Happy Earth Day!
As we look ahead to our fourth summer providing Chicago with the best soft serve we know, Vaca’s Creamery is in need of a more defined identity. In the past year we have doubled in staff (and locations!), significantly expanded our menu and offerings, and were featured in the New York Times in a story about the success of vegan ice cream shops.
We are so lucky to have the staff that makes this possible and for the community in Chicago for supporting us the past three years. With this growth, we felt it necessary to do some deep thinking on what Vaca’s stands for and what it strives to be. We, Mariana and Dylan, started Vaca’s Creamery as idealists with little to no experience running a food business. We promised ethically sourced ingredients, the highest of standards in quality, and a tipless model that paid above a living wage. We are proud to have succeeded and acknowledge the hard road it took to get here, but it has felt a bit like we were too busy to really focus on the things that matter in the big picture.
So what follows is the Vaca’s Creamery commitments to a higher standard of service. Simply put, worker’s rights are under threat, climate change is progressing and is directly linked to meat and dairy production, and according to the U.S. Animal Kill Clock, over 150 million animals are killed every day in the United States of America. So even though we are just a vegan small business in Chicago, we feel we need to set the bar very high for ourselves as our own guiding principles. It will be difficult and we will probably struggle, but we need to strive to be the best we can be.
Looking forward to our best year yet and thank you always for your support,
Dylan and Mariana
Vaca’s Creamery Co-owners
Happy May or should we say… Happy birth month to us! 🎉
This is our FIFTH BIRTHDAY and we are celebrating all month with specials, pop-ups with some of our favorite vegan businesses, and a walk down memory lane in our newsletter (link in bio) 🥳
Our soft serve flavor of the month is Cake Batter and we brought back our dear chocolate cake shake as a special!
Come celebrate with us 🎂
@palermos_unreal_foods@herbivore_chicago@aztecvegankitchen
A huge thank you to VACAS Creamery for creating the perfect dessert for the Pastry Collective event at Miru Restaurant in Chicago, Illinois.
Mariana from VACAS Creamery, one of our incredible Carpigiani chef consultants, crafted a dessert that was not only delicious, but also gluten-free, vegan, and dairy-free!
Take a look at some of these photos of her amazing creation, and stay tuned for more highlights from the event!
You can get your Fauxtillos fix today at our Palermo’s Unreal Foods pop up from 3pm-sold out in Lincoln Square! Palermo’s is bringing the Italian beef and hot dogs and we have the chocolate cake shakes 🌭🍦
Update on the Wicker machine, we are waiting on a crucial part to ship from Italy 🤌 but it is set to arrive next week! We will update when it’s all ready to go, but for this weekend we just have vanilla out of our one working machine so please be patient with our wonderful staff 🥰 you can still get all flavors of milkshake and sundaes under the sun 🌞
We need your help to turn our luck around, please send good thoughts and vibes 🙏 The Wicker Park vanilla/chocolate machine is struggling!
We are calling in every favor to get this fixed as soon as possible, but this little burnt wire requires the entire motherboard to be replaced and that is no easy task.
Until then we only have the best vanilla soft serve you ever tasted at our Wicker Park location (the remaining working machine is the best); but Lincoln Square still has all flavors available!
Thanks for your patience at Wicker Park because our entire business relies on one machine until we can get everything fixed 🍦
We are so honored to be partnering with Resilience for this seasonal pint flavor, Blueberry Cheezecake! Proceeds go directly to @resiliencechi and it is available at both locations and on delivery 💜
Resilience is a Chicago based free and confidential se*ual assault clinic that empowers survivors with advocacy, education, and healing. To access services or learn how you can support our vision of a world free from se*ual violence, visit their website at ourresilience.org
Cosmic Cake Sundaes and Chocolate Cake Shakes are back for May! 🥳
These treats are made with our famous chocolate cake bites (which happen to be gf) and were available on our day one menu in 2021, so we decided to bring them back for our 5 year bday month!
🎂
The chocolate cake is perfect but delicate, so we replaced them with our brownie bites in 2023 when we opened our Lincoln Square shop.
Also reminder that the first 50 customers at both shops will get a free slice of birthday cake tomorrow (Saturday)!
Our Lincoln Square seasonal machine is in need of a technical repair, so sadly we won’t have carrot cake there for the next day or two. But you can still get the magical carrot cake bites or the carrot cake pint that benefits @hrschicago 🐰🥕
Our Wicker Park shop carrot cake machine is going strong! 💪
Flavor changes 4/30!
