A charming story of a chef, a dream, and a maxed-out credit card.

The Millie’s story began back in the summer of 2014 when co-founder, Chad Townsend, decided it was time for a career change. After years of hustling as a renowned chef in the fast-paced world of fine dining, he was ready to leave it all behind. On a whim, he purchased a Paco-Jet™ – a fancy Swiss-made kitchen appliance that micro-purees deep-frozen foods to a fine texture to produce ice creams and sorbets. Fun facts: Paco-Jets are like, really, really expensive & this purchase was on his wife’s credit card (oof).

His wife, Lauren, let the charge slide on one condition — the Paco-Jet™ had to be paid off by the end of summer. So, after stocking their home kitchen with deep freezers, Chad got to work concocting flavor recipes and generating some buzz around their new labor of love. Before long, the pair began a delivery service, packing tasty pints, and serving ice cream lovers each weekend. With time, they moved the operation out of their kitchen and together they built Millie’s Ice Cream Works™.

Over the last few years, Millie’s has opened scoop shop locations throughout greater PGH, launched a food truck, started franchising, and began packaging pints to sell in local grocery stores. We’re on a mission to #spreadLove in our community through the simple joy of scratch-made ice cream. That means real relationships and real ingredients – always sourced from farmers & artisans and proudly spun into super premium ice cream at Millie’s Ice Cream Works™.