New business: Vogels move ice cream business to Speers
Holly Tonini
Patrice Vogel, owner of Kimmie’s Kones in Speers, is pictured behind the counter.
A recent flavor of the week served at Kimmie’s Kones in Speers in soft serve ice cream was black raspberry.
Holly Tonini
Two years after closing up shop in Perryopolis, Patrice and Art Vogel have opened a new Kimmie’s Kones 11 miles away in Speers.
For one thing, Patrice Vogel said, “We rented up there, and we wanted to own our own place.”
So the Vogels bought a new location at 2 McKean Ave., just over the borough line from Charleroi’s downtown business district. It wasn’t the only change.
“We found out here in Charleroi people like their hard-dipped flavors,” Mrs. Vogel said. “We just bought another dipping cabinet.”
That will allow the couple to dish out 16 flavors, up from the 13 now available with the scoopers, including what she described as “our four biggest sellers,” butter pecan, pistachio, chocolate peanut butter cup and black raspberry.
Chocolate almond, rainbow sherbet, strawberry cheesecake, cookie dough, mint chocolate chip and “your basic chocolate and vanilla” are available, too, but not strawberry.
“We tried plain old strawberry and it didn’t sell,” Patrice Vogel said.
The hard-dipped ice cream is shipped in from Country Parlour in Cleveland. Eight flavors can be found on the soft-serve machine, provided by United Dairy of Uniontown — and strawberry was included there, at least in August.
“What’s better than a bowl of fresh strawberries in the summer?” the Kimmie’s Kones Facebook page asked. “A bowl (or cone) of Strawberry Soft Serve from Kimmie’s!”
Hot dogs were offered for a time, but the grill’s been shut down because of a lack of customer interest. The rest of the menu includes assorted sundaes, soft drinks and chips.
By the way, who’s Kimmie? It’s not Mrs. Vogel, who’s been called Kimmie, prompting her daughter to suggest buying a T-shirt that says, “I am not Kimmie.”
And, as it happens, it really isn’t Art and Patrice’s daughter Kimberly, now 30 and an assistant manager at a Sheetz convenience store in Pittsburgh’s South Hills, even if one might think so from the name of the Vogels’ business.
“Kimmie’s Kones had a ring to it,” Kimberly’s mother said.
The usual staff during the store’s 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. hours Tuesday through Saturday and 3-9 p.m. hours Sundays and Mondays (and every day beginning at the end of September) is “strictly me and my husband,” Patrice said.
The Perryopolis store was “strictly seasonal,” but in Speers it will be a year-round operation.
Helping the Vogels are a part-time employee, 16-year-old Haley Edwards, as well as niece Becky Vogel who attends Waynesburg University, and Kimberly herself on occasion.
After once touting “a guest appearance by Kimmie,” the daughter told her mother, “Stop doing that.”
Kimberly, by the way, is administrator for her parents’ Facebook page.
As for why the two-year absence, there were family concerns, including two strokes suffered by Art Vogel’s mother.
The Vogels have had their share of economic ups and downs, too, during a marriage that just passed its 34th anniversary. Patrice grew up in Castle Shannon, Art in South Park Township.
“He was my first boyfriend,” Patrice recalled. “I was 13, going on 14.”
She’s now 56, he’s 59. They’ve lived in the mid-Mon Valley since Kimberly was 8, and they moved to Rostraver Township.
And the urge to sell ice cream has been around a long time, too.
“There was a pizza and ice cream shop. (Art) worked at it,” Patrice said. “We always talked about doing that sometime down the line.”
That led to the Perryopolis store, which always was just one of the family’s jobs.
“He’s a jack of all trades,” Patrice said. “He’s a three-quarter pastor (in the United Methodist Church), with three churches up in Addison, Somerset County.”
Up until recently, Art also worked as a manager at a plumbing warehouse.
While working nights in Perryopolis, Patrice also worked for Solar Power Industries, until taking a buyout in 2010.
“A year later it went belly up,” she said.
Kimberly got her a job at Sheetz and Patrice also had a job at Bethel Bakery — but a traffic accident led to her losing both jobs.
So she settles for a job she likes, serving ice cream.
“It is definitely my home away from home,” Patrice Vogel said. “My dog looks at me and says, ‘are you leaving again?'”
Just for a few hours.