Meet Our Founder

Mary DeBartolo

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 The Local Scoop opened its doors in Orleans, July 2012, the fulfillment of my lifelong dream. As a kid I filled numerous journals with elaborate ideas and drawings to create the ultimate ice cream shop. So many notebooks in fact that they could fill a bookcase. The Dairy Queen, on the corner of Roosevelt Avenue and Main Street in Stamford CT, where I grew up, was considered the ultimate experience, and where I spent most of my allowance.

Steve’s Ice Cream in Summerville burst onto the scene in Boston at the same time I was studying at Northeastern University. Designing a scoop of Steve’s homemade vanilla ice cream with mix-ins occupied a great deal of my imagination. As I continued to pursue academics in the form of a degree in psychology, which morphed into a BA in marketing, food remained my passion. All of the pizza parlors and gyro joints on Huntington Avenue were well represented in the Northeastern News, since that was my territory for selling advertising space. Upon graduation, I landed a corporate job in computer sales for General Dynamics in New York City. With an expense account, a passion for food, and one of the first Zagat books in hand, I explored and sampled my way through the city. Corporate consumed all my time by day, at night it was all culinary - Peter Kump Cooking School on the upper West Side to be exact.

In the interest of romance, I moved to Natick MA, just outside of Boston and continued corporate by day, computer sales for IBM,and education at night, BU Culinary School. During this time, I longed for NYC, and realized I needed to be smack in the middle of a big city,  or remote on the outskirts. My mom had a home in Eastham MA, which exposed me to a way of living, that I considered a “fairy -tale”. So in 1992 my life as a wash-ashore began.  The beauty of the Cape Cod landscape took my breath away; both the bustle of the summer and the desolate, quiet of the winter. 

Immersed in raising my 3 boys, and my corporate career the ice cream dream seemed just that, an impossible leap. Culinary continued to be a passion, so I launched a cooking newsletter called Gourmet Mom, which led to a stint writing for Family Fun Magazine. Trips to The Culinary Institute in NY, and Penn State Ice Cream University is where I could be found during my “vacation times”.

And as my kids grew, I reached a point where I was frustrated…. it was time to decide go/no go for the dream of an ice cream shop….. Then I realized that the fear holding me back was minuscule compared to giving up my dream - and off I went on one of the best decisions I made in this journey of life.

Hard - yes indeed / Demanding - you betcha / Redesign for pandemic - finally behind us

The Local Scoop menu was created based on my passion for food, flavor and all things Cape Cod. I was a founding member of Slow Food Cape Cod, which supports local farmers & food artisans. These concepts and ideals are part of The Local Scoop shop. Through Slow Food I learned how important it is to be a part of a food system that is “Good, Clean & Fair”. To have my money work as a “producer” vs a “consumer”. A producer puts their investment in places/people/goods in which they choose to support. We seek to invest in our community through our farms/food artisans and incorporate this into all we do.

Many of our offering do just this, for example we participate in farmers markets in Orleans, Brewster, Chatham, Truro and buy from local farmers. We incorporate these ingredients into our ice cream, frozen yogurt, crepes and even into the grilled cheese we make…. we also carry lots of local retail goods.

“A Local Delight In Every Bite” - We are working hard to provide a “Farm to Ice Cream” experience.