A local family brings in a new frozen dessert store, marking the beginning of the summer season.
Rita’s Italian Ice Custard Happiness is open in Scotts Valley at King’s Village Shopping Center, 222-K Mount Hermon Rd.
The Rita’s franchise began on the East Coast in 1984, and their success prompted Matt and Lisa Rasmussen to bring Rita’s franchise to northern California. They plan to open up dozens of Italian Ice stores along the west coast, but their ambitions start here at home.
“We looked at 35 different locations before deciding to bring it to California,” Matt Rasmussen said. “My vision was to bring their product to California — our product is light and it mixed well with the California dynamic.”
Rita’s has a variety of different flavors to choose from, offing its customers an extensive collection. They serve everything from Mango to OREO cookie, all with an option to add toppings of your choice. However, their selection of flavors is not the only new addition to their local Scotts Valley Store.
With the new store, comes new jobs for local residents; they will be employing 18 team members. Several of the new staff are local high school athletes who found the opportunity to earn some money at this new frozen treat store.
“We have multiple San Lorenzo Valley and Scotts Valley High School students,” Rasmussen said. “We had a lot of high school athletes come in, we probably have enough to start our own sports team.”
Rita’s plans to pay a very active role in local events, especially in local school fundraisers where they will sell their Ice Custard, with a percentage of the proceeds going to that organization.
“We plan to participate in lots of local events for schools,” said Rasmussen, “and a percentage of the proceeds earned will go to those programs.”
This new addition to Scotts Valley has already created quite a following with a soft opening. They gave out free ice to those who come by on April 27 and 28, and will celebrate their grand opening on May 21.
“Today (April 27) was phenomenal, it went a lot better than we thought,”
Rasmussen said.
The last few days have been very successful, especially with the warm weather. Rita’s grand opening is going to set the tone for the summer season with their tradition of giving 25 people free Italian Ice for a year. They will be opening their doors and allowing people to come in and enter their raffle, and at the end of the day they will be picking 25 contestants.
“All the people who come in on May 21 will be entered into a lottery to get free Italian ice for a year,” said Rasmussen.
