Please use the form below for general questions and comment. If you have a question you think we may have answered, check out our FAQ section below! If this is a question or request for Wholesale or an Event please use the dedicated forms on our Events and Wholesale Page.
Leona’s was inspired by our spunky dog, Leona, who came into our hearts in 2012 at the spry age of 10. Despite her rough past, she was quite the classy older lady. While we were creating our company, she was a constant source of inspiration (and a darn good taste tester). Every day she brought us joy and we hope that our ice cream brings you a little bit of the happiness Leona brought to us.
After working in public relations for years, Katie decided to make a change from promoting food brands to creating food. When she and Christa received an ice cream maker as a wedding gift, the whole idea of Leona’s was set in motion. Excited by the gift, Katie was also a little sad. She’s lactose intolerant and hadn’t been able to eat ice cream for a long time. Rather than dwell, she went to work. After a solid two years of testing flavors and recipes, a stint at culinary school and the famous Ice Cream Short Course at Penn State, Leona’s Ice Cream came to market as a 100% real dairy ice cream treat that was also 100% lactose free. The couple started in the back of a coffee shop in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh and now distribute to more than 70 locations around the Pittsburgh metro area.
Our ice cream is super premium. It's sourced from local, grass fed, sustainably raised cows. It's 16% butter fat and has a low overrun, so there isn't much air whipped into it. So you get more ice cream per spoonful than other ice creams. Beyond interesting flavors and combinations, our ice cream is 100% real dairy and 100% lactose-free, so every belly can enjoy. With the help of a natural enzyme, we break down the lactose that more than 60% of the US population has trouble digesting. This process doesn’t change the taste, texture or quality of the ice cream. So it’s just as creamy and delicious as you’d expect super premium ice cream to taste.
So many. We are curious bakers and flavor fanatics. Everyone who works at Leona’s brings their unique experiences with flavor to the table and then we play. All told, we have made more than 120 different flavors of sandwiches and pints. Here is a map of the ones that made it through testing. We don't make all of them at once though! Think strawberry in early spring, hot chocolate in the winter and berries in high summer. We offer about 10-15 different flavors at once and they showcase the best of the season. Our retail locations receive an assortment of the sandwiches we make at any given moment, so go in and check them out, you might just find your new favorite!
We don’t have a scoop shop… yet. For now, here is a map of restaurants, breweries, grocery stores, and shops where you can find Leona’s. Some of these locations carry sandwiches, some carry pints, some carry both, and some make an affogato (espresso poured over vanilla ice cream, that’s right). Stay tuned, though, because we’ve always got ideas churning away...
Any way you want. The cleanest way to eat your ice cream sandwich is to hold the sandwich so the flaps are on the top and bottom, peel off the round sticker holding the paper closed and rip the paper so it tears in half all the way around the sandwich. You will end up with a little nest for your sandwich that will catch drips and keep your fingers from getting sticky.
No way! You can enjoy our ice cream by the pint, too. We always offer some of our classic flavors—Fresh Mint Chocolate, Lavender and Honeycomb Candy, Coffee, Vanilla, Cinnamon Oatmeal Lace, to name a few—and we mix it up with seasonal pints. We’ve made Sticky Toffee Pudding and Chocolate Peppermint Bark for winter holidays, Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble for the spring and late winter we dig into Bourbon Cherry Chocolate to make the long winter more interesting. We are always testing, always inventing and always looking to offer more joy to our customers.
Wow, good question! If you have ideas for delicious flavor combinations, we are always looking to experiment, so shoot us an email. If you are requesting a flavor for a special event, get in touch with us and we’ll see what we can do.
Sorry, we don’t have any gluten free cookies, but we can recommend a great gluten free bakery to pair with your pint of Leona’s.
All of our ice cream is 100% real dairy, 100% lactose-free. We don’t have any non-dairy flavors yet….
We do a few in-kind donations each year. At the beginning of the year we decide on our charitable direction and stick with a few small organizations that align with our values as a company. This strategy allows us to do the most good with the resources we have.
We would love to! Here is a form to request event catering. Please note that we require a minimum of two weeks lead time for all events.
In 2017, we dipped our toes into shipping Leona’s for winter holidays. We’ve shipped to California, Texas, Florida, and some other places that are typically colder and closer to us in Pennsylvania. We’re working on getting our systems down--it’s no joke to ship ice cream to Texas--and we hope to offer shipping on a more regular basis in the future. One more thing about shipping--all of the materials that we use to ship our ice cream are 100% biodegradable. That’s right, even down to the insulation. We think that’s pretty cool.
We open up online ordering for the holidays each year but the pick-up is in person. Might we suggest subscribing to our newsletter or following us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram? We announce all special orders online first! Plus, sometimes we post pictures of cute dogs and babies eating ice cream.
It all depends on how cold your freezer is. Ice cream should be stored below zero to keep it as fresh as possible for as long as possible. We’ve conducted strictly non-scientific studies and found that sandwiches stored in a home freezer were delicious a month after purchase.
Not unless specified on the allergen statement that you can find at the very end of the ingredient list. However, some of our products do contain nuts, and while we take steps to avoid cross contamination, some may occur.
First, don’t panic. Ice cream likes to be stored really cold, colder than the freezing point of water. Ice cream should be stored below 0°F. That’s really cold! You might need to turn down the temperature of your freezer if you’re finding soft ice cream in there. You might also want to double check that you’re closing your freezer door all the way (it happens). Also, we know that you want your ice cream easily accessible, but you should actually store it in the coldest part of your freezer, towards the back and nestled in with other frozen things, but definitely not on the door. Please know that everyone’s freezer is different and if you put something in the freezer that is not yet frozen and it’s next to your ice cream, the item will probably melt your ice cream in the process of freezing itself. SCIENCE!
We don’t sell any of our baked cookies, but we do sell frozen cookie dough. Our packs of cookie dough come with 16 balls of dough, ready to be arranged on a baking tray and popped in the oven so you can take the credit. Cookie dough is available October-March at select locations. If your local Leona’s dealer doesn’t carry dough and you’d like them to, go ahead and let your opinion be known.
We don’t calculate the calories in every sandwich but each sandwich ranges between 420 and 560 calories, depending on the ingredients. That’s about as many calories in a slice of chocolate cake with frosting, in case you were wondering!
Yes! You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. We post pictures of ice cream, beer, cookies, and we keep you updated on new places to find Leona’s.
We buy our dairy from Trickling Springs Creamery in Chambersburg, PA. The farms that Trickling Springs works with are required to maintain grass-fed, heritage breed cows, produce very clean milk, and use no synthetic hormones. We tested dairy from all over, and we think that Trickling Springs tastes the best.
We source from local producers whenever possible. That means that we work with local farmers to supply fruit in season, and we work with local companies to source flour, chocolate, vinegar, and spices. Check out this list to get a sense of our sourcing. When we can’t get it locally, we try to get it as clean as we can.
On top of that, we have a garden where we grow mint, strawberries, blueberries, huckleberries, flowers, and more. The garden is a new endeavor for Leona’s, and we’re excited to see what we can grow in the future.
Lactose is just milk sugar that’s made up of two other sugars. Leona’s ice cream is made lactose free with the help of an enzyme added to break the two sugars apart into individual components so your body can more easily digest it. The process doesn’t change flavor or texture, it just changes one sugar to two. Science!!
Nope. Our ice cream is creamy, cold and delicious. Just like ice cream should be. The only thing that will feel different is your lactose-intolerant belly.
Butter contains trace amounts of lactose. There is zero detectable lactose in one teaspoon! Source
Lactose intolerance is the inability to digest lactose, a sugar that is found primarily in milk and dairy products. The body produces an enzyme called lactase, which breaks down lactose into two simple sugars, glucose and galactose, which can be absorbed into the bloodstream. Lactose intolerance happens when a body does not make enough lactase to fully digest the lactose. This lack of digestion causes mild to very uncomfortable side effects. Different people can handle different amounts of lactose, and there’s a solution to meet most needs in the dairy case –from lactose-free milk to dairy foods that are typically easier to digest.
Have a question we haven’t answered? Shoot us a note info@leonaspgh.com
