Heavenly Creamery: Pure Indulgence

Joe and Chrissy Erickson, co-owners of Heavenly Creamery in Conneaut, Ohio, turned a once-dilapidated church into a beloved custard-style ice cream shop in 2015. Together, they handcraft more than 130 flavors each year in the shop’s basement kitchen, offering everything from classics to creative delights like Ginger Molasses Cookie and Pineapple Upside Down Cake. Their passion for quality and originality has made Heavenly Creamery a community favorite and a destination for ice cream lovers near and far. DeliveryRank finds out more.

Heavenly Creamery emphasizes using only natural sweeteners (like agave, monk fruit, stevia, or honey) and avoids artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, and refined sugars. How do you maintain both taste and quality when creating new flavors without traditional additives, and what challenges arise from relying on natural ingredients?

Heavenly creamery started with the plan of not adding artificial colors or flavors. The customers demanded a product with more vivid colors and more intense flavor. While we still use pounds of fruit per batch we do add a small amount, much less than the recommended amount, of flavor and color to appease the consumer base. Some flavors, cotton candy, as an example do need an artificial flavor to appease the consumer. We have maintained a low stabilizer base and we do not use corn syrup in the base we pasteurize in house.

With over 500 rotating flavor options—ranging from vegan gelatos to seasonal sorbets—each location offers something unique. Can you describe your flavor development process and how customer feedback influences which flavors become permanent fixtures?

We have made a lot of flavors over the last decade. In the beginning most of the “odd” flavors came from family cookbooks. We’d take a dessert recipe and figure out how to turn it into an ice cream base. As with all things some flavors will never return. Licorice, chicken and waffles and dill pickle all come to mind. Most new flavors come from customer suggestions or our yearly employee flavor war where each employee designs a flavor and I turn it into an ice cream. At this time, we make about 130 flavors each year over the 6-month season. Most flavors will only be seen one time a season.

Heavenly Creamery prides itself on making all frozen desserts entirely from scratch and “never cut corners”. What operational systems or practices do you have in place to ensure consistency and quality across multiple locations while maintaining your small-batch, handcrafted ethos?

I make all the ice cream. When we started, we couldn’t find a product that we were interested in serving customers. We knew that we would want to serve a custard base but everything in the marketplace has moved to a high stabilizer content and that wasn’t what we were trying to do. So, we pasteurize all of our own base so that we have control over the taste and texture.

The menu includes gluten-free items (unless containing cake or cookies), egg-free, vegan gelatos, and sorbets. How do you balance catering to diverse dietary needs with maintaining flavor depth and authenticity—especially with vegan and allergen-friendly options?

Gluten free is easy. Ice cream and custard are naturally gluten free. Since we make custard, nothing is egg free. Eggs are used as a natural emulsifier to eliminate some of the stabilizer content that would otherwise been needed. Sorbets are naturally vegan as they are mainly fruit juice and sugar. I’ll be making watermelon sorbet next week and I’ll juice about a dozen watermelons to make the product. We had vegan for three seasons. We had worked with another dairy as our specialty is custard. After Covid we became two small of a player for that dairy to help us out any more. We’ve looked into other dairy’s to help us out as we don’t have production time to take from our main production for vegan offerings. However, just like trying to get our base produced off site, in order to increase production, the order minimums don’t make sense for a small supplier.

The brand highlights unique experiences, such as chocolate fountains at specific locations and a strong social media presence. In what ways do these immersive experiences and locally inspired activations help build customer loyalty and support brand identity?

Heavenly Creamery started out of necessity. We bought a century old church to stop it from being bulldozed. As we needed to do something with the building. The only thing my wife and I had in our back pocket was we knew how to make ice cream. Since the start we’ve found out there is a big difference between making a quart of ice cream at home on the stove and making gallons at a time in a commercial environment. We do off site scooping but it’s not a major part of the business. We want people to come in and see the building and the history that we’ve managed to save. 

If you would like to find out more about Heavenly Creamery, please visit https://www.heavenlycreamery.com/