Nellie's Ice Cream — Restaurant in Saint Paul

Running review as the experience and service defined by the owners changes and changes again. 2023: Happy times!!! We enjoyed splitting a "Single" and paid $5.62 with a very generous tip for the staff.

2024 - June - Not a happy visit: We were informed by reluctant workers that they no longer can split a single and the choices are a cup or cone and the price is twice or more expensive. Progress sucks when a fun neighborhood Creamery shifts is atmosphere from welcoming the public and offering a generous scoop to milking them by offering less ice cream in exchange for more money.

We still tipped the staff as they did not make the decision and were visibly uncomfortable having to explain the "NEW RULES".

2024 - JULY 26th: What a wonderful surprise to find the scooping arms of the always friendly staff were back at FULL STRENGTH SCOOP POWER!! We spent the evening walking in a local park and thought to give Nellies another go, to see if things had returned to 2023 scoops and pricing. YES!!! Our date night was closed by enjoying a "Single" that offered us plenty of wonderful creamy ice cream to share.

Thank you "FAM!"

2024-08-02 Another shift by the "Fam" to offer less and charge more. 10 oz cups reduced to 8 oz cups with similar minimized scoops to fill the smaller cup. +$$ for less, again. Nothing good last at Nellie's, except the phenomenal scooping artists!

2025-06/07 The strong scooping arms are back at it this year! Very nice portions are scooped and...

Terrible experience. When we were there a little girl helped herself to the Chocolat covered ice cream comes by reaching between the plexiglass. Her mother put the cones back. There were 3 employees behind the counter and none of them saw this happen. But we let them know if happened and as far as we could tell the cones were never removed.

Also, all I wanted was a scoop of ice cream. One scoop. I was pretty much forced to either have 2 scoops and a cookie or not get them and still pay for them. No one offered the child size to me instead, which would have been better customer service.

We also waited and waited for bottles of water when we were done with our ice cream, when there was only one man and his daughter ahead of us. I understand waiting for them, but when the second employee came back from her break, she should have helped us instead of scooping up ice cream for a customer and her kids that came in after us. It really only takes a couple of seconds to ring up a couple of bottles of water.

There was also an insident where my change was 39.50 and I wanted to give her the change to that I could get 2 20s back instead of having all of that change in my wallet and she made a fuss.

The customer service issues were enough of a reason to not make me want to go back, but the unsanitary germ spreading issues are a HUGE health issue. I will never go back...

The ice cream samdwhich was good, but when I say the portions are huge, they are HUGE and also inconsistent. My portion was big enough as is (I love ice cream it's my favorite food and even I was over it the last couple bites), but my partner probably had two pounds of ice cream in between his sandwhich. My cookie was pretty hard, even after heating up, but I can acknowledge we came late in the day. Ice cream was very good and they had a huge selection which I loved once I made my decisions finally.

The most annoying part and the thing that makes me not really want to go back was the two employees working. They both were young, so I get it, but they were so busy play fighting and play yelling at eachother I couldn't wait to leave. I'd never been before so was a little overwhelmed at all my selections and they seemed relieved they could keep hanging out with eachother. They moved quick and didn't really listen well. Plus the two tables inside were dirty and we would have sat inside had it been a better atmosphere. I'm not a "if you can lean you can clean" but at least make sure the tables are clean before you sit around and play with...