Howdy Homemade Starts Scooping This Week

When Texadelphia founder Tom Landis announced that he would be opening an ice cream shop that would employ adults with special needs, the community responded with overwhelming positivitiy. A Gofundme campaign raised more than $12,000 to help Landis purchase signage, ice cream freezers, and pay employees for their first two weeks of labor. Now, nearly three months after the campaign’s launch, Howdy Homemade is ready to start scooping..

As SideDish reported on Friday, Landis will open his ice cream shop’s doors next week, in a space at 4333 W. Lovers Ln. "His goal, other than serving great food and ice cream," writes D Magazine’s Nancy Nichols, "is to work with numerous special needs organizations to hire, train and employ people with Down Syndrome and Autism."

According to the Dallas Morning News, Landis has been training special needs employees to work at Texadelphia, his regional chain of cheesesteak and sandwich shops, for the past four years. At Howdy Homemade, the ice cream will be prepared, scooped, and sold by adults with developmental disabilities.

The menu at Howdy Homemade is part sandwich shop, part ice cream scoop heaven. In addition to a short menu of sandwiches, including a BLT, chicken panini, and roasted veggie on "hippie bread," you’ll find twelve types of ice cream by the scoop, ranging from the traditional strawberry and chocolate to more interesting flavor combinations like avocado-lime and sweet tea. Landis also plans to introduce the "world’s first Dr. Pepper chocolate chip" ice cream, which sounds like heaven in a cone.

Landis has ambitious plans for Howdy Homemade. Next year, he plans to take his ice cream to the Texas State Fair, begin "aggressively franchising" new stores to employ more special needs adults, and, by 2017, introduce his Dr. Pepper Chocolate Chip ice cream to grocery stores nationwide.

Howdy Homemade will serve its first scoop of ice cream on Sunday, December 20. The shop will be open 7 days a week, from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.