Meeting a need: Cream & The Crop serves up fresh produce, ice cream

A former Gulf Oil service station near downtown Kokomo has a new life.

The Cream & the Crop, located at 517 N. Apperson Way, is one of the city’s newest businesses, selling not only various plants but also fresh produce, ice cream and old fashioned soda fountain drinks.

The business opened around Mother’s Day and recently celebrated its grand opening.

It’s the brainchild of Shawn Clark, who hopes his new business abates, to some degree, downtown Kokomo’s status as a food desert, areas where residents have to travel a mile or more to access fresh food.

While the Cream & The Crop is no grocery store, it does offer fresh produce, such as bananas, potatoes, oranges, peaches, zucchini, onions, apples, lemons and more.

“I want to meet the needs of the community,” Clark said. “The customers I have, they only need maybe an onion or potato, and they would have to go all the way to Save A Lot or Walmart, and they don’t have any transportation.”

Clark decided to add ice cream to have something to sell when the flower business slows in the cold months. The Cream & The Crop’s “super premium” ice cream has more butter fat than regular ice cream, leading to a creamer, more dense and more tasteful ice cream.

Clark has owned the roughly half-acre lot on the southwest corner of Apperson Way and Jefferson Street for more than a decade, buying it from Jack Bowser Sr., the longtime owner of the property who operated it as a Gulf gas and service station for decades.

Famously, Bowser began selling “Mini-Jacks” sliders for a time after not wanting to drive from Kokomo to Indianapolis for White Castle sliders. Pictures of Bowser are placed on the shelves below the checkout.

Part of the old service station remains and has been repurposed by Clark, including a car jack that is now used as the base for a display table.

Other nods to Kokomo’s past include an old Kresge’s lunch counter that was once located in the company’s downtown Kokomo location. The Cream & The Crop’s” “Garden Center” sign is an old Kmart sign.

So far, Clark said the response from the community has been positive.

“I see that I’m meeting the need more so than actually making money,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about for me because I’m already retired. So to be able to supply that (fresh produce) means a lot to them and me. It’s been a blessing.”