The Beginning.
CP’s Dairy Delicious was established in 1980 by Carl Pearson. Carl owned the C. Pearson Trophy shop at the corner of Willowick Drive and Vine Street in Willowick, OH for several years when he decided to add on to the building to make a walk-up ice cream stand. The neighborhood enjoyed CP’s delicious soft-serve ice cream for decades until 2013, when Carl’s health failed and the business had to be sold.
A New Beginning.
Matt D’Arcy took over the shop for the 2013 summer season and kept on most of the crew that had helped to make CP’s Dairy Delicious such a popular place. Matt quickly realized he could not run the shop alone and so Paul Kosiewicz joined him and, together, they had a successful first season running the familiar Willowick icon.
Meanwhile, the trophy shop moved out and Paul and Matt began remodeling the space to make room for the new CP’s Cooler, an ice cream shop where we make homemade ice cream in a display kitchen so you can watch. Unfortunately, due to construction delays, the new shop did not open until Saturday, June 7th of 2014. Fortunately, customers loved the new shop – and the homemade ice creams – and have come in record numbers. We had to hire a lot more help but, fortunately, most of the crew came back for the 2014 summer season to continue with the awesome, friendly service!
In the season of 2016, Matt brought his niece Kristina Burns on board to take over Operations. Paul was looking for a change & Kristina came from a long background in Management. It was a perfect fit! We have since made Local, National & Worldwide News with our fun loving signs & aggressive goals for fundraising. We have added even more incredible items to our menu throughout the years as well. Such as Homemade Eggfree Cookie Dough & traditional Water Ice we have transformed into what we call The IceBurg (think Slush plus Homemade Lemonade, yummy)!
We have a brand new Drive-thru and are serving guests in record numbers once again. In the Summer Months we Welcome you to visit us inside as well. You will find we offer indoor & outdoor seating if you do decide to order with us inside.
We hope that you enjoy all that has stayed the same in regards to CP’s throughout the years & hope that you will continue to welcome the changes we are always bringing into the shop.
Why, CP’s Cooler?
Originally, we had planned to call the shop Pearson’s, in honor of Carl Pearson. However, as we began the remodel, we realized we were going to have to tear out an old wooden cooler that had been on the premises since before mechanical refrigeration. It was a beautiful two-door walk-in wooden cooler. The bottom door was for people to enter. The top door accessed a compartment where blocks of ice were placed to keep the cooler cold because it was installed at a time when electric refrigeration was not available.
It was just too beautiful to discard. So, we decided to hang those cooler doors on the entrance to our back vestibule. Then we needed a closet door and thought it would be neat to have the carpenter make a replica of the cooler doors for the closet door. Next we contacted Polar Hardware, the 98-year-old company who made the hardware on the original cooler doors to see if they would make the hardware for our cooler closet door. One thing led to another and, before you knew it, we had a half-height cooler door for kids to enter the building, a cooler on the front lawn to be our sign, icicles hanging in the entryway, floor tiles to look like a frozen pond and a bunch of other details making the place look like the inside of a cooler.
Given the décor, and the fact that we sell ice cream and other frozen treats, we decided a fitting name would be The Cooler. But our staff said we had to incorporate CP’s somehow because it was such a neighborhood tradition. So, we decided to make a penguin our mascot and to call him CP. That’s how we became CP’s Cooler.
Thank you for your continued support of our locally owned business.
