Scoop SD

Scoop San Diego Ice Cream Festival

Daniel Szpak turned his lifelong love of ice cream into a meaningful way to give back. The cofounder of North Park’s beloved Hammond’s Gourmet Ice Cream sold his share of the frosty favorite a few years back to focus on his career as clinical research nurse, but just couldn’t give up the sweet stuff.

In 2019, he created Scoop San Diego, the city’s first charity ice cream festival. Szpak’s passion project checked all the boxes. It was a fun way to bring people together, give back to the community (100 percent of net proceeds get donated to a local nonprofit), support underserved communities, and treat his taste buds to samplings from an array of local shops.

“I just couldn’t stay away from ice cream!” Szpak says. “So, I thought, ‘how can I still be involved in a project with ice cream and gelato and paletas, but not own a business?’ Immediately I came up with an idea—there’s not a lot of ice cream festivals in the country, let alone the world.”

The inaugural Scoop San Diego ice cream festival in June 2019 had about 20 vendors and raised $20,000 for the Monarch School. A virtual version in 2020 raised $5,000 for Home Start and a drive-thru festival the following year brought in $16,000 and more than 3,000 pounds of donated food for Feeding San Diego. This year’s event was held in North Park’s new mini-park and raised $25,000 for the Alpha Project.

“I decided to choose a different local nonprofit organization every year thinking that could be a good way to spread the wealth, spread the support,” Szpak says.

The most recent festival featured a VIP area and exclusive flavors created special for the event by six local ice cream chefs. Though the 2022 edition of Scoop San Diego was just last month, Szpak and his team are already planning for next year. The date hasn’t been set yet but without a doubt, it will be even more mouthwatering.

“The event was really successful this year and I’ve learned a lot, and I’m just taking a few minutes every day to be grateful,” he says. “It’s great to see an idea from just a couple years ago come to fruition and to actually put together an event that’s really fun for the community. It’s ice cream, so people are happy, and then when people find out that it’s all for a good cause it just, no pun intended, sweetens the entire deal.”

The post The Sweetest Form of Giving Back appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

The inaugural event takes place on June 23 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at North Park Way between 30th Street and Granada Ave.

Individual tickets ($20) buy 10 samples, while shareable tickets ($35) buy one sample from each vendor and can be shared with an unlimited number of people.

Not only is Scoop San Diego dog-friendly—dog ice cream will be available—but it’s for a good cause. The event benefits the Monarch School, whose students will serve an ice cream of their making (overseen by Stella Jean’s Ice Cream) created with produce grown in their school garden.

Here are a few of our faves to look for:

Bing Haus

The Southeast Asian-style rolled ice cream takes shape before your eyes as it gets poured onto a cold plate, mixed with toppings like fruit and cookies, then scraped into tight rolls.

Holy Paleta

Angelica Gonzalez trained in Mexico City and Guadalajara before creating the distinctly Mexican flavors (like mango chamoy and avocado mango), as well as frozen takes on some classics (like Key Lime, cookies and cream, and banana Nutella) for her Bonita-based popsicle business.

An’s Dry Cleaning

From-scratch gelato in refined flavor combinations like watermelon mint, rice milk cinnamon, and honey blueberry. So good you won’t mind if you get a few drops on your freshly laundered clothes.

Stella Jean’s

Making their signature Earl Grey citrus tea cake is a two-day process that requires steeping the milk with tea, baking tea cake with Thai butterfly pea flowers (for color), and folding it all together with blueberry compote.

Four favorites to try at Scoop San Diego ice cream fest

Photo courtesy of Scoop San Diego

The post Four favorites to try at Scoop San Diego ice cream fest appeared first on San Diego Magazine.