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Local entrepreneurs think outside the big box.
Billy's Burgers
(page 1 of 5)
It’s a warm afternoon in August, and Rick Bickner is offering a sample of one of his newest creations at Moo’s Gourmet Ice Cream. It’s light on the tongue, fruity, faintly perfumey. But what exactly is that flavor?
“It’s cocoa fruit,” the longtime Jackson Hole resident says. “Cocoa beans are the seeds of that fruit.”
Bickner has come up with at least a couple of hundred flavors since the mid-1980s—when, feeling burned out in his career as a certified executive pastry chef, he decided to go into the ice-cream business. It’s worked out so well that he and his wife, Vicki, recently were able to move Moo’s into a storefront at the intersection of Deloney Avenue and Center Street, a Town Square location that’s the local equivalent of Park Place on a Monopoly board.
Out-of-towners who wander into Moo’s for a scoop will probably be thinking more about how good that Pink Guava sorbet or Bourbon Java Vanilla ice cream tastes than about the fact that the Bickners and their staff made it from scratch in the adjacent kitchen. But if those tourists thought about it, they’ll realize, and appreciate, that Moo’s isn’t a shop they’ve seen anywhere else. It’s far at the opposite end of the spectrum from the likes of Baskin Robbins, which has some 6,000 retail shops in three dozen countries.
That’s the thing about Jackson. It doesn’t feel like Anywhere, USA. We may have a handful of national-brand stores, but—it seems to me—nothing like the parade of franchise storefronts seen in umpteen other towns and cities from coast to coast, and that includes a lot of the other ski-resort towns.
Wooden boardwalks and iconic elk antler arches give the town a unique, authentic feel. And so do a host of homegrown businesses offering big-city amenities under Jackson Hole names.
Where’s the Starbucks? Nowhere; the coffee mega-chain has come and gone, but the caffeine-deprived need not worry: Try Jackson Hole Roasters on East Broadway. Don’t look for a Chipotle Mexican Grill. Instead, walk from the Town Square to Merry Piglets on North Cache, a Mexican restaurant so popular that people will stand in line for a seat. You won’t find an IHOP, either, but you can get an even better breakfast at The Bunnery. And downtown shoppers looking for outdoor gear browse Teton Mountaineering and Skinny Skis, both one-of-a-kind retailers.
There’s a story behind every local business in Jackson. Here are the scoops on just four of my faves.
