When you walk into Clementine’s Ice Cream on the new Walmart campus in Bentonville, two things will instantly hit you. The first is the smell — and no, not the smell of ice cream. The smell of waffle cones. The second thing is a visual cue: the interior of the space. It’s vintage. It’s hip. Its floors are covered in meticulous tile.
Tamara Keefe is the CEO of Clementine’s. She says that’s intentional.
“We really focus on that organoleptic experience in parlor, and I think people can tell the difference. They can tell that they’re having an incredible experience. They’re not just — we’re definitely not just a transactional place in an environment.”She says the name Clementine’s comes from a family friend.
“When I was a kid, all grandmas looked the same. Like my grandma wore these thick Styrofoam shoes, and she wore these housecoats, and she had this permed head of hair that went — her head would move, her hair would follow. But Clementine did not look like my grandma Clementine. She wore high heels. She had long silver hair, and she wore red lipstick. And I had just never seen another grandma like her. And I thought she was the most elegant creature that ever walked the earth.And so I grew up thinking, someday I’m going to have a little girl, and I’m going to name her Clementine, and I’m going to bring her up. But in this life, I have not been blessed with kids. And so when I decided to open my ice cream company, Clementine was my baby. So it just worked.”The Bentonville shop is the 11th one for Keefe. The original parlor opened in 2014 on a dead-end street in the historic Lafayette Square neighborhood in St. Louis.
“It’s 500 square feet. It’s tiny. It’s beautiful. It’s in the strangest little corner of this cool neighborhood. It’s like this hidden gem that you don’t know that it’s there, and then you stumble upon it and you’re pleasantly surprised. And you walk into a little Victorian building in a little corner and you find the best ice cream in the country.” New parlors slowly started popping up around St. Louis; one in DeMun, another in Southampton. Before she knew it, she was in the Illinois suburbs of St. Louis and in Prairie Village, Kansas.
But the idea of bringing her ice cream to Northwest Arkansas happened recently.
“Last year, I spoke at a women’s conference. It was called CREW. It was a conference for women in real estate in St. Louis, and I was their keynote speaker. And someone was sitting in the audience who was good friends in the same organization here in Bentonville. And when they reached out and said, ‘Hey, we really need a great artisanal ice cream going into this new project at the Walmart headquarters,’ she said, ‘Oh my gosh, I know exactly who you need. You need Clementine’s.’And so it was just from word of mouth and from a super loyal Clementine superfan.”The super fandom seems to be well-earned. The ice cream is award-winning. In 2019, one signature flavor was awarded Flavor of the Year by the North American Ice Cream Association, and Keefe says they put a lot of intentionality into their flavors.
“In 2024, we had over 70 different flavors that we rotated in and out during the year. So innovation and bringing the cool, hip, happening, trendy things. We had Dubai chocolates when we were the only people in the whole Midwest that had them. So we really do keep our pulse on what’s happening on the East Coast and West Coast and internationally.”The flavors available in Bentonville are written on a stylized chalkboard above the serving line — everything from Madagascar vanilla to Midnight Pleasures — plus an expansive non-dairy selection that includes flavors like Earl Grey and tangerine sorbet. There are even a few naughty flavors infused with alcohol, like their Manhattan and maple bourbon pecan.
“So we have a trade secret process for infusing alcohol into ice cream. So we have our naughty ice creams. Those are for guests aged 21 and over. Early on in my endeavor, we discovered how to infuse alcohol in the ice cream. And it was really cool because there’s been zero innovation in ice cream since Dippin’ Dots, really.And so I’ve always taken the notion and looked at the space to say, ‘OK, how can we do things different? How can we take an old, dry space and make it cool and hip and interesting, and address parts of the market that people haven’t ever really addressed?’ So we were the first ice cream company to do boozy ice cream over 10 years ago.”Another ice cream Keefe thinks of when she thinks of Clementine’s is Blue Moon.
“Yep. So Blue Moon is an ice cream from the upper Midwest, like Wisconsin and Michigan. Blue Moon is a very regional flavor up there. I have my own version of it, and people who’ve had it before go crazy because no one ever makes that flavor of ice cream.And so it’s a blend of black raspberry, lemon and almond. That’s what we do. And then we turn it blue by using spirulina, which is an algae from the ocean, because we don’t use artificial anything. And so we use algae to turn it blue. And kids love it. And it’s like this super amazing flavor.But yes, we are definitely known in the Midwest, now the lower half of the United States, for making awesome Blue Moon ice cream.” Keefe describes the opening of a new store as a birthday party. You hope people will come, but there’s a moment of anxiety right before the party is set to begin. That’s especially true for this specific birthday party, in a place where most people had never been to — or even heard of — Clementine’s before stepping inside.
“It’s easy to get people to come to a birthday party when there’s ice cream, because ice cream is universal. Everyone loves ice cream. And I think people want to have the best of whatever it is that they’re going to eat. I think ice cream is the most democratic, and it’s definitely the most emotional food product that there is. And so it’s like this incredible melting pot where it doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from. You’re going to be able to come and bring your family and your friends and enjoy a sweet treat and connect.We live in this world where we’re super connected — we have iPhones and Apple Watches and iPads and all the things — but yet the thing we’re yearning for the most is to be connected to each other. And ice cream does that.And by the way, if you’re holding an ice cream cone, you’re not holding a phone. So I think ice cream is just — I feel honored every day to be able to provide those moments for people and to be part of people’s journey, whether it’s their first date, or they’re with their grandparents, or they’re just out because they’re having a bad day and want something nice for themselves. I get to be a part of that. It’s pretty cool.”When you think back to being in that creaky old little room off of Lafayette Square, just that one shop, and you think about where you are now, what would you tell that version of you opening up that shop off that dead-end street?
“Well, you touched a chord there. I think that you can do it. You can do it. You can risk it all. And you can take a bet on yourself when the world is against you. And if you have enough belief, you can do it for sure.”Clementine’s Ice Cream opens to the public today on Eighth Street in Bentonville. For more, visit clementinescreamery.com.
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