After five years of serving dairy-free creemees, scoops and sundaes, Offbeat Creemee owners Aisha and Danny Bassett have announced they’ll step away from their plant-based ice cream biz. The company’s location inside Uncommon Coffee in the Essex Experience will be open one final weekend in May before its lease ends.
Aisha developed Offbeat’s signature vegan coconut-oat milk base as a way to “set myself way apart and do something that Vermont doesn’t really have,” she told Seven Days in 2021. That summer, she opened a stand at Winooski’s Myers Memorial Pool, which quickly took off.
Offbeat left the pool after the 2024 season, with the Bassetts citing increased costs, and they instead focused on wholesale to markets and grocery stores. Last summer, they teamed up with Uncommon Coffee owner Maya Nguyen to share production space and operate an ice cream counter inside the café.
Rising costs are once again a reason for Offbeat’s closure, according to an Instagram post sharing the news last week.
“Some of our ingredients have doubled in price, making it incredibly difficult to keep our ice cream at a price point that felt accessible to everyone while staying profitable enough,” the post said.
The arrival of the Bassetts’ daughter over the winter has also shifted their priorities, the couple wrote, and “while there are different avenues forward, we’ve come to the conclusion that this life just isn’t for us anymore.” They are open to inquiries about the business and its equipment and “would absolutely love to see Offbeat’s mission and dream continue in some form.”
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