It’s hard to replace a community staple, especially a spot tied to childhood memories and frozen treats. But Gondolas Snack Bar, which took over the Mountain View’s spot on Route 15 in Morristown, is now starting its third season — and building quite the following of its own.
Some customers still call it the Mountain View, co-owners Louis Ferris III and Haley Haman said. That 200-menu-item snack bar was the longest-running of several seasonal locations with the same name around the state, all of which are now closed.
But the couple, both 30, have put their own highly branded stamp on the place. With smash burgers stacked six high and creemees — also stacked, not twisted — the red, white and blue roadside stop has all the elements of a perfect summer night, just modernized. Gondolas was enough of a hit that the duo launched a second, year-round location in downtown Morrisville this past December.
Since the snack bar opened for the summer season on May 15, Haman, Ferris and their team have been serving lunch and dinner daily in two spots, five miles apart. Each is definitely a Gondolas, named for the iconic red lifts that scale nearby Mount Mansfield. And each has its own slightly distinct menu and role.
“We’ve got the Snack Bar for the hangout and Downtown for the takeout,” Ferris said, as if coining a slogan on the spot.
In what might have been a nostalgia-driven fever dream, I decided to go to both. Back to back. Since I haven’t been to many snack shacks this season, I expected to have plenty of room for a smash burger or two. (For seven restaurant pros’ tips on local snack shacks, see here.)
On a Thursday in late May, I arrived at Gondolas Downtown on Portland Street in Morrisville right as the open flag went up at 11 a.m. Two people were already inside the tiny shop ahead of me, and both ordered the way regulars do: without looking at the menu.
I followed their lead with a meal deal ($14). Gondolas is all about the smash burger, especially at the downtown location, and the meal deal combines a double smash with hand-cut fries and a fountain drink. I went for the upgrades, maple-bacon specialty fries ($4 extra) and a maple milkshake ($3 extra). Go big or go home. I was on the clock, but the day’s agenda felt more like summer vacation.
The shake came out promptly, with a cloud of whipped cream filling the domed top and a sturdy blue straw. It was thick and so mapley it could have been straight from the evaporator.
Like many snack shacks around the state, Gondolas uses creemee mix from the multigenerational Michaud family at Kingdom Creamery of Vermont in East Hardwick. The shakes ($6), Ferris said, contain the maple mix, which features both dairy and maple syrup from the Michauds’ farm.
When Gondolas Downtown opened, most people ordered a Coke or Diet Coke, Haman said. It was winter, after all. But “now almost everyone gets a milkshake,” she continued. “It was just a matter of time to get them hooked.”
Customers can opt to add syrup — chocolate, strawberry or caramel — or other mix-ins such as Oreos ($1 extra). But I’d recommend starting with the Vermont classic.
The shake was half gone by the time my meal was ready, though it had only been a brief wait. Despite the sign taped to the register, asking customers to order online due to short staffing that day, I had my bag of food in seven minutes — hardly enough time to check my email. Maybe this was vacation?
Gondolas Downtown has a bench to wait on, but that’s it for seating. The building, which Ferris owns, is newly a restaurant, and it’s strictly for takeout.
It’s also only for the omnivorous: At both Gondolas locations, fryers use beef tallow, so nothing is vegetarian except the shakes and fountain sodas downtown and the sweets and drinks at the snack bar. (Gluten-free buns are available.)
I squirted some white vinegar for my fries into a clear plastic condiment cup, then headed a few blocks away to Oxbow Park. My car immediately smelled like bacon from the luxurious fries I’d ordered. I cracked the windows while I ate.
Those crispy hand-cut fries were generously topped and just a bit sweet from the maple. The edges of the smash burger were thinner than I usually like, unless it’s Oklahoma-style with onions mixed in. But once I got into the meat of the burger, with the soft potato bun, melty American cheese, pickle slices and secret-recipe Gondolas sauce, the lacy, flat patty hit just right.
Done eating, I was grateful I’d parked in front of a sign pointing to the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, which runs through town. I lumbered by a lumberyard to the trail and walked a bit to help my burger digest.
Gondolas Downtown gets a “regular Morrisville work crowd,” Ferris said. Some customers make pit stops from the trail.
At the Snack Bar, it’s a lot of families and people who live out toward Wolcott. Holiday weekends are a big draw for visitors, including those who spend their summers at Mountain View Campground across the street. (Ferris gave a special shout-out to a campground customer the staff affectionately calls “Hot-Fudge Guy,” who walks over every single night for, you guessed it, a hot-fudge sundae.)
Three years in, Haman and Ferris are seeing more license plates from states out west, they said, with customers mentioning that the roadside stand is on their “summer bucket list.” It helps that Gondolas’ TikTok account occasionally goes viral with videos of creemees and classic cars parked outside.
That online success reflects Haman’s background. She and Ferris both worked in restaurants and commercial kitchens growing up, after which she went into marketing and he went into real estate. The couple met in Florida; he’s from the Morristown area, she from Chicago.
“I didn’t even know what a snack bar was,” Haman said, but she quickly agreed when Ferris floated the idea of opening one. “I thought it was gonna be this small little thing with ice cream and hot dogs,” she added with a laugh. Their original plan was to run it themselves; now, they’ve got 25 employees.
Gondolas is branded from head to toe — this isn’t the type of snack shack where specials are scrawled in neon marker on a paper plate taped to the window. Everything is red, white and blue, from the building to the uniforms to the menu font to the cherry/blue raspberry stacked creemees.
Those creemees, the couple said, are the Snack Bar’s biggest draw. They estimated that 75 percent of customers order one. Midday is often a “creemee hour,” when people are looking for a pick-me-up. The rush for cones after a local baseball game or dance recital is unmatched.
“The creemees go crazy sometimes,” Haman said.
Creemees aren’t on the menu at Gondolas Downtown. The machine is complicated to maintain — “pretty much a car,” Ferris joked — and low ice cream demand in winter doesn’t balance out the upkeep.
“It’s a full engine, and you really have to know all the nooks and crannies,” Haman said.
Gondolas Snack Bar uses Kingdom Creamery’s base, too, starting with vanilla. Maple creemees are flavored with syrup from the Elmore Sugarhouse. The cherry flavor is homemade, too, Haman said, and she’s working on converting the rest, which rotate weekly and range from chocolate to strawberry to salted caramel.
A secret-menu move at the snack bar — secret’s out — is to swap your drink for a creemee when you get the meal deal. Who needs hydration when you can have a sugar rush?
I headed to the Snack Bar fresh from my walk, ready for a Cabot cheddar-topped double smash burger ($10) and some of the fried items unique to the snack bar menu, such as onion rings ($9) and mac and cheese bites ($9). The five-minute drive gave me just long enough to realize my delusion. So soon after my downtown meal, the six-patty Gondola burger ($20) was especially out of the question.
Instead, I embraced my nostalgia for a particular late-May snack-shack meal: mozzarella sticks ($9 for eight) and a blue raspberry creemee ($3 for a small), exactly what I used to eat several days a week at the end of my senior year of high school at what we called “the DB,” better known as the Arlington Dairy Bar.
It’s been a long time since my tongue turned blue — and since I’ve been as full as I was heading out of Morristown after my two Gondolas stops. But every stringy stretch of cheese and sweet lick of creemee brought me back — and will bring me back in the literal sense, too, for another summertime meal. ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Smashing It | Gondolas serves summer treats at two Morristown spots”
This article appears in June 10 • 2026.
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