By WHITNEE ICE
St. Joseph Post
The iconic pink cone of St. Joseph is moving a location to its neighboring college town, Maryville.
Kris and Kate’s owner Austin Evans, a born and raised local to St. Joseph poses the question, who doesn’t know the pink ice-cream cone?
“I always thought it was so cool because whether you’re literally two years old and talk or 90, you know what the pink ice-cream cone is, so it’s just so iconic,” Evans tells St. Joseph Post. “I loved it as a kid. As a kid, I use to joke like I want to work here I want to own it someday, like a lot of kids do and I had the opportunity to buy it and jumped all over it. Loved it.”
Evans says he enjoys the energy of Maryville and is looking forward to moving a location to the college town, although there has been some discussion among community members about the building itself.
“There’s a lot of buzz in Maryville right now about how it's an eyesore and it’s ugly,” says Evans. “We are painting it. It will be painted pink. It will be outfitted just like the cone here in St. Joe. We’ll have really pretty landscaping around. We just had a patio poured; we’ll have nice railings. I mean the whole thing will be very, very nice, so it won’t be an eyesore for long.”
Evans purchased the ice cream shop and reopened it for the first time in April of 2020, during the heat of the pandemic without a negative impact.
“The support was incredible, people came out of the woodworks like crazy,” says Evans. “I think people wanted to get out of the house. I think people were excited for Kris and Kates, a St. Joe staple to be opening when it was a sort of sitting with an unsure future and so we had lines like crazy back to the Scooters coffee. It was just, it was wild so. Tons of support and it was really good. Very grateful for the way it all turned out during COVID.”
The new location for Kris and Kate’s is going to be located in Maryville on the corner of 4th Street and Buchanan Street, behind Bank Midwest. Evans hopes the storefront will be open in mid-July.
