Our story
Made to be shared
We began with a simple goal: make the best ice cream sandwich we could, and share it. Here’s how a few kitchen experiments became a Chatham tradition.
It started in a home kitchen
In 2020, like a lot of people, our founder, Mitch Rogers, found himself at home with more time than usual, and he spent a lot of it in the kitchen. He’d always made ice cream sandwiches for his kids. Now he set out to make the perfect one.
He tested cookies and brownies (and even a rice crispy treat), adjusted the ice cream, layered in fudge and fine-tuned the proportions until every bite held together. Then he invited a few friends over to try them. His friend Mike, who had heard plenty of Mitch’s business ideas over the years, took one bite and said, “Mitch, this is the least crazy idea you’ve ever had.”
That was enough for us to begin.
How it happened
- 2020 The first recipes, in a home kitchen
- June 1, 2021 Opening day at the Chatham Farmers Market: 16 bars sold
- Summer 2021 More than 100 bars a week
- April 2022 Buffy’s Ice Cream changes hands
- May 15, 2022 Buffy’s reopens as the home of Chatham Ice Cream Bars
- Today At Buffy’s and more than 25 shops and restaurants
Sixteen bars on opening day
On June 1, 2021, we set up our first table at the Chatham Farmers Market: Mitch and his daughter Lexi, ten recipes, packaging we’d designed ourselves and bars made in a rented commercial kitchen. Mitch bet we’d sell 75 that day. Lexi guessed 25. We sold 16.
The next week we sold 46. Then more than 80, and from then on, more than 100 every week of the summer. Again and again, people would buy a bar, take a bite as they walked away, stop, and come back with the same question: “Where can we buy these in a store?”
Many came back the next week to tell us about sharing the bars with family and friends. Different stories, but in a way the same one.
A home on Main Street
By the end of that summer, the answer was clear: our bars needed a home. That fall, Mitch walked through downtown Chatham looking for the right place, for sale or not. The moment he saw Buffy’s Ice Cream, he knew.
When he went back a week later to meet the owner, there was a closed sign in the window, and next to it, a for-sale sign.
Mitch bought Buffy’s the following April. With help from his sister, his kids and a handful of close friends, we reopened it on May 15, 2022, with the same charm it had carried for decades and one new addition: it became the home of Chatham Ice Cream Bars.
The Fab 5
This dream team, with help from many others, has brought us to where we are today.
Nolan, our GM, has been with Mitch since our humble beginnings in a community kitchen in Kingston, Massachusetts. Emma, our pastry chef, joined the team our first summer. Lexi started as a supervisor at Buffy’s when the shop reopened in May 2022, then moved to the production team, where she has been our lead pastry cook since 2023.
And Kris has many roles, some of them productive. He’s been with us since the beginning, too, and is Mitch’s oldest friend (his other friends are younger).
The rest of the story is yours…
After a day at the beach. On the way back from Chatham Light or the Fish Pier. Before the Friday night band concert. With friends, with family, or all by yourself.
Find Chatham Ice Cream Bars at Buffy’s and at more than 25 shops and restaurants on and off Cape Cod. Just look for the shark. Thank you for letting us be part of your story.