The Double Dippers begins 25th season under new ownership
Story Location:
Double Dippers
11 North First Street
Rehoboth Beach, DE 19971
United States
Rehoboth Beach ice cream parlor The Double Dippers is celebrating two big events this year – 25 years of business and new ownership.
Located on the western side of North First Street, Joe Mack and Tom Gile opened The Double Dippers in 1999. Just in time for the start of the 25th season, Nate and Eluh Diehl took over ownership.
Mack had been running the business for the past nine years after Gile died in 2015.
“After 24 years, it’s time to slow down,” said Mack, in a post on the The Double Dippers Facebook page in February.
The Diehls took over ownership in late March. Nate said they kind of stumbled into it. He said they had tried to buy another business downtown but were unsuccessful. That business owner knew The Double Dippers was also for sale and facilitated a meeting with Mack.
“We’ve always wanted to get back into owning a business down here,” said Nate, whose mom owned The Mizzen Mast in Rehoboth for years. “This is a really stable business and when it became available, we thought it was a perfect fit. Ice cream is a happy business.”
A few months into ownership, the Diehls said they think they’re getting the hang of it. Joe has stuck around to help with any questions they have, said Nate.
The biggest thing they’re still perfecting is the ice cream-serving technique. The regular ice cream is easy enough, but there’s a technique to getting the soft-serve ice cream to look just right, said Nate.
“Eluh is getting pretty good at it. I’ve still got some work to do,” he said, adding they’re sticking with Hershey’s ice cream.
Right now, The Double Dippers is open on weekends. Beginning in June, it will be open every day at noon.
“It’s exciting to see how things are going to go,” said Eluh.
For more information on The Double Dippers, 11 N. First St., call 302-212-5189, email doubledippersrb@gmail.com or go to the business Facebook page.
Chris Flood has been working for the Cape Gazette since early 2014. He currently covers Rehoboth Beach and Henlopen Acres, but has also covered Dewey Beach and the state government. He covers environmental stories, business stories and random stories on subjects he finds interesting, and he also writes a column called Choppin’ Wood that runs every other week. Additionally, Flood moonlights as the company’s circulation manager, which primarily means fixing boxes that are jammed with coins during daylight hours, but sometimes means delivering papers in the middle of the night. He’s a graduate of the University of Maine and the Landing School of Boat Building & Design.
