After more than 20 years of serving up ice cream, such as honey lavender and wild blueberry, the owner of two D.C.-area ice cream shops is looking for a buyer to scoop up her business.
Susan Soorenko, the owner of Moorenko’s Ice Cream, owns two shops: One at 8030 Georgia Ave. in Silver Spring and the other on Capitol Hill at 740 C St. SE in D.C.
This winter, as first reported by the Source of the Spring website, a notice was taped to the window of her Silver Spring shop saying simply, “We’re very sorry, Moorenko’s is closed due to medical reasons.”
Soorenko, 73, said that after she was struck by a car in February 2024, it became clear that the injuries she sustained have made keeping up with the demands of the business, which includes manufacturing the ice cream and providing it to area stores and restaurants, has proven too great.
“I’m having hip replacement surgery in two weeks,” she told WTOP, adding that for the past year, she was in a lot pain and “not in a place” to take care of her shops.
There were other challenges, too. Winter business always lags, Soorenko said, despite people telling her that they eat more ice cream in the winter than they do in the summer.
“I don’t have the receipts to prove that,” Soorenko said. “If you want us here in the summer, you need to be here in the winter.”
It’s her hope that a future buyer will want to continue to make and sell the ice cream she’s branded as “ultra-premium,” a designation she said is rooted in the high milk fat content that’s more than 16%.
Soorenko said for the past 23 years, the business of making and selling ultra-premium ice cream has been “my heart, my soul, my raison-d’etre.”
She described ice cream as a “joy-giving” food.
“For the 15 minutes that you’re eating that cone, that’s what you’re focused on. You’re not focused on what craziness is going on in the government or how are you going to pay a bill or whatever,” she said. “You’re just eating that cone.”
The connection to the community has been meaningful as well.
“We’ve had people come to our shops straight from a funeral, or come to us right after getting chemotherapy because ice cream was the only thing they could keep down,” Soorenko said.
It’s also been gratifying to see the number of children who’ve grown up eating Moorenko’s ice cream and are now feeding it to their children, she said.
Now that she’s settled on selling the business, Soorenko said people have asked her what the next chapter of her life will look like.
Other than moving closer to her children in Virginia, Soorenko said she doesn’t know, and that’s OK.
“I’m just going to sit and breathe for a little bit, and wait for the next signal, whatever that may be,” Soorenko said.
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