Soft serve in Southern Pines: Scruton Brother's Ice Cream brings allergy-sensitive sweet treat, Coney dogs to Southern Pines

By Jenna Shackelford, posted Jul 21, 2022 on BizFayetteville.com

The Scruton brothers always dreamed of opening a business together, and a shared love of ice cream and Coney dogs was just what it took to get the ball rolling. PHOTOS PROVIDED BY SCRUTON BROTHERS ICE CREAM.

Brotherhood, a love of good ice cream, and innovation has brought an ice cream shop to town this year in Southern Pines.

Kiden and Kolby Scruton have always dreamed of starting a company together. “We’ve always wanted to start a business,” Kiden said. “We always thought it would be a really cool idea to do, especially something local – something we could bring to the community. We talked about this for years and we just ended up pulling the trigger in the past year.”

The boys have moved several times and traveled with their family throughout their lives, but one particular location stands out. “We used to live in Michigan, and then we moved to Virginia, and then we lived right outside of Fayetteville in Hope Mills, but when we went to see our grandparents in Michigan, we always really enjoyed the soft serve they had. There’s no soft serve spots around us, really,” Kiden said.
With that realization, Scruton Brother's Ice Cream was born.

With fond memories from Michigan in tow, a mission to bring delicious ice cream to the area became a pursuit of the whole family.
“We just thought the community needed a nice little soft serve spot, and we like bringing our own little twist to it, bringing Coney dogs from our trips to Michigan and we thought it’d be great to have that here,” Kiden said.
Kiden has common food allergies, however, making the venture a little more complex. He is allergic to dairy and wheat, and his mother is allergic to dairy, wheat, and eggs.
“We wanted to bring our own homestyle, [family friendly] soft serve spot to our town,” he said. “We wanted to make it as accessible as possible to food allergies too. We have dairy free and gluten free toppings and buns. Almost everything on our menu is available as allergy friendly.”
As someone with gluten and dairy sensitivities, I can attest to the fact that not all allergy-friendly alternatives are created equal – or even good. Kiden agreed. The family carefully sampled different allergy-friendly options to choose delicious products they could feature in their restaurant.
The ice cream is the star of the show, with dairy and non-dairy options available. The non-dairy options are made from almond milk.

The hot dog buns are made by Schär and are free of gluten and eggs.

The ingredients are carefully sourced to provide the best-of-the- best quality, allergy friendly options. Scruton said that some ingredients are even sourced from bakeries located out of the state.
“It took a long time. Initially, we were only going to do ice cream. Within the first month of getting the business ready, we decided we wanted to bring a food to it, too, so we ended up adding the Coney dogs to our menu, which are a staple in
Michigan,” Kiden said.
Although it’s not been open long, the ice cream and hot dog shop has been a grand success, boasting a whopping 4.8 stars on Google, and filling a niche in Southern Pines.
As a young entrepreneur, out of the advice he’s received so far, Kiden finds that one piece stands out above the others. “Stick with it,” he said. “It gets tough sometimes when you hit roadblocks. But if you stop and stall out, it gets harder, so keep going.”

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