Cute small-town ice cream shop with a hometown feel.
Feather N' Fin has been around for a long time. It's changed hands a few times, but it's always been a family-run type of business for as long as I can remember. I believe it still is even though the ownership has evolved throughout the years. Despite that, not a lot has changed about Feather N" Fin over the years, particularly when it comes to quality and service.
The prices are still average for the area and ice cream cream is still scooped with a smile. The menu has changed somewhat, but not a lot. They still serve up large single ice cream scoops, have blended flurries and plenty of flavors (the exact number of which I'm not sure, but it's a lot). They now sell Fireside Coffee, which I think is a new thing, but I've never ordered coffee here, so I'm not 100% certain when they started doing that.
The Ashby's ice cream is good and the portion sizes are ridiculous- scoops of ice cream are pretty much twice the size one would expect for the same amount of money. That's a good value, especially for a family. Oh, and it never starts melting as soon as you get it, no matter how hot it is. Trust me, I've been there when the heat index was 98.
As for the flurries, they are big, but not as good as I would have expected. To be honest, a McDonald's flurry is blended better, but mine was still decent, just not as good as I would have liked. To be fair, they have two kinds of Reese's Flurries- one with plain vanilla ice cream and one with chocolate and peanut butter ice cream mixed in. I ordered the former and probably should have gotten the latter. It was still good, just not as chunky and filled with Reese's topping as I'm used to.
They do charge extra for credit card transactions. I don't like that. There's no reason why they owners don't just do what every other small business (especially every restaurant, bar, farmer's market kiosk, and food truck in Flint) does and switch to using an Intuit card reader or get an Ipad for credit card transactions at a lower rate. I bet their foot traffic would tick up if they did that. I know how much I greatly dislike spending money at any business that either charges extra for credit card use or is cash only. I only stop in if I have cash on hand and am willing to spend it in the moment.
Service is great- very friendly, even downright personable. I can tell that likely none of the employees are from Flint- they're too nice! They're not too chatty, nor are they cold and robot-like. The staff actually acts like they enjoy their work. Maybe there are free ice cream perks involved? Who knows? At any rate, the employees seem to go out of their way to make everyone feel like family. This is definitely a small-town ice cream shop. Rarely do I see that kind of service on the regular in a larger, urban city.
There are plenty of shady areas to sit and eat outside, too. They have tables and even a covered pavilion area out back, large enough to accommodate large groups, too. That's a plus. read more