Greg's Ice Cream

Description

Greg Mahon likens his life’s work to bartending, only he’s not peddling shots, he’s peddling scoops.
The ebullient founder of Greg’s Ice Cream, a Toronto institution for close to three decades, has made many friends over his years in the business and they’ve shared their life stories with him over a cone or a sundae. “We’ve been around for a while now. It’s hard to believe we celebrated our 25th anniversary a couple of years ago. It’s been a real trip,” Mahon told CityNews.ca in an interview at his Bloor and Spadina ice cream parlour. “People come into the store, we catch up, we reminisce. We talk about their weddings, their funerals, their children. And their kids come to us now too.” Mahon was the first to make premium, all-natural ice cream in this city, which he did at the back of his tiny original shop at Bloor St. and Avenue Rd. He used local ingredients and quickly found there was an appetite for his flavours, from standards like vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry to offbeat recipes like grape nut and coffee toffee. The proof? A lineup that stretched around the block on opening day, in December, 1981. “I figured who the heck is going to be here (on a December day) but there they were,” he smiles, noting that a number of people claim to be his first-ever customers.