Twenty Years of Mount Desert Island Ice Cream
Linda Marie Parker knew from a young age that she wanted to work for herself and the only dessert that ever mattered was ice cream. Flash forward to this this year and Mount Desert Island Ice Cream is celebrating their 20th anniversary. 
Mount Desert Island (MDI) Ice Cream was born in 2005 when Linda (the founder of MDI Ice Cream) met someone in Bar Harbor who was selling their ice cream business. At the time they had no store – they only sold wholesale, a commissary kitchen with limited equipment that they shared with a caterer. At the time, she was working at a software company – Linda loved the job and the people she worked with, but knew it was time to break off on her own. She followed her gut feeling and bought the business within the week! After a year of wholesale only, she opened their store in Bar Harbor in 2006. Linda had never worked in retail, but her feeling was it would be easier to sell ice cream in a store rather than driving all around the state to make sales.
Linda is proud of following her gut feeling. “Looking back, this ended up being a great decision for reasons I hadn’t even imagined at the time, and for that, I feel lucky that my gut decision worked out!”
Sourcing Local Ingredients
When you look at their website, it is clear the time and care they put into souring their products. Here’s what Linda said about souring their products locally –
“You make a better product when you buy better quality, and better quality is usually attained when you buy local! Obviously sometimes ingredients are not available locally – Chocolate, Vanilla Beans for example, in that case we do a lot of research to find out where we can get the best quality with a concern for fair trade practices.”
When it comes to milk and cream, MDI Ice Cream knows the importance of supporting local dairy farmers as Linda notes “that is not an easy business (dairy farming) to be in”. Through the years, they have done their best to support Maine dairy farmers where they can. They used to have a custom mix of Maine’s Own Organic Milk but sadly, that project was not sustainable. They also supported Pineland Farms when they were selling fluid dairy products – milk and cream – purchased from local farmers. Right now, they are working on setting up space with several of their own pasteurizers so they can take raw milk and cream from smaller local farmers and pasteurize it in house. They are hoping this will be set up by Fall 2025.
Growing the Business
To increase their buying power to continue getting local ingredients, they initially expanded in Maine and opened a location in Portland. In addition to that, they wanted to be able to bring more production staff on. Linda was the only one prepping and producing ice cream when they first started and knew she needed help. She had no other plans to expand but as the years went by, she wanted to bring in some new perspectives and ideas. It also happened that she met someone who she thought would be a great partner for expansion who proposed opening a shop in Washington DC. Brian’s background is in Punk Rock as he runs Dischord Records. They opened their D.C. location in 2018.
Along with these three locations, MDI Ice Cream then expanded further to open two locations in Japan. Linda explained how these locations came to be –
“Around the same time (as opening the D.C. location), I was approached by an old friend – Kelton Boyer – asking me to consider opening up operations in Japan. Some background: I lived in Matsumoto, Japan in the 90’s, he was a friend from that time and still lives in Japan. This was an absolute no-brainer, I missed Matsumoto so much and wanted to have an excuse to go there!! We opened the Matsumoto store in late 2019, and a second store in Azumino in 2022. To those not familiar with Matsumoto and Azumino – these are two towns in the Japanese Alps.”
Maine’s Community
With this all beginning in Maine, I asked Linda what makes Maine special to her.
“Maine is pretty special as people are so supportive of small local businesses and will go out of their way to show that support, even if it means a higher price. Mainers are also special as ice cream eaters in that they are undeterred from eating ice cream in cold weather!!”
Linda also loves getting to hire people from the community and be able to watch them grow up over the years.
“One thing that has been delightful is to see all the young folks that I have hired from the community grow up before my eyes! This is the 20th year of the shop, so I have seen so many former employees grow up and become adults.”
Linda’s Favorite Flavors
We had to end this story by asking Linda what her favorite ice cream flavor is. She said it really depends on her mood, as every flavor has a special place in her heart (and tastebuds).
“I often veer towards out Vanilla Bean ice cream as I love the sophisticated flavor our Madagascar Beans impart (we don’t use extract; we use the actual whole bean.) If I want something with a lot more going on, I love our Emogene’s Butter Brickle/Butter Pecan – it’s a brown-butter based ice cream with handmade butter brickle and roasted butter pecans. At other times I crave our Lamington Ice Cream – it’s based on a popular Australian dessert with coconut, pound cake, fudge ripple.”
So, whether you’re here in Maine, Washington D.C., or all the way in Japan you can support Mount Desert Island Ice Cream and decide what flavor is your favorite.
