Chunky Monkey ice cream shop opens on Market Street
This is the new location of the Chunky Monkey ice cream shop, at 303 Market St. in downtown Clinton. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
New owner Troy Shafer said the business opened last Saturday, and features the same ice cream treats as it did in its former location in Norris.
“It’s been a long road,” he said Tuesday morning. “We’re excited to be a part of the Clinton community, and glad to be in downtown Clinton.
“We’re fully operational, and it’s still the exact same menu,” he said.
Business hours will be 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday, Shafer said. The shop is closed on Mondays.
While Shafer doesn’t plan to expand the menu to include meal items such as the cheeseburgers the previous Chunky Monkey location was famous for, he said he does expect to add coffee and eventually some baked goods to the menu.
Shafer, who also owns a computer technology business in Knoxville, confirmed late last year that he would be taking over the Chunky Monkey business and moving it to Clinton.
The previous owner, Angie Litton, announced in October that the ice cream shop had lost its lease at the 139 Little Senator Circle location in Norris.
Shafer said in December that he had signed a lease with Katherine Birkbeck on her building at 303 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 Monkey, in the Anderson Crossing shopping center.
There is another ice cream shop in the downtown area, Burr-Ville Sweet Treats, 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.
Litton, the longtime owner of the Chunky Monkey, told The Courier News in October that she was closing the ice cream shop, and would not be renewing her lease.
