In praise of clean hands

Our hand washing sink sits in the white cart, operates on a foot pump – and is used often.

When you serve children and adults lemonade and Italian ice, sticky hands are inevitable – on both customers and crew.

That’s why we keep wipes on hands for our young customers (and anyone else who wants one). And that’s one reason why we require our Mity Nicers to wash their hands early and often.

They are expected to wash up after they set up the carts and before they serve the first delicious scoops of lemon or mango ice.  And then again and again through their shift. (Singing ‘Happy birthday’ or another song while they wash is encouraged but not essential.)

While we’re discussing our cleanliness, let me point out:

Mity Nice is now ServSafe certified. Co-owner Mark Loeb just took the class. His big take away:

“For six of the 90 questions on the test, the answer was: “wash your hands.” ”

To serve food properly and safely, clean hands are essential.

That’s why we carry a hand washing sink with us just about everywhere we go.  It’s built into our second cart – the white one that also carries lemonade, iced tea and other supplies.  (Also sometimes it brings out brownies and muffins!)

Not every mobile business has one – and not every food vendor in Ann Arbor uses them regularly. (Since we started Mity Nice we pay closer attention to restaurant and food vendor hygiene – and we suggested to the Ann Arbor Observer that they write about it in a recent feature!)

So the next time a Mity Nice crew member takes us an extra 30 seconds to serve you something wonderful because he is washing his hands, think:  Clean is good. It’s sweet that they care about food safety.

 

A busy beautiful time for us!

 

Singer / songwriter Joe Reilly will perform at the Leslie Science & Nature Center on Saturday. We’re supporting the fundraiser. (Photo by Chad Skeers)

While summertime means a slower pace for many, we are in our busiest two weeks of the year – and looking forward to every minute of it.

Well, every minute we don’t float away as happened during the Ann Arbor Art Fair a couple of years ago.  (Our booth on Liberty literally filled with a river of water and we lost a few things, carried downstream in the deluge.) We don’t mind a few sprinkles, especially first thing in the morning, and we do bring our umbrella to almost all our special events

So  you can find us at all the fun, here’s a rundown of our whereabouts:

  • Saturday, July 13 – We’ve mastered the twice as nice arrangement. So we will be on Detroit Street 9-3ish and then will send our mini-cart to the Leslie Science and Nature Center for singer and songwriter Joe Reilly’s concert. Tickets are still available for Songs for Scholarships. The concert starts at 11 a.m. and you may want to come early, to visit the owls or the Critter House.
  • Sunday, July 14Huron River Day at Gallup Park takes us to a beautiful place for canoeing, kayaking and learning about the river. There’s a marvelous science and arts tent for children (and we’re hoping we’re allowed to set up nearby). The event runs 12-4, but we’ll arrive a little early in case you need a refreshment after the morning 5K run/walk. We are bringing some strawberry lemonade – and strawberry Italian ice (another way we’re twice as nice)
  • Monday, July 15The Townie Street Party.Come hear the MacPodz and other bands. Or make a paper hat or a tile with Motawi. This party takes place on East Washington and Ingalls Mall and is a local favorite in its ninth year. We’re there with Tea Haus so you could enjoy an Arnold Palmer.

    Mity Nice staff on crazy hat day during Art Fair 2012.
  • Wednesday, July 17 – Saturday, July 20 – Ann Arbor Art Fair in all its glory. Look for our Tweet and our Facebook post on the exact location; likely on State Street.  We serve muffins in the morning and Italian ice and drinks all day and evening long. Plus we will debut …. the Mity Nice brownies and will bring along some gluten free and vegan goodies from Tasty Bakery so everyone can enjoy.
  • Sunday, July 21 – 12-3 p.m. back on Detroit Street. It’s National Ice Cream Day and we want to be part of it, even though we’re a dairy free and vegan treat.  This is also the day to shop with the Sunday Artisan Market, which gives you an appetizer portion of great art and craft – many of them locals.

We’ve already started making our Maize & Blueberry muffins and are picking up the lemons from Eastern Market tomorrow for the fresh-squeezed lemonade.  Our half tip jar for July will go to two charities – Ozone House and one to be chosen by our Mity Nice team.

Hope to see you at one or two or three of these places. It will be Mity Nice to see some familiar faces amid the sea of visitors to Ann Arbor!

Fairies in the city, in the woods – and in our festival!

A very old fairy house (Photo by Vickie Elmer)

 

We spotted this ancient fairy home in a woodsy garden in Detroit. And we knew we had to share it with you, as a reminder always to  watch carefully for fairies and their hats, homes and treats.

You may know that three sister fairies lives in our cart and create their version of Italian ice. (That’s where we get our Fairy Ice, though they don’t part with it often or easily.) And we’re sure you know they live in a variety of places in Ann Arbor, and in

The second Mity Nice fairy door, made in Ann Arbor

Plymouth, Chelsea, Ypsilanti, andRoyal Oak, too.

But did you know that at least three fairy families were spotted in Palmer Park this spring? And that others settled in Detroit, on Belle Isle and in other woodsy areas, aeons ago?  No wonder then that Mity Nice is seriously considering a second location – in the D. We already buy our Italian ice from a lovely old Detroit company.

Naturally we love Ann Arbor – our home turf and a city that appreciates vegan treats and joyful times.  So we will stay firmly rooted in Kerrytown and on Main Street, and expand from there.

Speaking of expand, our third annual Fairies & Fairy Door Festival will grow this year and will take place in September. A lot of details are still being worked on, but the date is either Saturday, Sept. 21 or Saturday, Sept. 28, in a location not far from our cart and the fairy’s ice shop.

And yes, we have heard some of those Detroit fairies plan to fly in for the Fairies & Fairy Door Festival!

 

 

 

 

We’re open at last! Twice the Mity Nice

The Barringtons savoring the first Mity Nice ice of the season. Photo: Vickie Elmer

We know we’re late getting started, but we have a good excuse – truly.

Mark and Vickie were married barely a month ago, and couldn’t concentrate on the details of Mity Nice until early June.

Vickie and Mark, just wed and already behind! Photo: Patricia Beck

And since we lost our kitchen space when Papa John’s was demolished, we had to shop around for wedding rings and a kitchen partner at the same time.  And then the dog and cat … well enough of that.

Now though we’re open for the summer, and and welcomed our first customers to our tasty made-in-Detroit dairy free fat free treats.

We are thrilled to bring Ann Arbor Italian ices from two sidewalk spaces:

  • Our home base is 303 Detroit Street, right outside the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market. Come to the end of the Market where the office and bathrooms are located and go a little further – and there we are, right on your way to Tea Haus and the People’s Food Co-op. We  set up there Wednesdays and Saturdays, and occasional Sundays.
  • Our Main Street hangout is known as “Under the Clock” – and the clock is really a landmark.  We’re at the corner of Main and Washington in front of the First National Building, one of downtown’s beauties. We’ll be there Friday and Saturday nights, weather permitting and some other times too.
City rules do not allow us to set up during special events by the Main Street Association and during Art Fair so we turn into gypsies and move our wagons elsewhere those times.

So how do you, our dear customers, find out when and where we’ll be?  Our Twitter is easy – and the feed lands right on this website. Or join us on Facebook, and you’ll see some specials and join us for the Friends & Family Free Ice Frenzy, available exclusively to our Facebook friends.

So come out, say hello to the newlyweds and maybe you’ll toast us with our fresh squeezed lemonade – or our newest drink: A Pina Colada (virgin) made with Pineapple ice.

Yes, despite the slow start, it’s going to be a Mity Nice summer.

Bicyclists welcome! We believe in biking around A2

Our cart moves on two heavy-duty bicycle wheels. Here it’s stopped on Main Street.

During National Bike to Work Week, we figured it was time to confess something important:

We ride around Ann Arbor on bicycle wheels all the time.

Our cart, a beauty made by Worksman in Queens, N.Y., is outfitted with two heavy duty bicycle wheels. They only need inflating once a year. And it makes pushing a loaded cart uphill well… a sweet exercise.

Our mini-cart, created by our friend and handy-woman Laura, also has two bicycle wheels  though they’re from a child’s bike. It shows up at parties and private events, and sometimes during Art Fair.

We’ve had a bazillion customers bicycle up and buy an Italian ice or fresh-squeezed lemonade too. OK, so that might be an imaginary number, but our fairy friends use it all the time to talk about stars and dandelions and such. Anyway, our friends and customers usually stay a while to finish their treat before cycling off into the city.

Anyone who wants to stay or wander in our ‘hoods, there’s bicycle racks near both of our primary sidewalk spaces:

  • The one on Main at Washington gets a good workout from employees in the First National Building.
  • The one on Detroit Street near Catherine is popular on Farmers Market days. It looks like giant carrots! 

We usually add a third location – and we’ll be sure it’s in a bike friendly locale.

So if you have a sweet bicycling or a Mity Nice two-wheel tale to share, please drop by our cart – or drop it in a comment right here!

 

If you want more information on bicycling to work check out the Commuter Challenge ideas or  the League of American Bicyclists, which declares May Bike Month.

Also read our owner’s other post on what to pack and plan before you begin.

Summer’s sweet opportunities to give back

Summertime in Ann Arbor has such beauty, such a lot of sweetness.

Yet all the fun and good times don’t come without a lot of work – and a lot of support.

Mity Nice tries to be a good citizen by donating Italian ice to charities. We donate to more than a dozen fundraisers and special events – and we give a free ice to everyone who marches in the Ann Arbor Jaycees’ 4th of July Parade.

Not everyone can come up with 700 servings of Italian ice in 45 to 50 minutes. But everyone can chip in and help make summertime better by donating time or money. Here’s a handful of sweet summer causes in Ann Arbor:

  • Send a kid to camp.  A nonprofit group called Summer Camp Scholarships wants to send fourth and fifth graders from low-income families to camp this summer.  They say $200 will buy ten duffel bags and ten sleeping bags and $400 will send one kid to camp for a week. (The camps are several area YMCA camps, which contribute a portion of the cost too.) The all-volunteer group also is looking for more people to help out – and this that we hope to join.
  • Dance and song. Sponsor the Ann Arbor Summer Festival Top of the Park. Someday maybe there will be a Mity Nice street performer’s evening or a Mity Nice children’s movie and dance night  But for now, we’re asking you to give a little. Anyone can become a supporter of this great event – and if you’re a Patron who gives $250 to 499, you’ll get invited to the season’s announcement party and receive a pack of ‘I Gave’ stickers to wear. Those are some of the coolest summer accessories.
  • Make Main Street bloom. Three blocks of Main Street are the home of 46 planter beds, places where flowers and trees grow and people sit and sip lemonade or enjoy some soup from Le Dog.  The Main Street Association hires a landscaper to plant flowers and maintain them. “The tree roots absorb all the water and nutrients from the soil, and visitors are quite rough on them,” said Maura Thomson, director of the business association. For $500 anyone can sponsor the posies for a year.  She figures they will have about 20 flower beds available to be adopted.
  • Volunteer in the parks.  You could Adopt-A-Park or help clean up the Huron River or build a blue bird box. There are other opportunities too, and many o fthem show up on VolunteerWashtenaw.
  • Bring free Italian ice to a charity or community.  OK, this is a little enlightened self interest. But we would just love to find a corporation or two or someone with deep pockets who wants to make summer more delightful at Peace Neighborhood Center or a public housing project, and will underwrite free ice for all. We’d also be glad to do this right outside your business, too, as long as we can invite in some young people too.
We will highlight a couple of other sweet opportunities too:
If you love art or artists, the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair and its siblings all need volunteers this spring and summer. Host an artist, help out with children’s activities and more volunteering available.  We donate some time and some Italian ice.
If you want go go on a’picnic with a purpose’  tickets for Grillin’ – a luscious fundraiser for Food Gatherers -are on sale. They need volunteers for the event, and we’ve already raised our scooping arm. Mity Nice will be out in the children’s area with the games – and we hope to see you there!

Copyright © Mity Nice 2013

Circling in on our Mysterious Sunday event

The last Second Sunday of the season is fast approaching and there’s still so much you don’t know about it.

That, my friends, is because it’s called All Things Mysterious.

And so there are mystery guests aplenty, some of them may even show up magically and entertain us. Others may want you to guess their identity.

We expect some seasonal circles to show up too – some orange ones and some red and organic. Can you figure out what they are?

We know there will be a lot of surprises and some mysteries to solve, but there are a few facts you want to know:

  • All Things Mysterious runs 11:30 to 3 p.m., with most activities and guests from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Sunday Artisan Market and the Mity Nice cart on Detroit Street. First games commence at 11:30 and the Arts & Crafts Table opens at noon.
  • Our charity is the Leslie Science & Nature Center, a good friend and a great place to learn about Michigan creatures and take a nature walk. Francie will bring a few birds, including an owl, to Mysterious Day.
  • Mity Nice will offer a variety of  “sweet treats from the streets” – well, our cart really is on the sidewalk just outside the Farmers Market.  We’ll have cookies and muffins and some banana bread; Mindo Chocolates and Tea Haus tea as well as our Italian ice and lemonade, so please bring your appetite and a few dollars.  (We donate a percent of sales to Leslie Science Center, so the treats are doubly sweet.)
  • Our main sponsor is Second to None, a Kerrytown business that provides mystery shopping for many retailers.
  • Almost all or fun family activities are free, but we do ask for donations at the Arts & Crafts Table this month so we can replenish our supplies. (Half of the donations will go directly to Leslie.)

This event is coming up fast, and we don’t want it to be so mysterious that people miss out on it. So please share with a friend or neighbor or Tweet about the birds and fun! See you Sunday.

Tipping in favor of a good cause

The tip jar has become a staple at restaurants and cafes and food trucks, as common as hot sauce at a Mexican restaurant or waffle cone at an ice cream shop.

Yet for a long time, the owners of Mity Nice resisted having one out. It seemed too much like like begging. For perhaps two years, the only tips we received were handed directly to the staffer or given to management after a large party or event.

Then for Art Fair a couple of years ago, we agreed to set out a tip jar, in part because we were collaborating with Tea Haus and their staff expected one. It also was an experiment to see how it felt.

Our staff liked it, and we decided to embrace it, by adding our Mity Nice approach: Half the tips collected each month go to a local charity.  We’ve given them to Food Gatherers during September’s Hunger Awareness Month and The Breakfast at St. Andrews.

This year, we decided to allow our staff to select the charities, as long as they are within our cause areas of concentration.

Half of the cash in the tip jar goes to local charities

So for May and June, Nia has chosen to donate tips to Growing Hope. Growing Hope creates and supports neighborhood community gardens in Ypsilanti, and has developed a new farmers market for that city too.  (For a few years, Mity Nice has been one of the “restaurants” and donors to a beautiful fall fundraiser called Hopes Harvest that supports Growing Hope. That’s where we first met Nia.)  July’s tip jar – a big one because of Art Fair – went to Groundcover News, which helps housing challenged by creating sales and writing opportunities.  In August, David chose Ozone House, which works with youth.

And in September and October, we’re giving the money to the Breakfast program, which serves a free hot meal every day just a few blocks from our Detroit Street location.

Someday we’ll put up a sign on our tip jar – the 50/50 approach is worth a shout-out, so everyone knows that the quarters and dollars deposited there are enriching our staff and our community too.

 

It’s a Mystery who will show up at the last Second Sunday of the year

It’s called All Things Mysterious, this upcoming special day at the Mity Nice cart and the Sunday Artisan Market. And it will be a day full of surprises and mysteries, with some magic thrown in for good measure.

Yet it started out as a place holder or maybe a joke, when the Mity Nice crew first started planning the Second Sunday events early this spring. We knew we wanted a half year of joyful activities and events, yet we had not yet figured out what our October theme would be. The other five months came to us with ease, but not the last one.

So when we created the schedule and the sweet little postcards that adorn so many refrigerators around town, we wrote in “Mystery” for that month.

Eureka! We had a great idea and eventually we realized it worked perfectly, mixing in a little bit of Halloween with a lot of surprise – including some mystery guests and performers.

So we are sworn to secrecy a lot of this, but some entertainers you’ll recognize from our Mity Nice Street Fair and some are new to the Second Sunday scene. Some may be so mysterious you’ll never know their true identity.

One thing that is no surprise is our Mity Nice Arts & Crafts area, where children and adults play around and make things, whether they be sock puppets, bookmarks or a pirate’s moustache. We’re adding some mystery games near our cart on Detroit Street, too, because games are such fun. (Anyone for another hand of poetry cards?)

What:  A fun family day full of games, crafts, entertainment and many mysteries. (But no mystery meat, we promise. Our cart is all vegetarian and vegan treats!)

When: Sunday, Oct. 14, 11:30 to 3 p.m.

Where: At the Mity Nice cart, on the sidewalk at 303 Detroit Street, and throughout the Sunday Artisan Market

Who: Anyone who enjoys fall, mysteries, sweet treats or art – that’s all of us! Plus our friends from the Leslie Science & Nature Center are coming as our charity partner, and they’re bringing some mystery guests.

Why: Because next to Michigan-made Italian ice and other sweets, what could be more wonderful than a day full of joy and mysteries?

How:  How about creating a secret identity, just for the day of All Things Mysterious. Or maybe you want to pull your copy of Harriet the Spy or Encyclopedia Brown and read something mysterious before you show up.

What else:  We cannot tell you, or it will ruin the mystery and the fun surprises!

Blue moon – dogs, students and dancing this week

The summer’s fun continues to run.

We have a busy week here at Mity Nice, and we’re really looking forward to seeing friends back from vacation and students and staff back to U-M and other local universities. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s up with us:

  • Thursday, Aug. 30 –  We’re heading to Main Street around 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. to welcome Lena and Habana, the Latin American restaurant, to our neighborhood.  If you want a shot of tequila in your Italian ice, start at the cart then step inside!
  • Friday, Aug. 31 – Our first Full Moon, Dogs & Spoon event. Please stop by on Main Street with your friendly dogs, big, small, young or old. We are big dog lovers, and so we’ll have dog treats (courtesy of Dogma Catmantoo in Kerrytown) and a dog game or two. The spoon, of course, refers our wooden spoon so owners and friends can savor late summer heat with a couple of scoops of lemon or lime Italian ice.
  • Saturday, Sept. 1 – Hello Students! Look for us on our North University sidewalk space near Hill Auditorium, starting around 4 p.m. We’ll crack out the Go Blue! Italian ice, and give away a dozen of our Maize & Blueberry muffins to students, then scoop up some sweetness to new and old friends.
  • Sunday, Sept. 2 – Dancing in the Streets. Such a joyful event, with free dance lessons and music and more along Main Street. We have been part of it every year, and we always donate a percent of our sales to the organizers, the Ann Arbor Community of Traditional Dance and Music.  We’ll be there by around 1, and the dancing begins at 2 p.m. with ballroom dance lessons and family dance too.  (Yes, we will dance a bit, when we’re not scooping or pouring drinks.)

We hope to see you at a few of these fun events – dancing shoes and dogs are optional, but joy and friendship and Italian ice are essential!

 

 

Joy, jobs & charity through Italian ice – that's Mity Nice.