Lola’s Ice Cream Korner serves tasty Spring treats

When it comes to ice cream, Patrizia Santoro is a local expert. The Rockland native had been a longtime fan of the chilly dessert (her favorite flavor being coffee) before opening up Lola’s Ice Cream Korner in Nanuet above her husband’s barber shop. Though the shop opened in May of 2022, Santoro and her family had the idea to start an ice cream store at the beginning of the pandemic.

“The crazy thing was, it was during COVID,” Santoro recalled. (My family) was all home like everybody for three months straight. We were all talking and were like, what can we do? And then we thought, ‘Oh, maybe we can open up an ice cream store!’”

Though Santoro and her four children, ages 21 to 30, all had full time jobs, they put in the work to get the store up and running. After the previous tenants left and renovations were made, the store opened to the public, with plenty of customers of all ages coming from the park across the street.

Now running from May through October, Lola’s Ice Cream Korner—named in honor of the Santoro family dog, with the secondary nickname “Lick’s”—sells a variety of cold, tasty treats. Serving Hershey’s ice cream exclusively, Lola’s has approximately 30 different flavors of hard ice cream.

Additionally, the shop also sells two flavors of soft serve, as well as a variety of sundaes, floats, novelties, and ice cream-based desserts.

The biggest indicator of a day’s number of customers is the warmness of the weather, Santoro explained—though she herself prefers it no matter the temperature outside.

“When the weather’s nice, the kids come out, they sit outside, they play, they run around,” said Santoro. “They come from the park, which is really nice. It has to be a nice day…But I’ll eat ice cream anytime!”