Yacht Club, Minnesota Country Club, the Raspberry Festival in Hopkins, Summertime by George, a concert series in Plymouth, and the St. Cloud Air Show, plus one of Ava's favorite awkward wedding stories about setting up the ice cream bike on a dance floor. David wraps with a memorably disgusting story about a Buckwheat Zydeco show at First Avenue, where the venue's uncleaned rafters once rained dust bunnies onto the crowd from the heat and humidity, a story that loops right back to the Purple Fuzzy Space Monster bit from earlier in the series.

Key Topics Covered

• Why David really started Jupiter Moon: wanting the shop to be iconic and important to the community
• The "what's your ice cream story" question David asks every job applicant
• Ava's personal ice cream story: mint Oreo milkshakes with her dad
• Ice cream as a coping mechanism versus a celebration treat
• Studying other ice cream shops' social media for inspiration, including Elle's Cafe's scooter bit
• Ice cream at events: baseball games, concerts, weddings, and why First Ave would be a bad venue

https://www.jupitermoonicecream.com/

Takeaways

• Jupiter Moon is exploring a whiskey and spirit infused ice cream collaboration with Redhead Creamery, the Brooten, Minnesota, creamery that distills spirits from its own cheese making whey byproduct.
• The shop's candy truffle ice cream traces back to Kernel's Creamery in Covington, Kentucky, whose owner personally drove his equipment and recipes up to Minnesota when he stepped away from the business.
• Jupiter Moon sometimes sells the exact same ice cream flavor under two different names on the menu to A/B test which one customers actually order, including a grape flavor once sold as both Purple Reign and Purple Fuzzy Space Monster.

Summary of the Episode

In Part 1 of this two-part conversation on Ice Cream Social, host David Boyer sits down with Ava Peters, the freelance social media manager who has spent the summer running Jupiter Moon's Instagram while also working as a client service representative at Jacobs Financial. The conversation opens with ice cream: Ava's flavor evolution from mint chip as a kid to the salted caramel truffle now, a flavor she describes as reminding her of whiskey thanks to its bitter caramel and espresso notes.

That comparison leads to an interesting idea in the works: ice cream with real spirits in it. David shares that Redhead Creamery, the Brooten, Minnesota, creamery already distilling spirits from its own cheese making whey, has floated the idea of Jupiter Moon using their spirits in a seasonal flavor, possibly a peppermint schnapps ice cream for winter. It is still just an idea, but the relationship between the two local businesses is already there.

From there, David tells the origin story behind Jupiter Moon's candy truffles: recipes and equipment inherited from Kernel's Creamery, an ice cream shop in Covington, Kentucky, whose owner personally drove everything up to Minnesota, with his grandson, when he stepped away from the business for health reasons. He has since gone back to making ice cream himself. David also walks through his habit of A/B testing flavor names on the menu, using the same grape ice cream sold at different times as Purple Reign (spelled to sidestep any issues with the Prince estate) and, originally, Purple Fuzzy Space Monster, a name he still loves despite it barely selling.

The second half of the episode turns to Ava's own story: how she went from being unsure about being on camera and directing other people to running content that has become some of Jupiter Moon's highest performing social posts, including a "which one's vegan" bar joke and a "Minnesota nice, I'll pay" bit. She also opens up about how managing a business's social media, instead of her own, became a healthier relationship with the same platforms that felt unhealthy to her growing up.

Key Topics Covered

• Ava Peters's role managing Jupiter Moon's social media as a freelancer, plus her day job at Jacobs Financial
• Flavor evolution from childhood mint chip to salted caramel truffle
• A potential whiskey and spirit infused ice cream collaboration with Redhead Creamery in Brooten, Minnesota
• The origin of Jupiter Moon's candy truffles, traced back to Kernel's Creamery in Covington, Kentucky
• A/B testing flavor names on the menu: Purple Reign versus Purple Fuzzy Space Monster
• Jupiter Moon's vegan ice cream option and how it inspired one of the shop's top performing posts
• Ava's personal history with social media and how managing a business account changed her relationship with it
• A shoutout to Jupiter Moon team member Isaac, headed to college in Ithaca, New York

https://www.jupitermoonicecream.com/

Takeaways

• Jupiter Moon is completely nut-free — no tree nuts, no peanuts — and David Boyer made that call partly because he has a tree nut allergy himself. The decision he didn't fully anticipate was how many families it would free up: people who couldn't walk into a Twins game, couldn't walk into most ice cream shops, now have somewhere they can go without fear.
• Jupiter Moon started in a rented kitchen in Sauk Rapids, selling hand-packed cups from an ice cream bicycle at art fairs. David chose the bicycle not because he needed a bike, but because it was cute as all get out and fit the "rolling bubble of joy" experience he was trying to create. Today the shop makes around 15,000 gallons a month in the summer.
• A second Jupiter Moon location is coming to St. Anthony Park in St. Paul — a small space that used to be a tearoom, with a kitchen already in place and a neighborhood that fits the community-first model David has always built around.

In the third and final installment of this conversation on The Ice Cream Social, host David Boyer and Liz Fiedler Mergen of Sunny Mary Meadow dig into the side of Jupiter Moon that most customers never see — and a few pieces of news that listeners might want to pay attention to.

The episode opens with a look at what's coming next in the Jupiter Moon scoop case: a raspberry with chocolate flakes, a potential return of the white chocolate beta from last year, a banana cream pie that would actually work beautifully in oat milk (oat milk already has a graham-like flavor going for it, which Liz may or may not react to on camera), and the ongoing development of the Rainbow Nerds Space Rox flavor from the last episode. There are also early conversations happening about a flower ice cream made with freeze-dried edible petals from Sunny Mary Meadow. Nothing is confirmed, but the rose flavoring is in the building.

From there, David explains what makes Jupiter Moon genuinely rare in the ice cream world: it is completely nut-free. No tree nuts, no peanut butter, no peanut ice cream. The decision started with David's own tree nut allergy — he wasn't going to make ice cream he couldn't eat — and a choice not to do peanuts either so customers wouldn't have to keep track of which category applied to them. What he didn't expect was the size of the community that decision would create. Liz shares a story about a physician friend whose college-age son has a tree nut allergy; Jupiter Moon is one of the only places the whole family can just go. People who couldn't walk into a Twins game without anxiety have a shop now.

The origin story of Jupiter Moon comes up for the first time: the name came from friends at NASA who worked on a probe that has been circling Jupiter since 2016, discovering somewhere around 100 moons. David's crew has been assured that one of those moons is made of ice cream. That settled it. From there, he rented a kitchen by the hour from a gluten-free bakery in Sauk Rapids, made ice cream in the evenings, hand-packed the cups, and sold them out of an ice cream bicycle at Summertime by George and local art fairs. He chose the bicycle purely because it was, in his words, cute as all get out — and because the form factor fit the "rolling bubble of joy" experience he was already trying to design. His background is in UX: user experience design and front-end development. The psychology of how people interact with spaces has always shaped how he thinks about the shop.

https://www.jupitermoonicecream.com/