Open since 1988, a Kansas City ice cream institution is changing hands
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Foo’s Fabulous Frozen Custard in Brookside will change owners after 29 years.
- Longtime owner Betty Bremser sells shop to two former employees.
- New owners plan to preserve menu, traditions and community-driven legacy.
In Brookside, working at Foo’s Fabulous Frozen Custard has been a teenage rite of passage for decades.
That’s due to Betty Bremser, a French teacher turned business owner who since 1996 has run the Kansas City business like a classroom, dishing out cold treats and life lessons in equal measure.
“There are hundreds of people living all across the country doing amazing things today whose first job was at Foo’s, and so many of them would mention Betty if they had to give an acceptance speech,” said Megan Reilly. “I mean, I named my son Bremser after her.”
As of this summer, Reilly is officially one of the inheritors of Bremser’s legacy. She and friend Leah Krieger, a Foo’s alum, have purchased the custard shop at 6235 Brookside Plaza. The deal is set to close Sept 2.
“A lot of people have come to me over the years and said, ‘If you ever want to sell…’ and I always was like, ‘Get out of here,’” Bremser said. “But I knew my lease was up in August, and I’d been thinking for a year about what I was going to do after that. And then (Leah and Megan) approached me. And I realized: This is exactly what I want to happen.”
The three women have a lot of shared history. Krieger started at Foo’s when she was 15 and later worked at Oak 63, a now-closed Brookside restaurant that Bremser managed. Reilly, Krieger’s college roommate, also worked at that restaurant.
“Back in the Oak 63 days, after maybe a glass of wine or more, there’d be conversations like, ‘Somebody’s going to have to take Foo’s over eventually,’” Reilly said, since Bremser has no children and her nieces and nephews live elsewhere.
For a time, everyone thought Peter Edsall — a longtime Foo’s and Oak 63 employee — might take the reins.
“Peter passed away last year,” Reilly said. “With the lease being up and Peter gone, it felt like a way to honor both him and the Bremsers, by taking their baby and holding it as best we can.”
Foo’s hasn’t changed much since Betty’s brother Joe opened the shop in 1988 — Betty bought it from him eight years later when he and his wife moved to North Carolina — and the new owners aren’t planning on messing with the formula. Krieger is a self-employed marriage and family therapist; Reilly works as a nanny. Both are moms who live nearby with their families.
“We think it’s such a well-oiled machine,” Krieger said. “We’re just stepping in to keep it going. Maybe some cosmetic updates, but all the important stuff will stay.”
That includes Foo’s famous chalkboard, a chaotic, hand-scrawled menu bursting with a rainbow of concrete flavor combinations created by employees past and present.
Among the options on the board is Cookie Dough Crumble, invented by Krieger when she was 16. Vanilla custard, peanut butter sauce, chocolate chips, and chocolate chip cookie dough. It’s still Foo’s best seller.
