When Mardi Johnson Moore (M’82) was a teenager, she started coming to Purdue to visit her older sister, Virginia Johnson Pillman (HHS’76). It was then that her sister introduced her to Original Frozen Custard in Lafayette. At the time, it was just a tasty treat, not an epiphany.
But it’s funny how things work out sometimes. Today, Moore and her husband, Denny, run Scooter’s Frozen Custard on the North Side of Chicago. It has been voted the city’s best ice cream, milkshake, and dessert — and recently landed at number 13 on Time Out New York’s list of the 21 best ice cream shops in America.
The Moores met while working in sales for Illinois Bell (now AT&T), and though both enjoyed working in the corporate world, neither wanted to make a lifetime of it. “My husband used to always joke that ‘Someday I’m going to leave this corporate world and just open up a hot dog stand,’” Moore recalls. “And that never appealed to me at all.
“I was just driving around one day and we saw a frozen custard shop out in the suburbs of Chicago, and I just joked and said, ‘What about frozen custard?’ And I really wasn’t serious; I never really wanted to go into retail.”
The more they researched it, however, the more it made sense. The Moores took a Scoop School class in Escanaba, Michigan, and invested in a high-end Ross’s frozen custard machine — one that Moore jokingly refers to as “the Mercedes I never had.”
“We didn’t skimp on that, and we’re glad we didn’t,” she adds. “We still have that machine.” Now nearing the end of their 13th season in business — Scooter’s closes up shop for three months every winter and will close on December 4 this year — the Moores have no current plans to expand their business, but they aren’t ruling it out. For now, they’re happy to have built a strong reputation in a city that loves food like few others.
“Now we’ve gotten to the point where the concierges of the hotels send tourists up to our place,” Mardi says. Scooter’s boasts a summer staff of 20, is renowned for its signature Boston Shake, and its opening and closing days are considered major events in Chicago. And with hot dogs on the menu, Denny Moore did end up completing his original quest.
None of this was part of Moore’s original life plan, but it’s turned out to be a pretty sweet deal.