By Lea Kopke
Staff Writer
SUAMICO – At age 14, Emilee Rysticken tried her first donut ice cream cone during a school trip to Prague.
Rysticken said she came home and jokingly told her parents she would one day open a shop with the special cones.
Six years later, on July 27, she found herself opening her second donut cone ice cream shop in Historic Downtown Suamico, called Scream ‘N Conuts.
A conut is a donut baked into the shape of a waffle cone, rolled in cinnamon and sugar and lined with the customer’s choice of coating – served in a cup, to combat the mess.
Rysticken’s joke became more serious when she was the student representative for the Two Rivers Main Street board of directors in 2018.
“I randomly, jokingly, pitched this donut cone ice cream shop idea before a meeting because we were waiting for people, and everyone freaked out,” Rysticken said. “They were like, ‘Oh my gosh, you have to do that. You have to.’”
The next day, Rysticken said a realtor on the board showed her the property that would become her first shop, and the journey began.
She said she graduated from Two Rivers High School early in January 2019 to begin working on the shop and opened it just three days after she walked alongside her peers at their graduation ceremony in June 2019.
“I opened up, and it was very, very successful,” Rysticken said. “People loved it.”
It was so successful, she said Vickery Village owner Jon Henry asked her to open a second shop in Suamico.
“(Henry) actually works with my mom in Two Rivers at Aurora hospital, and he’s known me my whole life,” Rysticken said. “And he was looking for a good dessert place to have here in Vickery Village.”
She said she’d thought about expanding Scream ‘N Conuts through franchises eventually, but Henry pushed her to open a second location.
Rysticken said the shop’s first night was during a Tunes on Tuesday event at Vickery Village.
“They have a band and lots of people come, like, over 100 people,” she said. “And everyone from Tune Tuesday was either coming over, being nosy and checking out the menu, or getting something, and we were absolutely slammed… So that was very good.”
The conuts are made fresh every day, Rysticken said, and are lined with either chocolate, caramel, peanut butter, butterscotch or vanilla icing and filled with one of 12 Cedarcrest ice cream flavors.
Suamico location manager, Hannah Gleichner, said her favorite menu item is the specialty pie conuts, which are made up of layers of ice cream, cherry or apple pie filling and whipped cream.
Gleichner, who’s known Rysticken for five years and worked at the Two Rivers location, said it’s encouraging to see Suamico’s reactions to the business because it makes the workers more excited about their jobs.
She said while the job can be stressful when lines get long, it’s an overall fun atmosphere.
“Emilee makes it super fun and it’s laid-back,” Gleichner said. “It’s nice to just work with people, doing something fun, like obviously ice cream puts smiles on everybody’s faces.”
The shop is open Tuesdays from noon to 9 p.m. and Wednesdays through Sundays, noon to 8 p.m.
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