Shane Reese will never forget his first order of business as President of Brigham Young University.
When Reese assumed his current office in May of 2023, the first call he received came from BYU Dining Services, who asked him what his specialty Creamery ice cream flavor would be.
Reese’s flavor of choice — a mix of Dutch chocolate ice cream, marshmallow swirls and brownie pieces aptly named “In-Shane-ly chocolate” — and dozens of other ice cream selections can be found at BYU’s brand new Creamery on Ninth location, which began serving customers in December but held its official grand opening ceremony Monday.
The new Creamery is located right behind the previous building off of 900 East in Provo, nestled between Heritage Halls and the J. Reuben Clark Law School.
Given the more 1.3 million annual visitors at the previous Creamery building, which originally opened its doors in 1949 and had become cramped in recent years, the new location offers 71% more retail space and other notable improvements.
“What we want to do is make sure the students have a great place to shop, a fun place to hang out, and just meet people and be able to get what they need to,” store director Keith LeBaron said. “I think with adding so much more variety in the grocery department, we’re already seeing that they’re super excited for that.”
The increase in space, seating and grocery options has resulted in immediate success, as the new Creamery’s first month of revenue was double that of an average month at the previous location, according to BYU.
“We’ve partnered with local farmers, producers, artisans, to bring you the very best. When you shop here, you’re not just getting groceries, you’re supporting Utah-grown businesses and sustainable processes,” said Brent Craig, managing director of BYU Dining Services. “We’ve made an emphasis on that as we built this new building.”
Aside from the expanded grocery section, the new Creamery has a spacious outdoor patio seating area — complete with a scenic view of Y Mountain — that will be heated during winter months and cooled down during the summer. Additionally, a statue of BYU’s mascot Cosmo the Cougar will be placed at the store’s entrance sometime in the near future.
BYU employs more than 300 student workers at the Creamery and plans on future Creamery-related “community events, local food drives, and partnerships with neighborhood organizations.”
But of course, the Creamery won’t only be feeding BYU students and the local community, but also helping to satisfy their appetites for fellowship and belonging.
“We feel deeply that gathering together in person to gain an education that is both intellectually enlarging and spiritually strengthening is vitally important,” Reese said. ”... While (students) will remember amazing things about their statistics classes, and they’ll remember amazing things that they learned in their accounting classes and their engineering classes and all of the music classes that they attended on this campus, the things that they’ll carry with them after they leave this campus are the relationships that they built while here on this campus, and those relationships are going to happen in remarkable ways (at the Creamery).
“It’ll happen over ice cream, it’ll happen over a burger, it’ll happen over fries. They’ll form relationships that are friendships. They’ll form relationships that end up being marriage relationships. (The Creamery) will be a remarkable gathering place for this campus.”
