Made-From-Scratch Custard Is a Vacation Destination
Bunny's is the kind of third-generation icon that's hard to find these days
Lexington — Bunny’s Frozen Custard is an unassuming roadside stand. Unlike most businesses, it has vinyl siding like the houses in your neighborhood. It has a porch and a garden.
Bunny’s isn’t just named for its mascot: the rabbit-themed marketing comes from the nickname of founder Elizabeth “Bunny” Galbraith.
According to Sarah Rush, her granddaughter, Bunny’s makes the custard in-house from scratch because that’s the only way they can get the matriarch’s recipe exactly right.
Bunny had worked it out with ice cream manufacturer Frosty Products to provide her the ingredients in a pre-made mix, but Sara says the company started to tweak things to bring their costs down.
“It just didn’t taste the same,” Sara told me.
Bunny’s has been operating for 54 years. Sara recognizes it's rare for a family-owned business to last this long. Only about 13% of family businesses survive to the third generation, according to the SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell.
The reason Bunny’s has made it this long? The custard is fantastic. There are three main flavors of their signature custard—chocolate, vanilla, twist—and a flavor of the day—blueberry.
It’s rich, creamy. There are no off-flavors from unnatural ingredients. It’s cold but not icy, and doesn’t melt too fast to eat from a cone.
I got a regular cone and two kiddie cones for $8. That’s highway robbery for made-from-scratch ingredients and a stop in a restful place.
As you eat your ice cream, the deep blue sky hovers above Lake Huron, just out of sight behind the trees and a private neighborhood. Even if you can’t see the lake, you still know it’s there, and you’re in vacation mode.
People come from all over to Lexington and the surrounding beach town. I saw license plates from Ohio and other states. It’s easy to see why they’d stop at Bunny’s along M-25.
But Bunny’s could easily be the destination instead of a spur-of-the-moment stop.
Authentic frozen custard from a family-run business that makes its own product? That’s almost impossible to find these days. It’s more than worth the trip.
