Millie's Homemade Ice Cream has pushed back its planned opening on Thursday, September 10, of its first Maryland store at Downtown Crown in Gaithersburg, with no new date yet announced for the highly anticipated scoop shop. The Pittsburgh-born chain had been building toward a debut at 202 Ellington Boulevard, a spot that will also mark its first location in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.
The delay was first reported by The MoCo Show, which noted the shop plans to open within the week. The franchise will be operated by Usha Volate, a Frederick County resident who has lived in the area for 17 years and is Millie's first Maryland-based franchise partner. According to the same account, Volate was drawn to Millie's ice cream, its welcoming atmosphere, and its potential for community connection.
From Pittsburgh Kitchen to Multi-State Franchise
Millie's story starts far from the D.C. suburbs. Co-founder Chad Townsend, a former fine-dining chef who worked in Pittsburgh and in a Michelin-starred kitchen in France, launched the brand in 2014 after buying a high-end Swiss Paco-Jet micro-pureeing machine on his wife Lauren's credit card, according to a release detailed by PR Newswire. Chad and Lauren Townsend, a husband-and-wife team, started what began as a small homemade ice cream operation in the founders' kitchen before it grew into a commercial brand. Townsend named the company Millie's in honor of his late grandmother, Mildred, as reported by Eat n' Bougie.
Getting from a home kitchen to a real manufacturing operation took outside capital. Community development lender The Progress Fund financed the leap with a $90,000 loan after traditional commercial banks rejected the startup, funding the purchase of pasteurization and production equipment, per The Progress Fund. Millie's now produces its ice cream at its facility in Homestead, Pennsylvania.
Institutional Backing Fuels National Push
The brand's growth accelerated further in March 2023, when Pittsburgh restaurant conglomerate Eat'n Park Hospitality Group acquired a minority ownership stake in Millie's to support supply chain management, distribution logistics, and market expansion, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. More recently, in November 2025, Millie's partnered with franchise development firm Franchise FastLane and joined its CarPool coaching program to speed up national growth beyond its then-20 active locations in Pennsylvania and Florida, according to Franchise.org.
Millie's franchise model got its brick-and-mortar start in South Fayette, Pennsylvania, in March 2021, after franchisees spent the previous year driving a Millie's food truck through COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, according to WPXI. Opening a standalone franchise store today requires an estimated total investment ranging between $142,000 and $471,000, per official franchise disclosure figures listed on Millie's own site. The chain has since grown to 16 brick-and-mortar locations, including several university locations, spread across the Pittsburgh, Jacksonville, Lubbock, and Buffalo areas.
What's on the Menu at Downtown Crown
Once open, the Gaithersburg shop will serve Millie's full lineup: ice cream and gelato by the scoop and pint, homemade waffle cones, shakes, and sundaes. The menu also includes chef-inspired grass-fed dairy ice creams alongside dairy-free gelatos, with the brand offering vegan, gluten-free, and other allergen-friendly options. Millie's sources dairy from Twin Brook Dairy Company, based in western Pennsylvania, and emphasizes regional sourcing more broadly by partnering with farmers and artisans. The shop will also use compostable serving ware.
The Downtown Crown location takes over a storefront previously occupied by The Crepe Shoppe, which relocated to 230 Crown Park Avenue in Gaithersburg. That kind of tenant churn is common in Downtown Crown, a roughly 260,000-square-foot mixed-use retail hub anchored within a 3-mile radius where households average an annual disposable income of $119,227, according to Crexi. The 20-acre site was purchased for $28 million in July 2012 from the historic 180-acre Crown Farm to build the master-planned center, which combines retail with more than 500 residential apartments, according to The MoCo Show's earlier reporting.
Local outlets first reported in May 2026 that Millie's had chosen the Ellington Boulevard address for its debut Maryland location, kicking off a months-long buildup toward what was expected to be a September launch, according to Gaithersburg Patch. For now, no updated opening date has been announced, and the exact reason for the short delay remains unclear.
