Shaw’s Candy & Ice Cream Parlor

They don’t answer. Don’t bother.

Great place to get ice cream.
Horrible place to get candy.
The candy here is so expensive.
Like hella expensive.
Ice cream and waffle cones ftw though.
The price on those bas girls are way better compared to coldstone.

I love this place! I grew up going to school near here and it was sad to see the place lose their lease. But now that the place has reopened as Sweet Memories, it’s completely revamped and adorable! It makes me wish I was a kid again! They serve some desserts there as well as all kinds of candies, chocolates, fudge, unique candies, collector’s items, many different flavors of ice cream (very very generous on a single scoop), ice cream sundaes, espresso drinks and coffee.
I’ll definitely be visiting more often. They are going to be getting wireless internet (per the chick that worked behind the counter).

So sad that Shaw’s lost their lease. I will always remember the bubble gum ice cream, the waffle cones, and the chocolate shell syrup. I will also remember they had the coldest water fountain, which was so refreshing after your ice cream. As a kid I would get lost among the assortment of candy and stuffed animals. Even as a teen I would love to go to Shaw’s and pick up something for Valentine’s Day. I heard that they are looking for a spot in San Mateo, so hopefully they find one.

Looks like I slipped in before their big closure. They are advertising 70% on various items in the store so guess if you’re a sweets lover this is the time to get some deals. Had a good cup of toasted almond ice cream. Didn’t even know this place existed if I hadn’t had breakfast nearby. Looks like it has a lot of history that unfortunately will be going away. 3.5 stars

I come here from time to time to look at their old school candies and sometimes buy some for myself or my family. I’ve tried their ice cream, it’s not like Fenton’s good, but it’s better than McD’s and all that.
My friend told me that the place always had the for lease sign. For years even. I hope they don’t go out of business !

Let’s keep Shaw’s alive!!! (see bottom)
Such a cute place. A true, maybe the only, Millbrae landmark. I love sitting at their little tables in vintage-​looking chairs. BIG, FAT scoops of ice cream. Ah, rocky road =]. Eat quickly before it melts! They also make their own chocolates. They sell candy and cute/​weird little knick knacks… some of which you could probably find a use for, others that are pretty useless but interesting nonetheless. They have a minimum credit charge of $ 10 or something so bring cash. Ahah I know that doesn’t sound like much, but I hardly carry any cash…
THEY’RE CLOSING SOON if they don’t make more money. lkajfoiwejasdfjoi stupid economy!!! Maybe we can save them?

i love shaws! not only because its right down the street from my house, they have the best coffee crunch ice cream!
the workers are very friendly and helpful. you definitely gotta try the peppermint chews. theyre so addicting even if they get stuck on you teeth.
too bad theyre moving to san mateo (well thats what the lady who works there told me)

You know, I wanted to love this place so much. It has all of my favorite things in it — candy, ice cream, useless shit to buy… but I can’t love it — alas, I can’t even like it. A friend and I went there last Friday night because I had read great things about it on Unilocal and I’m always down for trying a new ice cream place! When I walked in, I could tell that it was an older building — nothing wrong with that — and it did smell yummy — like candy. They do have a lot of different kinds of candy, which is impressive, and I did rather enjoy the exchange I had with a 10-​year-​old girl who was there with like, 15 friends for a birthday party to get ice cream (there was a stretch Hummer outside the shop that was chauffeuring the girls and the birthday girl’s parents around town all night — dude, whatever happened to a birthday party at a park with cake and a piñata?! I’m just sayin’.) Anyway, the conversation went something like this:
(To set the scene — I went walking by this 10-​year-​old girl, who is sitting eating her ice cream. I don’t even look at her, or make eye contact as I walk by. She then says to me… out of the blue…)
Her: You have NO IDEA what it’s like in that limo.
Me (amused): Really? It looks pretty cool.
Her: It’s so LOUD. We’re all screaming inside!
Me: Does it have lights?
Her: Yes.
Me: Colored ones?
Her: Yes.
Me: And do they flash and is there music?
Her: Yes.
Me (all dejected and jealous): Oh MAN, that sounds so cool.
Then one of her friends decides to jump into the convo —
Friend: And there’s a bar.
Me (shocked): A bar? What?
Mom of the Birthday Girl: It only has soda.
Me: Oh, good. I thought maybe they had lowered the legal drinking age or something.
Friend (completely serious): We’re only 10.
Oh. Thanks for clarifying. ;)
Now, this exchange, while very amusing, cannot make up for what happened when my friend decided to get an ice cream sundae. She got a sundae with chocolate ice cream, hot fudge, whipped cream, nuts, and a cherry. This came to like, I dunno, $ 5 or something. She goes to use her debit card — and they tell her, «Oh, sorry, $ 10 credit card minimum.» She stands there, shocked (frankly, so was I). «But I don’t have any cash,» she tells them politely. The woman just gives her an «I-don’t-give-a-shit» smile and says, «Sorry. $ 10 minimum.» My friend then goes around the store and picks out some random crap to total $ 10. Then they make her wait in line AGAIN — mind you, the line is like, 8 people deep now — to pay. When she does pay, she’s at like, $ 8 and change, and they tell her again — $ 10 minimum. So she throws some candy at the counter in with her stuff. Criminy.
So, after all of this, she sits down with me to enjoy her sundae. She takes a bite, and we’re expecting some amazing treat… but she just looks at me kind of weird as she tastes it. Then she goes, «This tastes weird. Taste it.» (Don’t you love it when people say that kind of stuff? «This is SO GROSS… try it!» Hahaha…) So I taste it, and the ice cream was horrible quality. Like, it tasted like the bastard stepchild of the Safeway brand of ice cream, which isn’t even that bad. But this tasted really weird. Not good at all. Then, we get to the hot fudge — it’s chewy. Yeah, you read that right. CHEWY. It was so gross. It was chewy and just tasted old. I had to sit there and chew the fudge. Not cool, man. The whole experience was so bad, my friend threw her sundae away. And she had to buy extra candy that she didn’t even want!
I love the idea of this place — the concept of a fun, independent ice cream and candy store is a great one, and we could definitely use more of them around… but not like this one. :(

So, I’m sitting in the dentist chair and for some reason all I could think about was ICECREAM!
After leaving the buzz and bright lights of the dentist my mission was to find good icecream. No fast food stuff. An independent if possible, home made not lame fake stuff.
Heading north on El Camino there it was… like a beacon in the night SHAWS ICECREAM!
I had vanilla blackberry — it was rich, sweet, fresh and out right fantastic.
All this happiness for only $ 2.25. They also had prepacked ½ gallon containers to go for only 9 bucks. Thank God I had the will power to say no, well for now that is.

i haven’t been here in years but it remains to be nostalgia at it’s best. it’s like WWCF (yeah that’s right, i shortened Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. if you were a real foodie you would have figured it out yourself!) all condensed into a small old fashioned store. it’s so old timey looking that when i step in i feel like future Regina has walked into a time warp but really it’s just that time stands still at this place. i feel like i should only be allowed in the store if i am wearing a sundress and have ridden over on my bicycle with my little puppy, who i’ve just decided i will name Sunshine, in the basket.
this place contains random toys and games that most people probably wouldn’t purchase in our technology and electronics driven world. i can only imagine that the color has worn down on all of the packaging of the little army men and the kazoos that sit pretty near the windows. they have house made candies that include mouth exercising peppermint chews. ice cream and sundaes made for everybody’s liking.
places like this need to remain in business so that every so often we can take the time to slow down and enjoy the simple things in life. life when a scoop of ice cream was the highlight of the day and that was okay. yeah you can make money in the stock market, exercise to make yourself more physically appealing, fullfill yourself by working long hard hours to earn an extra buck, skydive to feel that rush of adrenaline, or pack your every minute with something to do so you feel you’ve accomplished a productive day. but sometimes a scoop of ice cream does actually make my day. and sometimes simplicity is more fullfilling than all of the aforementioned.
take a day out of your busy life and slow down. make it simple and make it fun. add Shaw’s into the equation and you’re set. have a good day!
oh, and just to let you know Sunshine isn’t real. she’s just there for story telling sake.

Growing up in San Francisco, I remembered 3 locations of Shaws: West Portal, Ocean Ave., and this one in San Bruno. Good memories of these places, with house made chocolates, fudge, and caramels, as well as other candy novelties. The highlight after school, or after football games. Ice cream sundaes and splits were to die for. Even made their own Its-It’s.
Fast forward to the present. Came to this location with my family. Still a lot of the old-​school feel with the 60’s era building. Although they still make some of their own candies, this place is filled wall-​to-​wall with almost every candy novelty you can think of, as well as some toys.
Ice cream scoops are still generous. I had a double scoop of mango and coconut. One daughter had bubblegum, the other had something chocolate (what else!). The mango tasted great with chunks of mango. Coconut was creamy. One daughter couldn’t finish her chocolate ice cream, and I did my fatherly duty and finished it for her.

I love this place! I’d always just driven buy, i’m really not a fan of ice cream anymore, (not since I was a kid), but my husband took me to this place a while back, and OMG! They’re coffee crunch ice cream is the best! so, now their’s is the only ice cream I eat.
They also have a lot of hard to find candies, and little knick-​knacks for you to take you back to when you were a kid.

It’s always good to go to simple places like ice cream shops that aren’t chains. This is a fun place just to go in. Kind of retro… if only just because there isn’t one in every shopping mall. I think the ice cream is creamier… sweeter, you can have multi scoops on a cone, (cones are more fun) and they do have a good selection. Shakes, malts & sodas… hot fudge sundaes… they can do all that. They also have assorted gift boxes of candy, and a few toys too. Now for you dudes that are lucky and secure enough NOT to have a high maintenance, superficial, blood sucking lady… you can put together a thoughtful «box of candy/​stuffed cute heart holding animal» combination for any occasion, that will make her happy, AND put you up 5 – 7 points on the sensitivity scale.
Or… just go to have a little fun.

Used to go for the shakes and the splits. Now, I just go to sniff the sugar air. Sometimes I end up splurging on chocolates or some sour sugar coated treats.
oh how I wish I could be twelve again and chow down on at Shaw’s without a worry about fitting into certain sizes.
Five spatulas for the sweet memories.

COFFEE CRUNCH ICE CREAM… order it and that’s an order!
they have lots of other home made flavors too. and the banana royale is delish! the best part of this old fashioned ice cream parlor is all the novelty toys and candies they sell on the side. you will be entertained the entire time you’re eating your ice cream while you look at all their nostalgic merchandise.

We tried this place in search of decent homemade ice cream, and the situation went steadily downhill from the moment we set foot in the store.
The hot fudge here is neither hot nor fudge. Maybe I’m just being a hot fudge snob, but I like my hot fudge to be… hot. And to taste like fudge. The brown gunk that was sitting on top of my chocolate peanut butter cup ice cream scoop was chewy and gummy and had no flavor. Plus, it was all cold and stuck to the sides of the cup.
It was literally a chore to scrape at the container and eat the stuff, and ice cream is supposed to be a treat! My husband and I both didn’t finish our respective scoops. Maybe that’s because the portions were gigantic, but also we weren’t enjoying the ice cream enough to finish.
The ice cream itself wasn’t bad, don’t get me wrong. But honestly, it wasn’t much better than the high-​end kind you get at the supermarket. I was expecting to be «wowed.»
They have a HUGE selection of just about every kind of candy and chocolate you can possibly imagine. If we come back, it’ll be for the confections, not the ice cream.

One word:
Yummy.
I don’t like to elaborate much, so hopefully you get it.

Such a cool old-​school homemade ice cream place. If you love ice cream (or have kids/​nieces/​nephews who love ice cream), you gotta check out this place.
For $ 1.99 you’ll get a HUGE scoop of Shaw’s homemade ice cream (see picture) double the size of a standard single scoop from a place like Baskin Robbins. And their ice cream flavors have their unique signature — my thin mint ice cream (like mint chocolate chip) had large chunks of actual chocolate thin mint candy. I really liked that. The table next to us was having this HUGE banana split — that looked SO SO good.
Inside looks very old school 50’s and has lots of different toys and candy — any kid’s dreamland. Too bad their exterior looks so drab — you could easily pass by this place and never notice it. Or even if you do notice it, it looks like a closed down shop. I only found this place because I saw it featured on a local tv show and came looking for it.
Bottom line: A must-​visit for ice cream lovers. Bring any kid here and they’ll think you’re the greatest. Come support Shaw’s because their business looked rather brisk even on a hot summer weekend day — would be awful for this place with such old school charm to close.

They have mint ice cream here that has chunks of Ande’s mints in it, holy-freakin’-crap! That’s good eats.
Love looking at all their delectable candies (home made and commercially produced) while trying to decide how much ice cream to get.
They need to fix their sign and/​or move their front door closer to the street. If you casually drive by, they never appear open. Has the unique distinction of being the only ice cream shop (that I know of) located across the street from a funeral home.