“We love being outdoors,” Andrea said. “We love the mountains. I had done some herbalism programs, and I really wanted to incorporate herbs and ice cream.” 

Andrea’s ice cream journey started years ago in Somerville, Massachusetts, with a business called Beakers and Cream. After she moved to Asheville she met Michael, and in the early pandemic days they decided to make ice cream for fun, selling ice cream sandwiches at the Weaverville Tailgate Market.

In 2021, they built a small, permanent kitchen in Mars Landing Galleries. They renovated the space in 2023, but ultimately it was too small, with limitations on production and noise due to gallery hours. In October 2024, shortly after Hurricane Helene, opportunity came knocking.

“We were kind of looking around, starting to talk about the moving process,” said Michael. “The guy who bought this building kind of blindly reached out to us, and we were like, oh wow, this could be perfect.” The old small-engine repair shop needed major renovations—including all new electrical and plumbing—but it offered the space they needed. They officially opened their new location on March 19, 2025, at 180 Carl Eller Road. 

In their new space, Andrea and Michael are making “four times as much” ice cream as before. “We’re probably making like seven cases, which is 50 gallons a week,” Andrea said. “It’s still pretty small in comparison to big places like Ultimate Ice Cream or The Hop.” 

But scale isn’t the focus—it’s quality and delight. Everything is made on site. “We do all of our add-ins, all the oreos are from scratch,” said Michael.  We make the cookies for the ice cream sandwiches, the fudge, the caramel—we make it all from scratch and in-house.” 

They grow many of their own herbs at home—used in flavors like chamomile vanilla and strawberry lemon verbena. The Clems also source what they can from local and regional partners. “We get the eggs from Dry Ridge Farms, we get seasonal fruit from the farmers’ market,” Andrea said. “We work a lot with New Roots Garden.” 

While Meadowsweet is deeply rooted in local sourcing, food safety regulations have led to necessary pivots. Initially, when they were only selling at the Weaverville Tailgate Market, they used local milk and made their custard from scratch. But USDA requirements for pasteurization make that process difficult and expensive at scale. 

“Even though we were getting milk and cream that were pasteurized,” said Michael, “it needs to be pasteurized again, which would require like a $50,000 piece [of equipment].”

Now, they use a pre-pasteurized ice cream base that comes fresh from Illinois, accessed through a cooperative arrangement with larger regional creameries. “We kind of piggyback off of bigger ice cream companies around the Southeast,” said Michael.

Since opening the new shop, the Clems have reduced their number of wholesale accounts, which has freed them to focus on flavor development and creativity. They’ve even started developing a line of sodas that they’ll use to make soda floats. “We're doing the things that are more important to us,” Andrea said. “It’s been giving us time to put the sodas on the menu and come up with new flavors—that creative part that we were missing out on.”

Support from peers has made a huge difference. “The owners of the larger ice cream companies, like The Hop and Ultimate—without them, we wouldn't have been able to grow,” said Andrea.

The new space gives Meadowsweet room to dream. “The space that we're in is bigger… it does have room where we are able to grow,” Michael said. Plans include possibly adding a walk-in freezer, expanding the production area, and building a kid-friendly outdoor hangout area.

They’ve already added two employees and are looking into hiring a third.

Neither Andrea nor Michael trained in culinary school. Andrea is a pharmacist and an accomplished baker, and both have taught themselves the delicate science of ice cream-making. “There’s a lot of stuff that has just been a lot of learning between the two of us,” Andrea said. “We’re just having fun doing it.”

Learn more at MeadowsweetCreamery.com