Major Changes for Foam Floaterie in Society Hill

Foam Floaterie will undergo a major reorganization this September, not quite closing but ceasing to exist in its current form, and leaving plenty of questions for the future. (The ice cream and soda brand shares space with Cookie Confidential.) Foam owner Tish Smith is leaving the current operation and relocating to Park City, Utah, to take on a new job under an old boss.

Smith will continue on in the store as-is until mid-September. After that, the plan is for Cookie Confidential owner Melissa Torre to "continue to sell Foam ice cream as long as she can." Smith will be producing some of that stock before she leaves, and has some pastry chef friends interested in possibly continuing production, though nothing is set in stone. At the very least, ice cream sales at the Society Hill shop will continue somewhat beyond Smith's departure.

Smith says the plans are for the shop's ice cream sandwiches (collaborative efforts with the cookie side of the co-op) to continue being served, while sodas and floats are "likely." She promises all the staple flavors will stick around: vanilla, root beer, milk chocolate, and toast and jam. She also has plans to stock up on mole chocolate, crunchie honey, Moroccan mint tea, and bourbon sweet potato flavors, with the possibility of a few more.

So why Park City? This will not be Smith's first stint there. She worked at Stein Eriksen Lodge for about a year previously, having followed an old boss who headed out there in 2010. (That old boss — currently exec pastry chef at Stein's — is Ann Giles, who used to run the pastry show for Garces Group.) In January, during a leisurely trip to Utah for the Sundance film festival, Smith was offered the chance to return to Stein's as pastry sous chef. "After months of going back and forth about what to do," Smith says, she decided the opportunity was too good to refuse.

From Utah, Smith is optimistic about opportunities to keep Foam alive. She's setting up her website to begin offering her soda syrups for sale online (she hopes to have the new site up next week), and is looking into having her sodas bottled. She also negotiated with her new bosses the ability to sell ice cream at Park City farmer's markets and festivals under the Foam Floaterie name during the summer season.

Smith also provided this statement, which we've reprinted here in her own words:

I just want to make sure my friends, family, wholesale accounts, and ice cream lovers know how much I have appreciated the support and love they have given me over the past two years. I don't feel like Foam has failed, I feel like it has flourished. I'm taking this wonderful job as an opportunity to fine-tune my dream and goals for this little company. I want to take some business classes and really be prepared for an eventual re-opening. I can't guarantee when and where exactly that will be, but Philly has my heart and I hope to return!

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