Chunky Monkey plans move to downtown Clinton
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The Chunky Monkey Ice Cream Shop, formerly in Norris, will move to this site on Market Street in Historic Downtown Clinton this spring, its new owner says. - G. Chambers Williams III
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The longtime Chunky Monkey Ice Cream Shop location in Norris has permanently closed. The business plans to reopen in downtown Clinton under new owners this year. - G. Chambers Williams III
Downtown Clinton looks to be the next stop for the locally famous Chunky Monkey Ice Cream Shop, which has a new owner and has moved out of its longtime location on Andersonville Highway in Norris.
Troy Shafer, who also owns a computer technology business in Knoxville, is taking over the Chunky Monkey business, whose previous owner announced in October that the ice cream shop had lost its lease at the 139 Little Senator Circle location in Norris.
Shafer said Friday that he has signed a lease with Kathryn Birkbeck on her Spindle Tree building at 303 North Market St., pending upgrades on the property to make it ADA-compliant.
He previously operated a satellite office of his computer business near the Chunky Money, in the Anderson Crossing shopping center.
Shafer said the new Chunky Monkey location will concentrate on ice cream and some baked goods. There is another ice cream shop in the downtown area, Burr-Ville Sweet Treats, but it’s several blocks away, on Edgewood Avenue behind the Walgreens pharmacy.
The Market Street location has been used by Birkbeck as a photo studio and event venue for the past several years. She and her husband, James, bought the building in October 2018. It was the location of a short-lived Cajun restaurant just before the Birkbecks bought it.
The longtime owner of the Chunky Monkey, Angela “Angie” Litton, told The Courier News in October that she was closing the ice cream shop, and would not be renewing her lease.
“I’m ready to move on; I’m tired and I’m exhausted,” she said at the time.
She said she had another buyer for the business lined up in mid-September, but the deal fell through because she does not own the building the shop operates in; she just leased it.
Litton contended that the prospective buyer of her business was unable to obtain a lease on the building to allow the Chunky Monkey to continue in the same location.
She said that she had operated the Chunky Monkey for nearly 13 years as a “single mother of two” since taking over another ice cream shop in the same location.
Her lease on the building was set to expire on Jan. 7, but she told the building owners that she wanted to retire and did not want to renew the lease and reopen the business for the coming spring and summer seasons.
While the Chunky Monkey originally was open year-round, a few years ago Litton began closing in the fall and reopening the next March. In 2024, the business closed for the season on Sept. 4.
The property owners, Mansour and Lisa Tavangaran, have put the property up for sale. It has been listed for sale since Dec. 3, 2023, according to the listing agency, Realty Executives. The asking price for the property, which includes a separate barber shop building behind the Chunky Monkey, is $695,000.
Lisa Tavangaran told The Courier News on Friday that the property has not yet been sold, and no new tenant has been found for the building that housed the Chunky Monkey.
Tavangaran, whose maiden name was Stooksbury, said her family operated the Little Senator Restaurant in the Chunky Monkey building for years. It was empty for several years after that business closed, before Litton started the ice cream shop.
“This is a family restaurant we have had forever,” she said of the location. “My mother and sister ran it.”
