(Lead image is not representative of Toby’s Ice Cream. Image courtesy Burst.)

A popular local ice cream shop is set to open its much-anticipated second location in Vienna soon! 

Toby’s Homemade Ice Cream is rumored to be opening in Vienna at Cedar Park Shopping Center (280 Cedar Lane SE) this year, according to a county permit database that shows a vacant space in the plaza is being modified for the treat shop.

This cozy neighborhood ice cream shop “making and serving the creamiest, richest, homemade ice cream in Arlington, Virginia!” (according to its Facebook page) may sound familiar if you remember the cicada craze last year. Toby’s creative “cicada sundaes” — which looked like the Brood X creatures but didn’t contain them — turned the D.C.-area shop into a viral sensation.

Closer Look at Toby’s Ice Cream

Perhaps because of this rapid success, and the area’s appreciation for its gourmet goodies, Toby’s is expanding the business established in 2000 into a second location.

As in Arlington at its Westover shop, the Vienna location will serve ice cream, ice cream cakes, smoothies, hot chocolate, and roasted gourmet coffee. 

Toby’s Ice Cream scoops are large and come in a wide variety of interesting and sometimes unusual flavors.

“Espresso Chip, Real Vanilla Bean, Black Raspberry Chip, Coffee Oreo, Pistachio, Ube (Taro), and Philippine Mango are some of our most popular flavors,” Toby says on Facebook. “We’re always rotating our flavor selection and try to keep it seasonal, so in the summer look for Fresh Peach, and in the winter look for Peppermint Stick.”

“We also have Chocolate Fudge Brownie Sundaes, Cookie Beast Sundaes, and the best thick, creamy milkshakes and malts in the DC metro area.”

The Toby’s Ice Cream cakes are popular according to Toby because they are “more rich and creamy than the competition,” and customers love that the coffee offered is locally roasted — and always free from dilution since the iced coffee is made with frozen coffee ice cubes!

Perhaps Toby knows something about selling all-natural, handmade, superpremium ice cream because he’s always loved it. He maintains that as a kid, he could regularly eat six scoops of ice cream at one time, and he worked in various ice cream shops in the area growing up. (He staffs local students in much the same way today.)

Ice cream became a calling in college when he took the University of Maryland Ice Cream Short Course with Dr. Scott Rankin, so after a start as a professional graphic designer in advertising and marketing, he and his wife bought an ice cream shop and made it into the Toby’s Homemade Ice Cream the NoVa area now knows and loves.

Toby’s Ice Cream in Arlington was closed for the holidays from Dec. 23 to Jan. 4, but the Washington Business Journal and other publications have “scooped” that Toby’s Ice Cream will have a location in the Cedar Park Shopping plaza with a commercial kitchen, merchandise area, and dining area. This new location will be bigger than the original since the space allows occupancy of nearly 30 people with a dining area of about 148 square feet. (Alexandria’s store has little to no seating inside.)

Toby’s will be in delicious company as the Cedar Park Shopping Center is also welcoming America’s Best Wings and the Centreville-based Turkish restaurant Lezzet early this year, and the Japanese restaurant Sushi Koji opened to customers in December.