Green Cow Milestone Sweet Revenge

• Harper Pauler, 4, in front plays with her sister, Addie Pauler, 7, while their mother, Alyse watches. Families often enjoy hanging out and playing games after the main event of ice cream.
• What’s your favorite flavor? ·Each month sees a few special flavors added to the basic 14 at the Green Cow. March flavors include Lucky Charm, Carrot Cake, and Chocolate Hazelnut. ·For sugar sensitive customers there are sorbets and strawberry lemon made with allulose, a plant-based sweetener “without an aftertaste.” There are also non-dairy flavors for lactose intolerants. ·The top two flavors are Banana Pudding and Chocolate Oreo. Coming in April: Peach Cobbler Open 7 Days a week

CUERO – When Green Cow Creamery owners Jeanette and Rudy Rocha opened not one, but two Ice cream shops (one on Main Street in Cuero and one in Downtown Victoria), some friends doubted the viability of their business plan. With the recent purchase of the 200,000th scoop of ice cream at the Cuero shop on March 15th, the couple got the last laugh.

“People laughed at us!” Jeanette said. “They said ‘This is never going to work. Is this a hobby?’ You’re going to have to sell a whole lot of scoops of ice cream if you’re ever going to make any money. Do you know how much ice cream that is?’ ” The milestone scoop was just for the Cuero store, and it did not count specialty items, like banana splits, that include ice cream. It was straight up scoops of ice cream, sold to customers on Main Street in Cuero, which opened in June of 2022. That’s a whole lot of scoops.

“The hardest thing right now is keeping up the volume,” Rudy said. “This store (Cuero) is stabilized, but the Victoria store is through the roof!” When speaking with Annelyse Cancino, 10, and Ella Cancino, 5, pause by Emmy the cow outside of the Green Cow Creamery. Their grandmother, Gladys, (not pictured) brought them for a visit during Spring Break.

the couple on a recent morning, Jeanette had just put in her third night in a week of working until 3 a.m. making ice cream to satisfy orders.

“We make sure to maintain the quality,” Jeanette said, describing their homemade recipe. “That’s really what built the brand. It’s not like we get it trucked in or you just call and order it.”

Starting out, Rudy said it took about six months to get the right formulation of milk from their dairy in Austin. Each week they would tweak the balance until they settled on their proprietary blend as the base for all their flavors.

The color green in the business name is not for the Gobblers as many Cuero fans assume. It's for the healthy, locally sourced ingredients. “We have no added syrups or dyes, no additives like preservatives,” Jeanette said. “It’s milk, cream and sugar, the very basics of ice cream.”

The Rochas said they try hard to source anything they can from local, small businesses, such as pecans from Yoakum, wine from Refugio, honey from a few local suppliers.

“Main Street is where we fit,” Jeanette said. “It’s old fashioned; it’s homemade, like a craft.”

As amazing as the flavors are for the taste buds, the product of the Green Cow is not just ice cream. From the start Jeanette imagined how a child would experience her shop and she wanted to create a space for special memories, like the ones she shared with her father.

“That was our thing,” she said, describing her father. “We would go get ice cream together; it was our special time.”

Jeanette also remembers fixating as a child on a car wash with a big pink elephant, and she would always ask her father to go to the elephant. “I loved it because of that dang pink elephant,” she said.

So for her own shop she knew she wanted something big and metal. The dairy cow was it. Each creamery has its own large, metal cow that young customers have named. Cuero’s cow is Emmy and Victoria’s is Millie. The child that named Emmy is, of course, a regular customer who rings her bell whenever coming in.

Rudy, who is a Cuero native, has a background as an educator. He’s currently the associate principal at Cuero High School, but when he first came back to his hometown he was at John C. French Elementary, working with pre-k, kindergarten and first grade.

“They’re the innocent part,” Rudy said. “If the whole world acted like them, we’d be okay. With all the stuff that goes on in the world that’s negative, it’s really neat to see their positive light.”

Children and families often play the tic-tac-toe and four-in-a-row games on the shop’s tables.

“That's the coolest thing,” Jeanette said. “We see families coming in and they sit down and they play games. It's such a fun atmosphere to hear people’s stories. We play 50s music so even the older people tell us about when they were dancing to that song.”

To celebrate the ever-important childhood birthdays, the shop offers “over the top” birthday parties. In ice cream school Jeanette teaches children how to make ice cream and the history of it. She said kids who’ve been to the class feel comfortable enough to walk in back and ask to help.

The creameries also offer field trips.

“A few weeks ago we had 73 first graders come through our Victoria store,” Rudy said. “We have 63 coming through here next week from Yoakum.”

Other events the Green Cow caters include weddings, baby showers, and gender reveals. Earlier this year they did the exclusive concessions at the Victoria Art Center for Darcy Lynn, who won America’s Got Talent in 2017.

“I created four flavors based on her favorite things,” Jeanette said. “That’s the fun part. I could create flavors all day long.”

“The fun part for me,” Rudy said, “is just talking to people and hearing their stories.”

Jeanette agreed, saying Ice cream just has a way of bringing out that fun for people.

“What’s unique about Cuero,” Rudy said, “is we are in the crossroads and we get people downtown from all over, people going from Rockport to Austin. We just had people from Australia!”

The couple said the business has far exceeded their expectations. “The whole thing’s been so fun,” Jeanette said. “We get a phone call or an email every other day from someone wanting us to open another store somewhere.”

They are carefully considering options as they work on finding a way for Jeanette to get to bed on time.

“Even if I’m tired,” Rudy said, “It makes me feel good, especially when kids walk in.”