Shawn Michelle’s Homemade Ice Cream expands into South Suburbs

Yahya and Nataki Muhammad own Shawn Michelle’s Homemade Ice Cream, which has two locations, one in Bronzeville and another in Olympia Fields. Photo provided by Christi Love.
Yahya and Nataki Muhammad own Shawn Michelle’s Homemade Ice Cream, which has two locations, one in Bronzeville and another in Olympia Fields. Photo provided by Christi Love.

Shawn Michelle’s Homemade Ice Cream expands into South Suburbs
By Tia Carol Jones
Yahya Muhammad remembers having ice cream at Avalon Park after baseball practice. There was a lady on the bench with tiny cups of ice cream for $1. He never had anything like that before and he didn’t have anything like that again until he started to experiment with making his own ice cream.

Yahya and his wife Nataki are the owners of Shawn Michelle’s Homemade Ice Cream, which has two standalone locations, one in Bronzeville at 46 E. 47th St, and in the South Suburbs at 3252 Vollmer Road in Olympia Fields.

Muhammad and his wife Nataki are the parents of seven children and they have been married for 16 years. They love to travel and they love good food. When they travel to places, they like to try out the homemade ice cream stores. It gives them a pulse on what they are doing.

Muhammad was nostalgic in talking about his upbringing and childhood on the South side of Chicago. “We had so many iconic businesses on the South Side. Seventy ninth Street, I can roll them off, you want to mention Harold’s Chicken, it was nothing like the one off 79th off Cottage back in the days.
Eighty-seventh Street, Kham and Nates, Docks. This is history,” Muhammad said. “We had a lot of real food back then. All of us could list off five restaurants.”

Muhammad wants to participate in the process of rebuilding of the Black community by contributing in the culinary arts, which he called a culinary ministry.

With Shawn Michelle’s Homemade Ice Cream, The Muhammad’s want to take people back to grandma’s house with their ice cream that has milk, cream and sugar. The experience at Shawn Michelle’s reminds people of the experience and memories of ice cream with their loved ones.

“Everything we do is a salute, because we stand on the shoulders of Baldwin’s Ice Cream. My mom took me there as a child,” Muhammad said, remembering eating chocolate ice cream there.

Muhammad started experimenting with ice cream in Graduate School. It took him six years to get to a point where the ice cream was palatable. The goal is not to just have one or two locations of Shawn Michelle’s Homemade Ice Cream in the Chicagoland area, but to have it expand to the entire country and make it a household name.

The flavors came to Muhammad through inspiration and what he calls culinary concepts. The flavors include Vanilla, with Madagascar vanilla; Rum Raisin, Lemon Sunbeam Supreme.  “It is the concepts but it’s fun and putting things together that people really enjoy,” Nataki Muhammad said, adding that her absolute go-to flavor is Vanilla.

Shawn Michelle’s Homemade Ice Cream had the opportunity to open a location at the Time Out Market Chicago. It enabled people who weren’t on the South Side to experience Shawn Michelle’s Homemade Ice Cream. Muhammad wanted to bring that experience back to enhance the quality of services to the Black community.

At the grand opening of the Olympia Fields location people from the community showed up and it made the Muhammad’s feel needed. “The space is not just for ice cream. Shawn Michelle’s is integrating itself into the community. When people come in, we want them to feel like they can sit down, we have a fireplace … We’re creating a space for families to come in and enjoy their ice cream and have the Shawn Michelle’s experience,” Nataki Muhammad.

To find out more about Shawn Michelle’s Homemade Ice Cream, visit them on all the socials @shawnsmichelle

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