Mount Airy’s favorite ice cream shop is staying open after all

Zsa’s Ice Cream hasn’t closed permanently, after all.

Founder Danielle Jowdy announced in December 2024 that she planned to end her 14-year run at the end of 2025. She called the wind-down a “grand closing” to allow customers to enjoy a final full season of scratch-made scoops and staff time to prepare for transitions. But as Jowdy considered the future, she decided to try selling the business to someone with roots in the neighborhood.

That someone is Liz Yee, a pastry chef at the nearby Catering by Design who also creates desserts for Doho restaurant, also in Mount Airy. Yee plans to reopen Zsa’s (6616 Germantown Ave.) on Saturday, Ice Cream for Breakfast Day.

For Yee, the opportunity was both personal and professional. From the moment she saw the sale announcement over the summer, she began exploring the idea of keeping Zsa’s alive, not just as a retail store but as a community hub.

Keeping the business in Mount Airy was a major part of the appeal for Yee, who lives in Roxborough. “I work down the street, and I’ve always loved coming here,” she said. “It’s just special.”

She plans to keep it as Zsa’s — a nickname that Jowdy and her sister, Rebecca, shared since childhood — and will offer the same menu, plus twists and specials. Yee also wants to bring back the wholesale business.

For Saturday’s return, Yee will lean into her pastry background, offering fresh croissants paired with cereal-milk ice cream. She’s also bringing back favorites such as Black Magic (coffee ice cream with chocolate cake swirled in).

“I know when people sell a business, there are often mixed feelings, but I’m honestly over the moon right now. It feels terrific,” said Jowdy, who will work with Yee during the transition. Jowdy said she was still deliberating her next professional steps but hopes to stay involved in food and community work.

Jowdy fell into ice cream years ago. When she and her mother were packing up the family home in Connecticut for sale, they found a hand-cranked ice cream machine the parents received as a wedding gift in 1980. As kids, Jowdy and her brother, Christopher, poured in skim milk and Hershey’s syrup “and we’d have at it,” she said.

Jowdy brought the machine back to Philadelphia and, armed with a 1980s-era Ben & Jerry’s cookbook, began making ice cream to take to parties and cookouts. She was working at a stained-glass studio as her dessert hobby grew. When she was laid off 14 years ago, she went professional.

Yee’s path to Zsa’s is equally windy. Back in the 2010s, she was studying math at Drexel University when she decided to turn her baking hobby into a career. She headed the pastry department at the Rittenhouse Hotel and in 2018, she joined Walnut Street Cafe as executive pastry chef and baker before she joined Catering by Design six years ago.

Yee, whose 6-year-old son and 7-month-old daughter enjoy Zsa’s, said she would fit the business in with her personal and professional lives. “I work down the street and I run like a little 10-mile circuit around [the area],” she said.

Zsa’s, 6619 Germantown Ave., 215-848-7215, instagram.com/zsas. Winter hours starting Feb. 7: 3 to 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday, noon to 9 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, or sell-out.