Debbie Battye joked she missed her calling years ago but found it last month in Elston - serving ice cream.
Housed in a small renovated building at 912 Route T, near St. Martins, Taste-T-Stop serves Central Dairy ice cream, including vanilla, chocolate, cookie dough, cookies and cream, rocky road and more. The shop offers ice cream cups, cones, sundaes, shakes and floats, along with hot coffee, tea, frozen lemonade, soda, milk, eggs and bags of ice.
The ice cream shop also has a gazebo customers can use for parties.
The community welcomed the new ice cream shop with open arms, Battye said - to the point she has already upgraded to a larger refrigerator to help meet the high demand.
"I'm loving this - the people, the kids," she said. "It's the best job ever, scooping ice cream. Who would have thought?"
Because of the overwhelming support, Battye plans to expand the business in the coming months to include food, such as hot dogs and chips.
While the ice cream shop is currently open 11 a.m.-9 p.m. every day, she is considering opening early during hunting season to serve breakfast.
"It's a lot of money to invest and take that risk, and that was the scariest part because I didn't know how it was going to do. But I'm really thrilled that it's doing good, and hopefully, we'll be able to survive the winter," she said.
Battye purchased the land after a house on the lot burned down several years ago. At the time, she didn't know what she wanted to do with the property, so she started random projects on the lot like planting apple trees and selling flowers.
Battye got her inspiration to open Taste-T-Stop after she heard of an ice cream shop in Rolla that employs people with disabilities. At the time, Battye cared for a girl with a disability and knew the girl's mother was struggling to find fun activities for her daughter. Even though the girl may not be able to work at the new ice cream shop now, she said, the ice cream shop owner plans to teach her how to create some of the tasty ice cream dishes.
"She's a wonderful girl, and I just thought the world of her, and that's what gave me the idea," she said. "She was a little bit of the inspiration."
Battye and her boyfriend, Patrick Wade, got to work renovating the small building - adding insulation, installing wiring and plumbing, and painting.
Having worked in an office most of her life, Battye added, it's nice to work a business that is flexible and tends to brighten people's days.
"Nobody is having a bad day when I see them," she said. "So it has really made for a nice, fun adventure."
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