Arguably the busiest corner in Suttons Bay has a familiar name with a new twist as Dalzell Dairy is breaking onto the summer scene with hopes of being a success.
The husband and wife team of Haley and Jake Fox will be running the local ice cream shop.
“Ever since we were young we wanted to do something like this because (Jake) always wanted to create that atmosphere ... it’s been a dream,” Haley Fox said.
After being out of the dairy business for nearly threedecades, the Dalzells, are back at again by serving ice cream.
“It’s been amazing. Everybody’s excited and it’s just been a lot of fun,” Haley Fox (Dalzell) said. “We have a really fun group of people working with us, all local, a couple returning ones from previous or have had backgrounds at different ice cream shops. And it’s been fun to be able to be with the kids in the community like that.”
Businesses including Dalzell Dairy have seen an impressive May that has led to high hopes for a summer crowd and profits that are as big as ever.
Fox is excited to be in the dairy business again and following, somewhat, in her family’s footsteps by distributing not necessarily milk, but with ice cream.
It will be a family deal for the Fox’s as the kids’ chores are wiping the tables.
Haley admits they haven’t had any trouble hiring, especially with the younger demographic. The power of word-of-mouth has heavily surpassed posting on online job sites.
“That negative thing that’s out there, kids don’t want to work. People don’t want to work. That’s not what we’re finding,” she said. “We’re finding they’re really hard workers.”
Dalzell Dairy replaces Scoops 22. Fox is a nurse and Jake is an electrician. The dream was helped out by Fox’s father, Doug Dalzell who owns the building at 403 North Joseph Street.
Jake has lived in Northport and traveled for a living, and Haley, who is from Marshall, would come and visit grandma. Now they are ready to take on Suttons Bay by storm.
The ice cream shop is typically open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. with hours expanding in the summertime.
The shop offers a variety of ice cream flavors from Moomers in Traverse City and Guernsey Farms Dairy in Northville, along with soft-serve, vegan options, milkshakes, malts, and more.
According to local lore, the various different ice cream shops that has always graced the corner since the 1950s was the first in Leelanau County to serve soft served ice cream.
“It’s always been run by a family. Families bought it, put their kids through college and sold it,” local historian Alan Dalzell said. “It’s getting a lot of publicity in Northport because there’s no Dalzells in Suttons Bay anymore.”
Dalzell was born in 1937 on a small farm north of Northport. His younger years were filled with tagging along with his father Donald Dalzell on the road delivering milk. The story of milk delivery in Leelanau County in a lot of ways is a story of consolidation.
Don shut down his milking operation for a delivery business sometime in the mid-1940s.
“The state was requiring pasteurized milk, and he didn’t want to put in all that equipment, he just went to Traverse City and bought his milk as a wholesaler and then delivered. And then we used to, at first, we drove right through Suttons Bay,” Dalzell said. “We were the only house to house delivery in the county at that time.”
Each community had their own milk delivery business before they all eventually closed and Dalzell dominated the milk delivering industry.
“With customers inside the city limits of Traverse city and then all the way down 22, all of Suttons Bay, all of Northport. Don took it over in 1954 after he was done with the Navy,” Alan said. “My dad had a heart attack in June of that year, so when I was 17-16 years old, and I ran the business for a few months and even during school.”
The Dalzell family name for nearly three-quarters of a century ran the milk game in Leelanau County. Three decades later the Dalzell Dairy brand is back in the form of ice cream.
From 1918 to 1993 the family served the community as milkmen. The Dalzell Dairy ice cream shop is a tribute to that era.
Thomas Roy, the great-greatgrandfather of Fox, who established a dairy business in Northport in 1918, managing it until 1929. The business was then taken over by his son-in-law, Donald F. Dalzell, who ran it for 25 years before passing it on to his son, Donald J. Dalzell, in 1954.
Donald J. dedicated 39 years to the business, retiring in 1993.
