Bar32 ice cream returns to Rosedale with coffee in tow
The cottage-country ice cream sisters are back for a summer pop-up at The Lobby by Heaps Estrin, now serving espresso alongside their hand-dipped bars.
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Bar32, the homemade ice cream bar business that made a splash in Muskoka's cottage country, is back in Toronto for the summer — this time with coffee.
Chloe and Sydney Carron launched Bar32 in the summers of 2021 and 2022 from a converted horse trailer in Port Carling, selling chocolate-covered bars made entirely from scratch. They'd deliver by boat, earned an immediate reputation, and eventually ran a Toronto pop-up. After two fruitful summers, they stepped back for full-time jobs, but the business never left their minds.
"Life got busy, but honestly, BAR32 never really left our minds," Chloe tells us. "We'd still get stopped on the street by customers asking when we were coming back. At some point, the answer just became: okay, let's actually do it."
This summer, they're returning to Rosedale at The Lobby by Heaps Estrin, the same space where they operated in 2022. The new model adds coffee — beans from Detour — alongside the ice cream bars. Customers can order cappuccinos, espresso, or an affogato, where a shot pulls over a scoop of Bar32 ice cream or an ice cream bar.
The current flavour lineup includes salted caramel, pistachio, raspberry, and mango. What hasn't changed is the labour-intensive process: Chloe and Sydney mix, fill moulds, and hand-dip every bar themselves.
The business was born from "pandemic boredom," a desire to build something together, and "the fortuitous inheritance" of their grandparents' 25-year-old commercial ice cream machine. "We started experimenting with flavours, and somewhere along the way decided it would be way more fun to turn the mixes into ice cream bars," Chloe says. "Once we landed on that idea, the business side of things followed."
What strikes Chloe most about returning is seeing customers walk in with recognition — especially those reconnecting with the space's history as an ice cream shop years before Bar32. "There's something special about reopening in the same space, in the same neighbourhood, and watching people walk in with this look of recognition. We've heard so many stories from people reconnecting with those memories, and that never gets old."
Bar32 is at 3 Macpherson Ave.