French Custard, Brookside’s beloved custard-based ice cream shop, might be closed for the season, but there’s good news on the horizon. Next year, French Custard’s owner plan to open a West Bottoms shop selling soft serve inspired by a popular style in New Zealand.
Fruit Spun Ice Cream Co. is among the businesses slated to open around The Depot (1020 Santa Fe St., KCMO), a new public park planned for the West Bottoms neighborhood in 2027. The kiosk will sit just outside the Moline Building, which will house Blackbird Collection, a locally owned sustainable fashion and interior business. The ambitious redevelopment of the West Bottoms is led by real estate investment firm SomeraRoad.
If you’re a loyal French Custard customer, you might have already tried the new style of soft serve this summer.
“We had it over the summer in Austin and became so obsessed, we imported the machine from New Zealand,” says Jessica Wood, who owns French Custard alongside her husband, Alex. “After testing the concept this summer at French Custard, we decided it should be two separate businesses.”
Unlike French Custard’s traditional egg-rich custard base, New Zealand-style soft serve, which Food & Wine reported on in May as a growing trend in the United States, starts with a scoop of ice cream and a scoop of frozen fruit blended together in an auger-equipped machine. The result is a “soft serve treat that’s literally half fruit,” says Wood. Or, according to the Food & Wine article, “like a smoothie meets ice cream.”
Strawberry banana was the bestseller during the summer trial, Wood says, followed by mango. The kiosk will also serve specialty flavors like peach, along with homemade waffle cones, milkshakes and sundaes.
An opening date has yet to be determined for Fruit Spun Ice Cream Co. The soft serve shop, Blackbird Collection along with Two Hands, an Australian-inspired all-day cafe and bar, are slated to open in the Moline Building in 2027. Fruit Spun is currently the only kiosk planned for SomeraRoad’s West Bottoms development; the other businesses will occupy brick-and-mortar spaces.
For the fall and winter, French Custard is open Saturdays from 1 to 4 pm.
