In recent years, Boise’s food scene has exploded with new, innovative restaurants. An intriguing business in this movement is The STIL, a local ice cream chain known for its natural ingredients and creative menu items. They offer dairy-free, gluten-free, and even alcohol-infused ice cream options in addition to conventional dairy-based choices.
“I met my business partner, Dan Sell, playing slow pitch softball,” laughs The STIL co-founder, Kasey Allen. “We had mutual entrepreneurial interests and started working on [a different] idea with each other.” Allen is a Boise native, but Sell grew up in Cleveland and lived in several other places before settling here. During a business meeting, Sell asked Alan where to take his family for ice cream. Uninterested in Cold Stone or Ben & Jerry’s, Sell inquired about local options. That's when it hit Alan: local ice cream options were limited. “You don’t think about the things that your city doesn’t have when you’re from there,” he notes.
The pair decided to create that local ice cream option and go above and beyond with their vision. One way The STIL continually accomplishes this is by using natural flavors. “In an ice cream world, it’s common to use artificial flavors. Our style [is] to use the real thing.” So they make peanut butter ice cream by adding real peanut butter to the cream base, coffee-flavored ice cream with actual espresso, and so on.
Beyond the menu itself, Sell and Alan consciously put their money where their mouths are in terms of being a local business. “It’s important to us to partner local and have that strong community presence. We do events and fundraisers around the Valley to give back to the community that supports us,” he explains. Thus, they obtain ingredients from local vendors and regularly partner with other businesses.
Regarding the menu, The STIL stays accessibly creative. “There’s a trend in ice cream to have really out-there flavors,” Alan says. “We try to be unique, but approachable. We want people to have a sense of what the flavor will be, as opposed to being like, ‘I’ve never heard of those ingredients’." (Laughs)
Examples of this include the Idaho Wildnerness, which is a berry and lavender contraption made with fresh lavender buds from an Eagle vendor; the almond cream-based Deja Vu, titled as such “because it reminds you of something but you can’t figure out what it is”; and the Beer and Wine Flight, which is four alcohols teamed with four ice creams. This innovative yet customer-centric mentality has cemented The STIL as a Boise staple.
If you haven't tried The STIL yet but would like to, you can find its locations, menu, and hours of business by visiting iLoveTheStil.com.
