Quick Take
Oregon-based Nico’s Real Fruit Ice Cream, known for its New Zealand-style soft serve-like ice cream blended with fruit, opened a location on Locust Street in downtown Santa Cruz in early November.
In early November, popular Portland, Oregon, brand Nico’s Real Fruit Ice Cream opened a new location in downtown Santa Cruz, giving many Santa Cruzans their first taste of the brand’s signature New Zealand-style soft serve.
Founder Nico Vergara started the company as an ice cream cart in 2021 and now has two brick-and-mortar stores in Portland. This year, Nico’s expanded to the Monterey Bay area when he opened a third location, on Cannery Row in Monterey, in October and a fourth ice cream shop, at 111 Locust St. in Santa Cruz.
Co-owner Kelton Stone said the reason the small business went from selling half-pints out of a cooler to opening a fourth location three years later is because of its hardworking staff and community. “Without them we wouldn’t be Nico’s,” he said.
He and Vergara had their sights set on a location in Santa Cruz since the beginning, said Stone. “The brands that are here and the people that are here are special to us,” said Stone, who’s from the East Bay. “The community has been so welcoming.”
What sets Nico’s Ice Cream apart from other ice cream options like The Penny Ice Creamery, Mission Hill Creamery and Italian ice shop Izzy’s Ices? Real fruit – the current menu offers strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries – is blended to order in front of the customer with Nico’s house-made vanilla ice cream base using a special machine imported from New Zealand, resulting in a creamy soft-serve texture and an appetizing swirl.
Each cone or cup ($6 to $8) can be finished with any combination of Nico’s toppings (50 cents each): sprinkles, graham cracker dust, coconut flakes, tajin and chamoy. On Tropical Thursdays, the shop offers mango, banana and pineapple flavors as well, said Stone.
The shop was previously home to Central Coast Juicery and, from April 2023 to its closure in August, it shared the space in collaboration with coffee pop-up Coffee Conspiracy. Central Coast Juicery juices are still available online through the website of parent company Central Coast Live Foods, and Coffee Conspiracy plans to open a coffee shop in a former Starbucks in the Capitola Mall early next year.
With two new locations under their belts, Stone said there might be more Nico’s on the horizon in other cities in the future, but “we want to make sure we can keep customers happy in downtown Santa Cruz first.”
111 Locust St., Santa Cruz; nicosicecream.com.
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