Sweet Cub brings new soft serve ice cream options to Asheville

Like many Americans, Nicole Wandtke has fond childhood memories of a soft serve ice cream spot where, on warm summer nights, families, Little League baseball teams and packs of teens pressed close to the walk-up window to order chocolate-vanilla twists, dipped cones and elaborate sundaes.

Wandtke has turned that sweet nostalgia into her own business. On March 27, she launched Sweet Cub in a vintage trailer in the parking lot of Highline North Apartments in Woodfin. Retrofitted by Wandtke and her boyfriend, Spencer Sain, the trailer has a service window through which Wandtke passes the cups and cones, both plain and bedazzled with traditional toppings as well as some unique ones, such as olive oil and sea salt flakes.

Wandtke’s nomadic route to Asheville from her hometown of Mason, Ohio — about 30 miles outside Cincinnati — didn’t foreshadow the travel trailer as a base of operations as much as her lifelong passion for ice cream culminated in the concept of the business. “[I have] always believed there is always room for ice cream,” she says. “Growing up, the local soft serve place was Loveland Dairy Whip. We’d go after games and with neighborhood kids. It was part of my youth.”

After college in Columbus, Wandtke was hired by General Mills, which placed her in Albuquerque N.M., then later in Minneapolis. After transitioning to working remotely for a recruiting company, she chose to relocate to the Asheville area, which suited her love of hiking and the outdoors.

Ultimately, though, she started feeling burned out from staring at a computer screen all day and isolated from her co-workers. In October, after Tropical Storm Helene hit Western North Carolina, she ditched the corporate path and quit her job.

Looking for direction, she turned to a bucket list she had written in high school. “I wanted to be out in the community, meeting people,” she says. “‘Open an ice cream shop’ was something I thought I’d do when I retired, but it popped to the top of the list,” she says.

Online research led Wandtke to a company in Georgia that sold trailer shells. Sain took charge of the buildout, and she tracked down two soft serve machines, learned the method, practiced techniques, developed recipes and oversaw the aesthetic. “I wanted a look and colors that reminded people of vintage national parks, and that’s exactly the reaction from people when they see it,” she says.

Aside from the soft serve basics and loads of toppings, Sweet Cub’s menu features three sundaes — the Blue Ridge Bear is drizzled with honey and sprinkled with flaked sea salt; the Campfire is topped with toasted marshmallows, graham cracker crumbs and chocolate sauce; and the Dirt Road has gummy bears and Oreo crumbles. Another option, ice cream nachos, features soft serve piled on waffle cone chips with a syrup and a topping.

Wandtke’s favorite? “I’m a simple girl,” she says with a laugh. “I like vanilla with rainbow sprinkles.”

In addition to public pop-ups, Sweet Cub can be booked for weddings, parties, special events, festivals and other gatherings. Learn more at avl.mx/eog, and follow on Instagram for pop-up schedule at avl.mx/eoh.