Food and Drink

Trendy ice cream shop with sugar-dusted pastry cones opens in Steele Creek

Crispy Cones, the trendy ice cream shop serving warm pastry shells swirled high with soft serve, is finally open in Charlotte.

The shop officially opened its doors to ice cream lovers May 8 near the Charlotte Premium Outlets in Steele Creek, according to the brand’s social media channels.

It marked Crispy Cone’s debut in the Queen City; the chain also has spot in Wilmington.

A close-up shot of a customer paying with a smartphone as a worker hands over a swirl of soft-serve ice cream topped with chocolate drizzle and brownie bits, served in a cinnamon-sugar chimney cake cone. The background shows a bustling ice cream shop with other staff members blurred out.
Crispy Cones is a specialty dessert shop offering warm pastry cones topped with soft serve ice cream and more. Crispy Cones

Expect fresh-baked cones “grilled rotisserie-style” and dusted with cinnamon sugar. The brioche-like pastries are then filled with your choice of spread, soft serve ice cream, fruit, sauce and other toppings.

Classic chocolate and vanilla are on the menu along with limited-time flavors like mango and cookie dough, plus specialty cone creations like “The Blondie.” Flavors rotate on a weekly basis, and new cones debut every month, the shop’s website says.

Inspired by the Czech Republic’s popular chimney cakes, Crispy Cones founder Jeremy Carlson pitched his business on ABC’s “Shark Tank” and landed a $200,000 deal with Barbara Corcoran.

A close-up shows a fresh chimney cake pastry rotating on a metal spit over a metal tray as cinnamon sugar is scooped and poured generously over it. The motion captures the sugar cascading over the golden-brown dough in a busy bakery setting.
The pastry cones at Crispy Cones are dusted with cinnamon sugar. Crispy Cones

Today, the dessert shop has locations in more than a dozen states nationwide.

Charlotte’s Crispy Cones is open Monday-Thursday from noon until 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 12:30 a.m.; and Sunday from noon to 9 p.m.

Portions of this story previously appeared in CharlotteFive.

A worker wearing clear plastic gloves uses a squeeze bottle to drizzle chocolate sauce over a tall swirl of chocolate and vanilla twist soft-serve ice cream. The ice cream is piled high inside a pastry cone, garnished with chocolate chunks, with several squeeze bottles lined up on the counter in the foreground.
At Crispy Cones, desserts can be customized to your liking with warm sauces, spreads, fruit and other toppings. Crispy Cones

Crispy Cones

Location: 8736 Outlets Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28278

Cuisine: Pastry cones, ice cream and hot chocolate

Menu

Instagram: @crispycones

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Tanasia Kenney
Sun Herald
Tanasia is a service journalism reporter at the Charlotte Observer | CharlotteFive, working remotely from Atlanta, Georgia. She covers restaurant openings/closings in Charlotte and statewide explainers for the NC Service Journalism team. She’s been with McClatchy since 2020.
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