AKRON, Ohio — Terry Rastetter-Helbling has always wanted to own an ice cream shop.
“This is meant to be, this is absolutely what I am meant to do,” Rastetter-Helbling said.
He opened up his ice cream shop, Skoops, in Barberton just days before the pandemic hit.
“It was very, very scary,” he said. “Once we opened, we closed down seven days later for the pandemic just because we didn’t know the severity of it.”
As Rastetter-Helbling was preparing to shut his business down for quarantine, he had a surprise visitor.
“I get a knock on the window from the little kid that asked if we had anything to eat,” Rastetter-Helbling said. “He asked if we had anything because there is no school lunches.”
He was able to help the boy by giving him some food he had at the shop.
“I gave him some, of course, I had some ice cream leftover, some novelty items, some Spongebob pops,” he said. “I kind of loaded this kid up.”
That moment inspired Rastetter-Helbling to want to give back even more.
“I went back home and he just sat on my heart very, very heavy,” he said. “I woke up the next day and I told my husband, Dave, I said I think we have to make lunches.”
For the next several weeks, while his business was closed to customers, he fed the community.
“For five weeks, every single day, seven days a week, feeding lunches,” Rastetter-Helbling said. “God blessed us enough to where we were able to donate 2,400 lunches from random people, dropping off cases of water, other restaurants dropping off supplies, donations and it just brought this great big circle of community together on this piece of property.”
Once Skoops was finally able to reopen to the public, the ice cream was very well received.
“My promise that I made a long time ago when we first started doing this is if this works, this has been my dream my entire life, that we will always give it back,” he said. “We were tested, but I hope we delivered.”
Rastetter-Helbling plans to continue his mission of feeding the community now that summer is in session.
“There (are) still people who are barely scraping by,” he said. “If there is a kid out there who is used to getting a school lunch or anything, just stop by and see us. We will make sure that you are OK. “
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