30-07-2025
Shawn Michelle's churns out homemade ice cream on Chicago's South Side
Ice cream is always good, but Shawn Michelle's Homemade Ice Cream gives "good" a whole new meeting.
The shop has been churning out their homemade custard goodness to loyal customers on the South Side of Chicago.
"That's the only way we know how to make it. You want to get into Shawn Michelle's, you're going to go back to grandma's house, whether you like it or not," said owner Yahya Muhammad.
He said ice cream has the power to take someone back down memory lane.
"The first taste of homemade ice cream that I had was that experience with the lady sitting on the bench after baseball practice. We went over and she had a bucket, a white bucket. It wasn't even hard," he recalled. "It was so good that I could literally not just eat it. I almost wanted to, to just hold it and just savor it, what I had experienced."
Muhammed held onto that experience for years until he decided to dabble in the homemade ice cream game himself as a student at Western Illinois University. His fraternity brothers were his early taste testers.
"They are lucky to be able to say it started right there with them," he said with a laugh.
Once he perfected his art, Muhammed started selling it. Eventually he was able to take his passion from side hustle to bustling business, with two locations.
"The one thing he was always passionate about was his ice cream. He believed in it, he loved it and he shared it," said his friend Jalance Hunt.
Like ice cream, life is best when it's shared. Muhammed shares his with high school sweetheart-turned-wife Nataki and their seven children.
A true family business, Shawn Michelle's is named in honor of Muhammed's beloved sister Shawn, who was killed in a car crash in 1999. Yahya may be the face of the business, but it is Shawn's name on the door.
"Shawn was a baker. She literally helped inspire me to get into business," he said. "We call it the spirit of Shawn Michelle, you know? And so the same way that you'll experience my passion, my energy, my sister had it."
And that indelible spirit makes its way into every bath of hand-stirred Shawn Michelle's Homemade Ice Cream.
So what's next? Expansion.
"I can ee it in Atlanta, in D.C., and Houston, Texas. I can see it in Phoenix," Muhammed said. "This isn't to be kept. No, we gonna share this love!"
