Jay’s Specialty Ice Cream opens first Fresno store after a decade on wheels

After years of running her business from an ice cream truck, Janel Haas has finally opened her own shop, Jay’s Specialty Ice Cream.

The shop at Shaw and Hayes avenues serves more than 45 flavors.

“My family always used to make homemade ice cream for family events, for Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. We started with the old-school hand-churn machines and later moved on to the small motorized ones that used rock salt, ice, and you would freeze the container,” Haas said.

A lifelong ice cream lover, Haas first pitched the idea of opening her own shop in a business class during her senior year at Fresno State in 2012.

While she initially envisioned a storefront, she pivoted to a truck after realizing the costs of opening a store would be too high. She named it after her longtime nickname, “Jay.”

“Once I did all the research on it, it really made me say, ‘I can actually physically do this as a business. I can make this a real thing if I tried,’” Haas said.

Haas eventually graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in entrepreneurship. By October 2013, she had her truck and began selling her ice cream at farmers markets, carnivals, high school football games, and private parties.

It wasn’t until 2024 that Haas decided to move forward with the idea of opening her own storefront, largely because her customers kept asking for it. With a store, she could sell ice cream year round.

“For the last three or four years it was always in the back of my mind—I was just waiting for the right spot and the right time to say, ‘Okay, we’re gonna go for it and open this storefront so people can have us whenever they want,’” Haas said.

With the truck, Haas could also only offer up to eight flavors because of limited space. Now, with the added storage at her shop, she can feature as many as 45 flavors — everything from rocky road to her rich and creamy chocolate chip Oreo, apple pie, and Ba-Nilla-Fer (banana ice cream with Nilla wafer cookies), plus alcohol-infused options like peach rum and mango margarita. She also offers fruit flavors such as peach and strawberry.

Among her most popular flavors are “Oreo Delight” (a blend of signature vanilla ice cream and Oreo cookies), “Red Wave” (strawberry ice cream mixed with blueberries and white chocolate chips), and rocky road.

“I think besides being able to get a variety of flavors, I really think the quality and the taste is what keeps bringing people back. It’s more of a rich, creamy flavor, it doesn’t have an icy texture to it. It’s not a soft serve. It’s a hard hand scooped ice cream that I feel like is hard to find,” Haas said.

Besides more traditional ice cream scoops, Jay’s also offers milkshakes, root beer floats, orange floats with vanilla ice cream and specialty desserts like banana splits, cheesecake rolls, ice cream nachos and mini pancakes. Items range from $4 to $12.

“I like to make sure that when you get an item, you say, ‘Oh yeah, that looks like a good size,” Haas said.

Now that the store is open, Haas said she’s still working out details like identifying their busiest hours and making sure they’re staffed properly throughout the day. One of the toughest challenges, she added, was securing all the necessary permits—from the city of Fresno to the California Food and Agriculture Dairy department and the Fresno Fire Department.

Looking ahead, Haas said she plans to keep running her ice cream truck, which is already booked for events through March of next year, and is considering adding another truck and eventually opening a second storefront in Clovis area.

“I want to be able to grow something that my three kids can have if they want,” she said.

This story was originally published October 7, 2025 at 12:49 PM.

Marina Peña

The Fresno Bee

Marina Peña is a former journalist for the Fresno Bee