Ice Cream Shop and Photography Studio Open New Storefronts in Downtown Lucedale

Downtown Lucedale has two new storefronts — an ice cream and smoothie shop and a photography studio — both run by owners with established track records in the business. The openings add fresh destinations to the George County seat’s Main Street corridor, where city leaders have worked in recent years to keep the downtown blocks active with retail, services and community events. One business is a homecoming, the other an expansion, and together they represent the kind of small-business growth that small towns across south Mississippi have been working to court.

Grub Junkie opened at 5185 Main St., a revival of owner Ariel Rainey’s original concept. She launched the brand in 2018 as a food truck in nearby Agricola, quickly drawing crowds for rolled ice cream and Cajun food before pausing the venture while expecting her daughter. The truck’s run was short but intense, building a following that stretched well beyond the Agricola community where it parked. “It just exploded in a short amount of time. People loved it, they came from all over the coast. We would have an hour wait with so many customers,” Rainey said.

The brick-and-mortar menu centers on milkshakes built from the food truck’s most popular item, plus macarons and smoothies made with real fruit, natural agave syrup and milk from Havens Creamery. The decision to source dairy from a nearby creamery reflects a deliberate positioning for the shop, which leans toward simpler ingredient lists than the typical dessert counter. “We want to support local and give a really healthy, all-natural option that wasn’t really available anywhere here before,” she said.

The shop is open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, closed Wednesdays, and 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays, with plans to expand hours for special events like Second Saturday. Those extended event hours matter in Lucedale, where the monthly Second Saturday celebration has become the downtown district’s signature occasion, drawing browsers, shoppers and families onto Main Street after dark. Dessert shops and drink stops are among the businesses that benefit most when foot traffic surges during those events, and Rainey’s plan to stay open late for them signals that Grub Junkie intends to be part of the downtown rhythm rather than operating on an island.

The return of the Grub Junkie name also illustrates the sometimes winding path of food-truck entrepreneurship. Mobile food businesses often build devoted followings quickly but face steep challenges in the form of weather, equipment breakdowns and the constant search for high-traffic parking spots. Translating a truck concept into a fixed storefront gives an owner a permanent kitchen, reliable utilities and a recognizable address — advantages that can be decisive for a brand trying to convert seasonal buzz into a lasting business.

A Studio Built One Portrait at a Time

A few doors down at 5169C Main St., Keepsake Photography celebrated a ribbon cutting for its new studio — the latest expansion for Sonja Shamblin’s seven-year-old business. Ribbon cuttings have become a familiar marker of downtown Lucedale’s recent commercial activity, and the studio’s arrival gives the Main Street corridor another destination business, the kind that draws clients on appointment schedules throughout the week rather than relying on walk-in traffic alone.

Shamblin taught herself photography shooting her newborn son and has since built a niche spanning senior photos, sports, families, weddings and professional headshots. That self-taught origin is a common thread among working photographers of her generation, who came up as digital cameras and editing software lowered the barriers to entry while raising the ceiling on what a skilled independent could deliver without a formal studio background.

Her work has won international competitions and been featured in modeling and senior portrait magazines. The recognition has carried the Lucedale studio’s name well beyond George County, giving area families access to a level of portrait work that previously might have required a trip to Mobile or the Gulf Coast’s larger markets. Senior portraits in particular have grown into a specialized and competitive corner of the industry, with style-conscious high school students and their parents driving demand for distinctive, magazine-quality sessions.

Upcoming projects include Santa Paws, offering discounted pet photos with Santa in exchange for food donations to the city animal shelter. The event pairs a seasonal revenue driver with a charitable cause that reaches a longstanding need — city animal shelters across south Mississippi operate on thin budgets, and food donation drives timed to the holidays are a reliable way to stock shelves during the winter months. Pet-focused holiday sessions have also become one of the most popular niches in portrait photography, giving families a tradition that includes four-legged members.

“That’s the main thing is being in the community and having a positive influence,” Shamblin said. The studio is open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays and 8 a.m. to noon Saturdays.

Lucedale’s Downtown Push

Lucedale serves as the seat of George County, a growing rural county tucked between the Pascagoula River basin and the Alabama line. The city sits along U.S. 98, the main east-west artery connecting it to Mobile about 45 minutes to the southeast and Hattiesburg to the northwest, and that position has made it both a passing-through town and a bedroom community for workers commuting toward the coast. Like many county seats of its size, Lucedale has watched retail activity drift toward highway interchanges over the decades, and efforts to keep the historic Main Street blocks alive have depended heavily on locally owned businesses willing to invest downtown.

Second Saturday events are part of that formula. Communities across the Gulf South have adopted the monthly model — shops staying open into the evening, vendors lining the sidewalks, live music and children’s activities — as a way to give residents a recurring reason to come downtown. For a new dessert shop, the events offer concentrated exposure to exactly the family traffic that buys milkshakes and smoothies, and for a photography studio they provide a stage for holiday promotions like the upcoming Santa Paws sessions.

The pairing of the two new storefronts also reflects how small-town commercial districts evolve. Destination businesses such as studios and specialty food shops do not compete with the hardware stores and pharmacies that anchor daily errands; they add reasons to linger, and linger-time is what turns a downtown from a corridor into a destination. Owners of adjacent businesses typically see the spillover on event nights, when a family that stops for ice cream will also browse other storefronts that are open late.

What the Openings Mean for Residents

For Lucedale residents, the openings fill gaps that previously required a drive. An all-natural smoothie and dessert option within the city limits is a change from the fast-food chains that dominate small-town dining, and the sourcing arrangement with Havens Creamery keeps part of every purchase circulating in the regional farm economy rather than leaving the area entirely. Families scheduling senior portraits, weddings or team photos likewise gain a studio with a national award record inside the county line, sparing them the trip to larger coastal markets.

The holiday timing of both debuts positions them well. The stretch from late fall through Christmas is the busiest season of the year for portrait studios, between family sessions, church directories and Santa-themed promotions, and dessert shops similarly see their strongest traffic when school is out and relatives are visiting. Both owners opened their doors with that calendar in view, giving their businesses a runway of high-traffic weeks to establish regulars before the slower stretch of the new year.

Together, the two storefronts offer a snapshot of how downtown revitalization actually happens in towns like Lucedale — not through a single large project, but through a sequence of individual owners betting on the district, one lease at a time. If the patterns seen in other small Gulf Coast county seats hold, each successful opening lowers the perceived risk for the next prospective tenant, and the corridor’s momentum builds from there.

Rolled ice cream, the technique that first made the Grub Junkie truck famous, remains one of the more theatrical formats in the dessert business. The preparation method, which spread to the United States from Southeast Asian street vendors, involves pouring a liquid cream base onto a frozen metal plate, mixing in candy, fruit or other add-ins, and scraping the finished product into tight rolls that are stood upright in a cup and topped to order. The process is as much performance as food service, and shops built around it tend to generate the kind of social-media visibility that money cannot easily buy for a small startup.

Rainey’s Cajun offerings from the truck days also tie the brand to a deep well of regional cooking. The Cajun influence that runs through south Mississippi and south Louisiana kitchens is a signature of the Gulf Coast’s food identity, and pairing it with desserts gave the truck a two-sided menu that few competitors were offering. Whether the storefront menu eventually expands back toward those savory items, the milkshake base gives the business a focused core to build around.

The milkshakes themselves, made with creamery milk and real fruit smoothies alongside, position Grub Junkie in the fast-growing space between indulgence and better-for-you treats. Parents in particular have driven demand for options with recognizable ingredients, and a shop that can serve a traditional Loaded milkshake and a fruit-forward smoothie under the same roof captures both halves of a family’s order in a single stop.

The Economics of Main Street Openings

For both owners, the move into a permanent storefront represents the stage of small-business growth where the risks are largest. Rent, utilities and build-out costs arrive every month regardless of revenue, unlike the leaner economics of a truck or a home-based studio. But the upside is durability: a fixed location builds equity in a brand, allows for consistent hours that customers can memorize, and makes a business legible to newcomers who would never find a truck’s rotating schedule.

Downtown Lucedale’s landlords and civic leaders have reason to cheer both openings for another reason — they demonstrate that the corridor’s spaces can be filled by proven operators rather than first-time ventures. Rainey had already proven demand with the truck; Shamblin had already proven demand with seven years of sessions. What remained was for each to find the right storefront and commit to the lease, and the fact that both did so in the same season suggests the downtown’s fundamentals are trending the right way.

Residents will get their clearest sense of the changes in the months ahead, as the shop’s extended Second Saturday hours begin and the studio’s holiday calendar fills. If early patterns from similar openings in south Mississippi county seats hold, both businesses will spend their first year converting curiosity into routine — the after-school milkshake run, the annual family portrait — which is where small-town storefronts truly earn their keep.