Hector Fonseca is planning to open an ice cream shop at 156 Jericho Tpke. after receiving approval from the Mineola Village Board in January. The building, which is owned by Churrasqueira Bairrada owner Manny Carvalho, used to house Classic Firearms of Mineola.
Fonseca and Carvalho would co-own the ice cream store. Fonseca is planning an April opening.
“I think this business will be great for the community,” Fonseca said. “Every community deserves an ice cream parlor and right now we don’t have one.”
Fonseca hasn’t settled on a name, but would like to call the shop “Rodizio Ice Cream Parlor.”
“I’m just very excited to get started and have it ready when the weather turns warm,” he said.
The shop will be open seven days a week, from 10:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Two, four-seat tables would be available in the establishment. Fonseca originally planned the shop to not offer seating.
“Hopefully you’re very successful and with success, comes people,” Mayor Scott Strauss said. “We’re concerned about having kids in the street, so we pre-approved eight seats in the interior of the store. But if [Fonseca] needs more than that, he would have to come back to us.”
Fonseca does not plan to cook in the building and all the ice cream will be shipped in from an outside vendor.
“There will be no back entrance to the business out to the back parking area,” said Foseca’s legal counsel Paul Barroca. “It’s the same size, approximately 780 square feet, as the store that was previously there. There’ll be minimal impact to parking and [Fonseca] would not conduct cooking at the site.”
Trustee Paul Cusato saw flashbacks to his high school days in the 1960s, when an ice cream shop sat across the street from Fonseca’s future business.
“Maybe this could be a [high school] hang out again,” he said.
