CONEFLOWER CREAMERY

Hoppen Hierarchy:★★★★

District: Blackstone; Downtown Omaha

Ice Cream Parlor that highlights local ingredients and seasonal flavors

Perfect For: Baked Goods/Desserts; Casual Dining; Takeout

Standout Dishes: Blackstone Butterbrickle; Mexican Hot Chocolate; Vanilla Bean; Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

Strawberry is one of the best-selling flavors at Coneflower Creamery. It’s also only available for a few weeks each year.

Because strawberries are only fresh for about three weeks in Nebraska each summer, that’s the only time you’ll see them on Coneflower’s menu—and why these scoops carry a wonderful sweetness, along with the slight sour you’ll find in a ripe strawberry.

Could Coneflower sell more ice cream if it slightly sacrificed quality and purchased strawberries out of season? Probably. But that’s not a compromise owners Brian Langbehn and Katie Arant are willing to make.

“That’s a hard one not to have in your shop all the time,” Katie said on the Restaurant Hoppen podcast. “It’s a tough call, but it’s what makes us unique.”

“We’re using literally the best ingredients we can find,” Brian added. “It’s like, ‘This is the best strawberry that we could possibly find, and this is the only time we could get it, and that’s when it’s going to be made.’ And it’s going to show when you taste that bite. It’s like, ‘This is the best strawberry ice cream I’ve ever had.’ That’s what we’re going for across the board.

“We let the seasons write the menu.”

And that’s why there’s almost always a line spilling out Coneflower’s door.

Coneflower’s “farm to cone” approach is one of the things that differentiates it from any other ice cream shop in Omaha. The menu is constantly changing based on what’s in season and what the team is inspired by. You can have a different experience every time you walk into the shop.

No matter what flavor you get, however, you know it starts with an excellent base. The ice cream itself is so smooth and creamy that it almost has a velvety mouthfeel. It’s sweet, but not overly so, and balances well with whatever flavor the chefs choose to pair it with.

Coneflower’s ice cream can melt quickly, especially on a trademark Nebraska summer day. While this may seem like a negative, it’s actually a sign that Coneflower’s ice cream doesn’t contain stabilizers that add fat and slow the melting process. Coneflower’s confections are as natural as they get.

While Coneflower is known for its hyperseasonal approach, there are staples you’ll always find on the menu, from the famous Butterbrickle to rich Dark Chocolate and Archetype Coffee, Coneflower’s delicious nod to its neighbors across the street.

Butterbrickle: It’s Coneflower’s most beloved flavor for a reason. Creamy, buttery ice cream is loaded with crunchy chunks of caramel-y toffee.
Vanilla Bean: Perfect in its simplicity: rich and aromatic, it just carries a pure flavor that’s difficult to describe until you taste it. Coneflower carefully slices and scrapes each vanilla bean to extract as much flavor as possible.
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough: takes this brilliant vanilla and tosses in gobs of chewy homemade dough that amp up the sweetness but also add texture (via the chocolate chips).

Great as the everyday flavors are, Coneflower takes things to the next level with its seasonal offerings. Many ice cream shops mash flavors together, hoping to draw in customers with Instagram-able photos or wacky combos. That’s not Coneflower’s way. Each ice cream is thoughtfully composed and balanced.

Some of the best seasonal specials include:

Christmas in July: Made for peppermint loves, this mixes chunks of white chocolate and chocolate sandwich cookie chunks into creamy peppermint ice cream. The texture contrast between the smooth base and the crunchy add-ons is perfect.
Cornbread & Hot Honey: The sweet corn ice cream tastes like the milk at the bottom of the cereal bowl from childhood, but with a natural sweetness, not artificial junk. The house-made cornbread adds good texture, while ribbons of hot honey add a sticky sweetness and a touch of heat.
Mexican Hot Chocolate: Spicy ice creams are often poor-tasting gimmicks, but Coneflower finds a perfect heat/sweet balance. The rich dark chocolate ice cream is infused with chipotle, guajillo, and arbol peppers swirled with Abuelita hot chocolate, giving the cocoa a palate-tingling kick.
Garden Mint Chip: You’ll notice a distinct difference in color from what you’ll find in most mint chip offerings from the grocery store. Instead of appearing a neon, fluorescent green, the green tone is more subtle and earthy. Coneflower uses real mint leaves as opposed to extracts, giving it an herbaceous, bright, and refreshing flavor.

Sweet Corn, featuring Miller Dohrmann Farms corn, infuses the natural sweetness of the corn into the silky ice cream for a product that tastes like delicious cereal milk.
Amaretto Cherry w/ Marzipan Cake: Delicate vanilla ice cream is mixed with sweet, tart cherries and hunks of marzipan cake, which adds both a nice almond flavor and wonderful texture.

Coneflower’s creations are great when enjoyed in a dish or a pint, but they’re at their best when scooped into a house made waffle cone. The cone adds just a touch of sweetness while providing a great crunch to accent the creamy product inside. The cone has a mind-bending combo of being crisp and fluffy at the same time.

Coneflower immediately became one of Omaha’s favorite—if not the favorite—when it opened its doors in 2016, and in 2023 it opened a second location inside Millwork Commons in downtown Omaha.

And a few times a year, Coneflower uses its ice cream to craft marvelous, stunning ice cream cakes. The smooth, luscious texture of the ice cream complements the moist, firm cake perfectly. And the flavors are balanced brilliantly. Take, for example, the Chocolate Cake for Two that Coneflower offered for Valentines Day one year.

Salted caramel ice cream brought a salty taste, brown butter ice cream added a pleasant nuttiness, and the bitter notes of the Archetype Coffee ice cream cut through the sweetness of the cake. And the cherry on top was the toasted meringue, a smoky, slickly covering for the whole cake that slipped in a pleasant s’mores vibe.

These cakes (for good reason) sell out very fast, so if you want one, do not hesitate when Coneflower puts out the message on social media.

While the original location has it homey charm, the newer spot boasts far more tables and room to eat. There’s also a side room—Katie’s “lab”—where you can watch her create her newest masterpiece. Brian said he wanted the Millwork location to feel like Willy Wonka designed it.

Mission accomplished.

At the end of the day, you can be confident any order at Coneflower is going to be excellent because of its attention to detail. From the owners hand-picking strawberries from the field to employees creating waffle cones in full view of the customer (infusing the shop with an intoxicating brown sugar aroma), every detail is carefully curated.

The subtle differences are what sets Coneflower apart and makes it the best ice cream shop in Omaha.