Marble Slab Creamery is unique to Utah, and offers premium ice cream to customers

IC photo by Christine Young

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Jeremy Pool, owner of Marble Slab Creamery, makes a milk shake for a customer. Marble Slab’s base ice cream mix is made at a local dairy and doesn’t contain artificial chemicals or preservatives.

RIVERTON — A Marble Slab Creamery experience starts when you enter the store and are greeted with the aroma of freshly baked waffle cones and brownies. Then comes the moment of choice – deciding which one of the homemade ice cream flavors you want and how you want it served.

Marble Slab Creamery offers ice cream, dipped and rolled waffle cones, sundaes, non-fat yogurt, ice cream pies and cakes, malts and milk shakes, smoothies, fresh baked goods and tasty creations such as caramel peanut butter crisp, a smooth mint masterpiece, Swiss cocoa buttercup and white chocolate raspberry swirl.

The Marble Slab Creamery was the first store in the center section of the Central District outdoor shopping center in Riverton on 11400 South and Bangerter Highway.

“We opened Oct. 4, 2007 and we are the only Marble Slab Creamery in Utah,” said owner Jeremy Pool, a 1997 Judge Memorial Catholic High School graduate. Pool owns the store with his wife, Mary Thorne Pool, a 1998 Judge Memorial graduate, who teaches 5th grade at Saint Andrew Elementary School. The Pools are members of St. Andrew Parish. In the last year they have been involved in catering wedding receptions, business parties and other parties. They offer a mobile sundae bar and have a miniature setup of what they have in the store.

Pool said they are open in the winter, although business is not as good. “We have a completely opposite sales pattern from traditional retail,” he said. “Our money-making season is in the summertime and theirs is during the Christmas holidays.”

What sets Marble Slab apart from other ice cream companies is everything is made in the store and it is part of a franchise which created the frozen slab concept. Marble Slab Creamery began in Houston, Texas in 1983. Today there are stores in 35 states, along with locations in Canada, Puerto Rico, and The United Arab Emirates.

“Our base mix comes from a local dairy,” said Pool. “Instead of all of the mix for all of the Mable Slab stores across the country being made at one place, we all contract out to a local dairy. Our base mix does not have any artificial chemicals or preservatives in it. The dairy is contractually obligated to only sell to us, but when you go to any Marble Slab in the country, it is the same recipe.”

Pool said being the only franchise in Utah was difficult when he first opened because he didn’t have a supply and demand chain with which to compare sales numbers from other stores and he and his wife were basically taking a risk.

Pool gained his experience to go into business for himself by managing several Radio Shack stores for five years before going into real estate and business ownership.

“My background has always been in sales of some kind,” he said. “I always wanted to open my own business and I knew this shopping center was going to be up and coming. I got the idea for Marble Slab while on a family vacation in Florida when we stopped at a Marble Slab Creamery. I loved the ice cream and immediately got online to find out the history of the franchise. Liking a challenge, I contacted the corporate office and the rest is history. It’s been tough with the economy the way it is and I can work 80 or 90 hours a week, but looking back, I’d do it all over again.”