This Sunday, July 21, Americans will celebrate their favorite creamy, dreamy dessert: ice cream. National Ice Cream Day started in 1984 with President Ronald Reagan officially marking the third Sunday in July as a day to honor the treat.

And here in New England, we are in the perfect place to explore and indulge in ice cream trends of all flavors with iconic shops like Herrell’s, which created the mix-ins made wildly popular by dessert chain Cold Stone, and Ben and Jerry’s, hailing from Vermont.

Deena Jalal, cofounder of the vegan ice cream shop and brand FoMu, got into the industry not as an ice cream maker but as a curious entrepreneur.

“Before opening FoMu, my business entrepreneurship 101 was I bought a location of Emack & Bolio’s and ran it for a year,” Jalal said. “That’s kind of how I learned about ice cream — learned how ingredients were sourced, what the current recipes were, a lot of the behind-the-scenes of ice cream.”

J.P. Licks cofounder Vincent Petryk got his start as a dishwasher in an ice cream shop in Philadelphia, working his way up the ladder and creating his own recipes from scratch. Once he was ready to branch out on his own, he realized just how big a business ice cream is in Boston. When he opened J.P. Licks’ iconic Coolidge Corner location in the 1980s, five other frozen dessert spots were nearby, including a Friendly’s, a franchise of Steve’s (of Herrell’s fame) and the original Emack & Bolio’s.

“Five years later, I looked up and down the street, and we were the only ones left. And we did nothing but sell ice cream as best we could,” Petryk said. “You know, one thing that I’ve always found critical, especially with ice cream, is service and treating people kindly, fairly. And then after about five years, I realized quickly was really key, because nobody likes to wait in lines.”

Since their start, Jalal and Petryk have both carved out a unique place in the Boston ice cream scene.

“Following a plant-based recipe allowed us to build from the ground up with really exquisite real ingredients and be able to create from scratch all types of unique flavors as well, because we started by making the base from scratch,” Jalal said. “We didn’t use a mix. We could control the sugar. We could control the ingredients. And so we started from there.”

Petryk says part of his ice cream motivation and ethos is about creating his own world within his shops.

“I didn’t find the world to be all that kind and nice of a place,” Petryck said. “And I wanted a world where people were treated fairly with compassion and humor whenever possible.”

GUESTS

  • Deena Jalal, cofounder of FoMu
  • Vincent Petryk, cofounder and CEO of J.P. Licks