I Scream, You Scream, DeVries Helped Save the Ice Cream!

Last week’s power outages were trying on everyone. I was one of the lucky ones that had my power restored after 12 hours, although at the time I didn’t feel so lucky. I lost all the food in my fridge and freezer for the second time in three weeks. Driving around town I saw extension cords running across streets and heard generators still going on Thursday. That’s when I felt fortunate.

Imagine if you owned an ice cream shop and the power went out. What would you do? Maria Marciniec, owner of , 25 S. Ashland Ave., experienced that scenario last week. Marciniec is a  friendly, upbeat woman who gets to know all her customers by name. She quickly jumped into action by calling Phillies Pizza Bar and Grill, 6300 S. Kingery Highway, to see if there was room in their walk-in freezer for some of her ice cream. Fortunately, they had room for some of the ice cream so Marciniec and her staff quickly took advantage of the offer.

But even with the help, there was still ice cream that needed a place to stay cold and ingredients that required refrigeration, so Marciniec decided to buy some ice and see what she could salvage.

She headed over to , 806 Arlington Ave. While buying the ice she struck up a conversation with Dick DeVries, one of the owners of DeVries. Marciniec explained what her situation was and DeVries quickly offered up space in his freezers for her ice cream.

“If I were in the same situation I would hope that another business would come forward and help me out. It’s about helping each other out in a time of need,” DeVries said.

Because of the generosity of DeVries and Phillies, Tates only lost about thirty gallons of ice cream. DeVries was able to store forty-five gallons and Phillies about the same amount. Tates’ power came back on at 1:09 p.m. Tuesday, but they still had to wait four hours for the freezers to get cold before bringing the ice cream back to the store. By 7 p.m. Tuesday night, about thirty-five hours after the power went out, Tates was back in business with people at the door waiting to buy ice cream.

Marciniec was so grateful for all the help that DeVries and Phillies gave her, she said losing all her product would have been devastating to her business and would have required a lot more than thirty-five hours to get back in business.

“Not only did Phillies and DeVries store my ice cream, but Phillies even bought some of my ice cream and served it to their customers as a thank you and promoting my store. It’s amazing how people came to the rescue and helped me out,” Marciniec explained.

The power outages have been trying, to say the least, but every time we’ve had one I hear these wonderful stories about people banding together and helping each other out. Isn’t that the way it should be all the time?