The Kansas City Ice Cream and Frozen Custard Tradition

Kansas City’s ice cream and frozen custard tradition is a roughly century-long lineage of locally owned makers, stretching from Country Club Plaza popcorn-and-ice-cream parlors of the late 1920s through the steakburger drive-ins of the 1940s, the family custard stands of the 1980s and ’90s, and the small-batch craft scene of the 2010s. It pairs two distinct Midwestern frozen-dessert traditions — classic homemade ice cream and egg-rich frozen custard — and remains, to this day, dominated by independent, family-run shops.

Origins

Kansas City’s standing as a dairy, milling, and meatpacking hub on the edge of the Great Plains gave the city a reliable supply of cream and milk, and the rail network to distribute frozen and refrigerated goods. That agricultural and logistical base supported a local ice cream trade well before the dessert became a national craze.

The tradition’s oldest surviving thread is Topsy’s, established on the Country Club Plaza in 1929. Opened originally as “Patsy’s” and renamed Topsy’s in 1949, it is the oldest merchant still operating on the Plaza. Topsy’s built its reputation on gourmet popcorn — it claims to have invented the three-way popcorn tin — but its parlors also became known for ice cream and a freshly squeezed limeade whose recipe dates to the 1920s. The company grew into a public corporation in 1968 and at its peak ran roughly 500 snack-bar units nationwide before contracting back to a cluster of franchised popcorn-and-ice-cream shops around the KC metro.¹

The other anchor of the early tradition is Winstead’s. The chain began in Springfield, Illinois, where Kathryn Winstead opened a pioneering drive-in in 1936; her family brought the concept to Kansas City near the Plaza in 1940. Winstead’s became a KC institution on the strength of its griddled steakburgers and its outsized “Skyscraper” sodas and malts — multi-scoop fountain drinks built to be shared by five or six people. (Fries and frosty malts joined the menu in 1957.) Critic Calvin Trillin famously rated its cheeseburgers among the best anywhere, and the Streamline Moderne styling of the original restaurant became a local landmark.²

Frozen custard heritage

Frozen custard is a richer, denser cousin of ice cream, distinguished by the addition of egg yolks and a slower churn that incorporates less air. The style was introduced commercially at Coney Island, New York, in 1919, when vendors found that egg yolks produced a smoother texture that held the cold longer. It spread nationally after the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair and put down its deepest roots in the upper Midwest — Milwaukee is often called the unofficial frozen-custard capital — where Prohibition-era dairy abundance and a culture of German-immigrant stands cemented the tradition.³

Kansas City sits squarely within that Midwestern custard belt, and frozen custard forms a parallel lineage alongside the city’s homemade-ice-cream shops. The local custard story is led by Foo’s Fabulous Frozen Custard, opened in Brookside in June 1988 by Joe Bremser and his wife Roseann. Bremser, who held a degree in microbiology, taught himself to make custard after the St. Louis institution Ted Drewes declined to franchise. Foo’s passed to Betty Bremser in 1996, added a Leawood location in 2006, and in the 2010s was bought by two longtime former employees, Leah Krieger and Megan Reilly, who have kept the Brookside shop running.⁴

The metro’s best-known custard chain is Sheridan’s Frozen Custard, which Jim Sheridan opened in a former Hardee’s building on West 75th Street in Overland Park, Kansas, on June 15, 1998, after years of planning. Sheridan’s grew quickly, reaching roughly 13 KC-area locations by 2003 before franchising into a multi-state regional presence. The brand remains identified with its Kansas City–metro origins.⁵

Notable makers

Beyond the anchors above, the tradition includes a series of beloved independents:

• Murray’s Ice Creams & Cookies — opened in Westport in 1984 by the mother-daughter team of Penny and Murray Nixon. Famous for small in-house batches with offbeat flavors such as the cream-cheese-based “Chocolate Flake Fromage,” Murray’s operated seasonally for more than three decades before closing for good after the 2016 season. A successor business, Westport Ice Cream Bakery, took over the Pennsylvania Avenue storefront.⁶
• Sylas & Maddy’s Homemade Ice Cream — founded on Massachusetts Street in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1997 by Jim and Cindy England, who had moved from Minnesota and missed a classic mom-and-pop parlor. The shop (named for a friend’s cat and the family dog) added an Olathe location in 1999, makes its waffle cones fresh daily, and remains family-owned.⁷
• Betty Rae’s Ice Cream — see betty-raes-ice-cream. Opened in Waldo in 2015 by David Friesen and Mary Nguyen, who had both worked at Sparky’s Homemade Ice Cream in Columbia, Missouri. Named for Friesen’s grandmother, it became known for inventive flavors such as Lavender Honey, added an ice cream truck and a River Market location, and later changed hands.⁸
• Glacé Artisan Ice Cream — the small-batch ice cream line from chocolatier Christopher Elbow, extending his craft-confection brand into frozen desserts with a Crossroads presence.
• Andy’s Frozen Custard — a Springfield, Missouri–founded custard chain with a notable KC-area footprint; widely available across the metro though not KC-founded.
• Whoppy’s Frozen Custard — a longtime independent custard stand.

Modern craft wave

The 2000s and 2010s brought a small-batch revival that mirrored the national craft-food movement. Glacé and Betty Rae’s are the clearest local examples, emphasizing house-made bases, seasonal and unconventional flavors, and a parlor-as-destination model rather than the drive-in or snack-bar formats of earlier eras. This wave broadened the tradition from a handful of legacy names into a denser field of independent scoop shops across Brookside, Waldo, the Crossroads, Westport, and the River Market, while custard chains continued to serve the suburbs.

Cultural significance

Ice cream and frozen custard occupy a distinct place in Kansas City’s food identity, complementing the more frequently cited barbecue, steakhouse, and immigrant-cuisine traditions. Several traits define the lineage: it is overwhelmingly locally owned; it spans two parallel dessert styles (homemade ice cream and egg-rich custard); and it has repeatedly produced multi-decade neighborhood fixtures — Topsy’s, Winstead’s, Foo’s — that double as civic landmarks. The Skyscraper soda, the Plaza popcorn tin, and the seasonal custard window are as much a part of local memory as any single flavor.

Among currently operating makers, the multi-decade, KC-rooted independents (Topsy’s, Winstead’s, Foo’s, Sylas & Maddy’s) are strong heritage-recognition candidates, with classification a matter of editorial judgment rather than mechanical rule.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Topsy’s Popcorn — company history and FAQ (founding 1929; Patsy’s-to-Topsy’s renaming 1949; corporate and franchise expansion); KSHB, “Topsy’s popcorn is about as ‘KC’ as it gets.” https://www.topsyspopcorn.com/about; https://blog.topsyspopcorn.com/about-topsys-popcorn/topsys-popcorn-faq/ ↩

2. Winstead’s — Wikipedia and KCtoday history (Springfield, IL origin 1936; KC opening near the Plaza 1940; Skyscraper sodas; fries/malts added 1957; Trillin praise). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winstead’s; https://kctoday.6amcity.com/business/history-of-winsteads-kansas-city ↩

3. Frozen custard origin and Midwestern heritage — Wikipedia and Milwaukee Record (Coney Island commercial introduction 1919 via the Kohr brothers; spread after the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair; Milwaukee/German-immigrant custard tradition). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_custard; https://milwaukeerecord.com/food-drink/mandatory-milwaukee-kopps-frozen-custard-hand-in-hand/ ↩

4. Foo’s Fabulous Frozen Custard — Feast Magazine and BrooksideKC coverage (founded June 1988 by Joe and Roseann Bremser; sold to Betty Bremser 1996; Leawood location 2006; later sale to former employees Leah Krieger and Megan Reilly). https://www.brooksidekc.org/article/former-employees-purchase-iconic-foos-preserve-its-legacy; https://www.fabfoos.com/about ↩

5. Sheridan’s Frozen Custard — Johnson County Post and company materials (first store opened June 15, 1998 in Overland Park, KS; rapid metro growth; multi-state expansion). https://johnsoncountypost.com/2022/06/14/sheridans-frozen-custard-closes-overland-park-location-moves-to-westwood-147927/; https://sheridansfrozencustard.com/kansas-city-sheridan-s-frozen-custard-about ↩

6. Murray’s Ice Creams & Cookies — Feast Magazine and KSHB (opened 1984 by Penny and Murray Nixon; signature Chocolate Flake Fromage; permanent closure after the 2016 season; succeeded by Westport Ice Cream Bakery). https://www.feastmagazine.com/feast-50/ice-cream-and-custard-murrays-ice-cream-cookies/article_2017370e-268a-11e5-9a3d-db8f90802d2b.html; https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/after-32-years-kansas-citys-murrays-ice-cream-closes-its-doors-for-good ↩

7. Sylas & Maddy’s Homemade Ice Cream — “Our Story” and Kansas Living Magazine (founded 1997 in Lawrence by Jim and Cindy England; Olathe location 1999; named for a cat and dog). http://www.sylasandmaddysicecream.com/ourstory; https://kansaslivingmagazine.com/articles/2020/05/06/sylas-and-maddy%E2%80%99s-homemade-ice-cream ↩

8. Betty Rae’s Ice Cream — company “About Us,” Feast Magazine, and KCUR (opened in Waldo 2015 by David Friesen and Mary Nguyen; Sparky’s background; Lavender Honey; River Market expansion; later sale). https://bettyraes.squarespace.com/aboutus; https://www.kcur.org/arts-life/2023-05-20/betty-raes-ice-cream-kansas-city-new-owner-shatto-milk ↩