Dippers, Cedar City’s new frozen banana shop, already finding plenty of ‘a-peel’

Written by Jeff Richards
February 4, 2024

CEDAR CITY – Customers are already going bananas for Dippers, Cedar City’s newest sweet treats shop.

Olivia Small prepares to fulfill a customer’s order at Dippers during the store’s grand opening, Cedar City, Utah, Jan. 30, 2024 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News

The business specializes in serving frozen bananas on a stick dipped in chocolate and covered with various other toppings. Located a short distance from the Southern Utah University campus, Dippers is owned and operated by the brother-sister duo Ian and Olivia Small, who are full-time students at the university.

Olivia Small, a sophomore art major who hails from Tooele, spoke to Cedar City News about how the idea for the business began. She said she first tried frozen bananas while traveling along the West Coast, and later learned they are also a common treat in Guatemala and other parts of Central America.

“I just got addicted,” she said. “And then I came to school here, and I would kind of make them for me because I wanted to eat them.”

When her brother Ian, a freshman music major, decided to also come to Cedar City and attend SUU, they started making batches of frozen bananas to sell at the local farmer’s market and other events.

“Every pickleball tournament or softball tournament, we would just email them and be like, can we show up and sell them there?” she said.

Then, one day, she recalled, they were sitting at their farmer’s market stand and noticed a small vacant building across the street.

Customers wait to place their orders at Dippers during the store’s grand opening, Cedar City, Utah, Jan. 30, 2024 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News

“We were just peeking through the windows and someone, one of the renters next door, came over. So we were asking him about it,” Olivia Small said, adding that the man initially thought she and her brother were teenagers trying to break into the building.

After signing a lease in September, the siblings went to work renovating the place to get it ready for business. They did most of the work themselves, Olivia said.

“We just spent, like, every spare minute, because we’re full time students,” she said. “We just had to YouTube everything and figure it out.”

Tuesday’s grand opening exceeded their expectations, Olivia Small added.

“We were just blown away by how many people came,” she said. “We had almost 300 bananas frozen and we thought that would last us throughout the week, but we sold out by 7 o’clock that night.”

After making a restocking trip to Costco, they came in early the next morning to freeze another large batch of bananas, Olivia said. 

“It’s been awesome,” Ian Small said as a group of about a dozen people came into the shop as the store opened on Thursday. “I’m just shocked … we thought we had enough bananas for the week. It’s been kind of crazy to see that people enjoy it and are having fun with it, or as much fun as we are.”

Dippers is located at 18 N. 100 West in Cedar City. The store’s winter hours are 3-9 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 2-10 p.m. Fridays and noon to 10 p.m. Saturdays, closed on Sundays and Mondays. For more information, follow Dippers on Instagram or Facebook.

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Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2024, all rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeff Richards, a native of Salt Lake City with family roots in Panguitch, lived in Moab for 20 years before joining St. George News in 2017. Jeff is a longtime journalist and secondary school teacher. He and his wife Penny are the parents of five daughters. They also have three young grandsons and one granddaughter. Jeff and his family enjoy swimming, camping, sightseeing, reading, and taking pictures.

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @stgnews@moabjeff@stgnewssports

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