Big Gay Ice Cream closes its Philadelphia location on South Street

Doug Quint and Bryan Petroff have announced that they have pulled the plug on Big Gay Ice Cream’s Philadelphia outpost — their first location outside of New York City — because of the pandemic.

The soft-serve specialist on South Street just off Broad Street, which debuted in 2015, has not been open since early last year. The men also closed their shop on East Seventh Street in New York’s East Village, their first location after starting in 2009 with a truck. Quint was a concert bassoonist, and his partner, Petroff, was in corporate human resources. They called it Big Gay Ice Cream until they could figure out a real name.

“The batteries have gone a bit dim on that street,” they wrote about their East Village location.

“Empty storefronts, the result of both rising rents and the COVID-19 pandemic, have settled in. Many great businesses have closed. It ain’t what it was. As a seasonal business with no indoor seating we recognize that the location will never truly recover. Therefore, we have decided to call it.”

They say that they hope to return to a new Philadelphia location. “For now, we’ve put the entire shop in storage,” they wrote. Two of their New York locations, on the Upper West Side and West Village, have been reopened.