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Former Cake Makers
Switch to Soft-Serve
Vaca’s Creamery is the city’s first 100% vegan ice cream shop
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MOST PEOPLE EQUATE COWS
with dairy. That’s what Mariana
Marinho and Dylan Sutcliff
are expecting when passersby see a
happy cow on the window of their new
vegan soft-serve ice cream shop, Vaca’s
Creamery. But the logo and name — vaca
means cow in Portuguese, Marinho’s native
language — are twists on the conventional
assumption.
“With the apostrophe, we’re thinking of
it like the cow’s shop, a cow-friendly shop,”
says Marinho.
“When someone walks past the shop,
and they see the cow, they’re going to think,
oh, that place has ice cream,” adds Sutcliff.
“That’s the important thing, but we very
gently want to remind them that maybe
cows wouldn’t like normal ice cream.”
Vaca’s Creamery, which occupies a
400-square-foot space inside a building
across the street from Pulaski Park, is
Chicago’s first dairy-free ice cream shop.
The couple says the shop offers soft-serve
only, a decision they made based on their
location — they can’t fit a walk-in freezer
or large machines — and personal preference.
Even when they worked together
at a popular Texas ice cream shop with
18 hand-scooped flavors, the vanilla
soft-serve machine was what excited
them most.
“It allows you the most creativity.
You do some vanilla soft-serve,
then you mix in two ingredients,
and all of a sudden,
you have this brand new
flavor,” says Sutcliff. “So
it’s really about flexibility,
creating. You know, doing
the most we can with a very stable, very
reliable and super-creamy product.”
Oat milk is the main base for the couple’s
creamy concoctions. They chose it
because it’s an environmentally friendly
milk alternative, and most people can tolerate
oats in their diet — unlike Marinho,
who, ironically, is allergic. “I know oats
are the least common allergen, so I’ll take
the hit,” she says.
Being vegan and all-inclusive is important
to Marinho and Sutcliff, who want
Vaca’s Creamery to be as allergy-friendly
and ethically responsible as possible.
“We’re very picky about our ingredients,”
says Marinho. “We’re going to use ethically
produced chocolate, and we don’t use
palm oil. And we’re going to try to be as
gluten-free as possible.”
One of their favorite gluten-free offerings
is their waffle cone, a product
they perfected years ago during their
first venture into the ice cream business.
“The classic thing you can get from an
ice cream shop, in my opinion, is a waffle
cone with some ice cream in it, and
you walk around in the sunshine,” says
Sutcliff. “That needs to be 110% the best
thing you can get. I mean, everything else
on our menu is going to be great, too, but
that’s the classic for me.”
At Vaca’s Creamery, everything else includes
sundaes, milkshakes and Dairy
Queen Blizzard-like products called
handshakes.
The couple says some of their flavors
and mix-ins draw inspiration
from South American and European
ingredients and desserts. “I’ll do passion
fruit and guava, fruits that are a
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PHOTO COURTESY OF VACA’S CREAMERY