Sweetcream Dairy : Jon and Jacqui
- Brick + Tides
- Jan 7
- 9 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
The science, the stubbornness, and the shared joy that brought Jon Denton back home to Biddeford — and let his wife Jacqui build a life around it
Sweetcream Dairy sits on Main Street in Biddeford like it belongs there, like it always knew it would end up exactly where it is. Not because the path was obvious. Not because it was easy. But because this is what happens when curiosity meets patience, and when two people decide that doing something the hard way is worth it.
Inside the shop at 128 Main Street, Suite 101, ice cream is being made in a way most customers never see. There’s a batch pasteurizer humming in the background, and nearby, a chart recorder quietly tracing lines across paper — proof that temperatures were reached, held, and respected.
It looks more like scientific equipment than dessert production, which makes perfect sense once you meet Jon Denton.
Jon doesn’t just like ice cream. He understands it. He dissects it. He rebuilds it. And standing right beside that intensity is Jacqui DeFranca — dancer, organizer, listener, teacher — the person who makes sure all that passion lands in the world as something warm, human, and welcoming.
Together, they’ve built Sweetcream Dairy into more than a shop. It’s a place where chemistry meets memory, where local farms meet downtown sidewalks, and where ice cream quietly becomes a bridge between people.
A restaurant in New York, and a habit of asking “why”
Jon and Jacqui met in New York City, working at the same restaurant in the West Village — Hudson Clearwater, a small, neighborhood spot on Hudson and Morton. Jacqui had just moved from Los Angeles, encouraged by a favorite customer to apply there. Jon was already part of the rhythm of the place.
They fell in love the way restaurant people often do: late nights, shared exhaustion, shared meals. And in between it all, a lot of ice cream.
Ice cream dates became their thing. Not just because ice cream is fun, but because they kept noticing the same thing: it was expensive, and often disappointing. That observation might pass for most people. For Jon and Jacqui, it stuck.
Jacqui remembers it clearly — the moment ice cream stopped being just a treat and became a question. Why does this taste like this? Why is this the standard?
Jon, already prone to deep dives, took the bait.
He had always liked recipe development, playing with food science in their apartment. Ice cream just gave that curiosity a direction. And while their earliest idea was actually milkshakes — big, playful, New York-style creations — the logic was unavoidable.
Milkshakes require ice cream. So they started there.
And Jon fell hard.
“I personally fell in love with making ice cream,” he said.
Brooklyn blind tastings and the beginning of a philosophy
Their Brooklyn apartment turned into an informal lab. Friends were invited over for blind tastings — vanilla versus vanilla, no labels, no bias. They pulled ice cream from bodegas, grocery stores, premium brands. Each sample was numbered. Feedback was collected.
What stood out wasn’t just which ice cream won — though Jon still loves telling the story of the expensive pint finishing last — but why people liked what they liked.
Some flavors weren’t technically impressive. They were emotionally powerful.
“That’s when I realized there’s nostalgia baked into ice cream,” Jon said.
That insight stuck. Ice cream wasn’t just chemistry. It was memory. Childhood. Wednesdays after school. Summer nights. People you loved.
Sweetcream would have to respect both.
Penn State says “don’t do this” — Jon does it anyway
In 2015, Jon attended the Penn State Ice Cream Short Course — an intensive, historic program that has trained generations of ice cream makers. The days were long. The crowd ranged from multinational food companies to tiny mom-and-pop shops.
Jon soaked it up.
He also heard something loud and clear: don’t do it the way we're teaching it.
Specifically, don’t make your own base.
Most ice cream shops buy a pre-made mix. It’s efficient. It’s safe. It avoids state inspections, pasteurization headaches, and extra labor. Ice cream school didn’t sugarcoat it.
“They told me not to do that,” Jon said.
But Jon already knew what he wanted — and Jacqui backed him fully.
They had tasted the difference. They had seen places like Ample Hills in New York pasteurize their own base and produce something undeniably better. Jacqui, always tuned into sourcing and intention, believed in that direction just as strongly.
Doing it from scratch meant control. It meant freedom. It meant being able to turn the dials, as Jon likes to say.
And that control would become the soul of Sweetcream.
Chemistry with a purpose — and strawberries as proof
Jon doesn’t talk about ice cream like a chef. He talks about it like a problem to solve — one he happens to love solving.
Ice cream is balance: fat, sugar, solids, water. Pre-made mixes are already tuned. Add real fruit, and you disrupt that balance. That’s why so much fruit ice cream relies on extracts.
Jon refuses that shortcut.
“I use a differential equation solver,” he said casually, like this is something everyone does on a Monday.
His spreadsheets allow him to adjust the entire recipe around real ingredients. If strawberries bring water, he compensates elsewhere. Less milk. More fruit. Still balanced.
The result is ice cream that tastes unmistakably real.
Strawberry is Jon’s benchmark — and his favorite.
“It’s night and day,” he said. “I really can’t eat other strawberry ice cream now.”
Jacqui laughs about it, but she understands why. Once you train your palate on real flavors, it’s hard to go back.
Back to Maine — and choosing Biddeford on purpose
New York had inspired the idea, but it wasn’t where the business belonged. Smorgasburg, in Williamsburg, NY, was considered. Test kitchens were explored. Permits piled up. Costs mounted. Eventually, the bigger question surfaced: Do we want to build our life here?
Jon didn’t.
They moved to Maine, initially thinking Portland would be the place. But the fit wasn’t right — too expensive, too constrained, too risky for something new.
Biddeford offered space. Flexibility. Possibility.
Their first shop was inside the Biddeford Mills — 300 square feet, a tiny footprint, and affordable rent.
It allowed them to experiment, grow, and survive. They made ice cream the hard way in a space that barely supported it. Wholesale orders stacked up. There was no walk-in freezer. Everything felt tight.
They outgrew it.
Owning the building — and discovering a family connection
A friend and community member tipped them off to a building for sale on Main Street. The idea of owning wasn’t about ambition — it was about stability.
Jacqui, always thinking long-term, understood what it meant to control their own rent in a changing city. Jon remembered advice from years earlier: If you can ever own the building your business is in, do it.
When they toured the building with Jon’s parents, something unexpected happened.
Jon’s mom started crying.
She recognized it immediately. Jon’s great-grandfather had worked there when it was a clothing store.
The building carried family history they hadn’t known was there.
“It felt meant to be,” Jacqui said.
They bought it. They built it out. They made it their own — while honoring what came before.
Local milk, local strawberries, and a lot of lifting for Sweetcream Dairy
Sweetcream’s commitment to local sourcing is real — and physical.
Milk and cream come from Harris Farm in Dayton, about twelve minutes away.
“They do not deliver,” Jon said.
So they go get it. Thousands of trips. Five-gallon bladders. Crates loaded by hand.
Jacqui jokes that it’s why they’re strong — but there’s truth in it. Local sourcing isn’t romantic. It’s work. And they’ve chosen it every time.
Chestnuts, a UNE professor, and ice cream as education
This curiosity doesn’t stop at flavor. It spills outward — into history, agriculture, and education.
One fall, while brainstorming seasonal holiday flavors, Jon wondered if chestnuts could be sourced locally. Instead of ordering from a distributor, he Googled Maine chestnuts.
Jon emailed him, not knowing where it would lead. Tom wrote back and explained that American chestnuts are largely extinct, victims of blight — but that he knew where a few trees remained.
So Jon, Jacqui, and their infant son Zay went foraging.
They walked through woods behind a church an hour away. Zay had his first foraging experience. They collected chestnuts by hand.
Those chestnuts became ice cream — but more importantly, they became a story.
Jacqui sees moments like this as central to what Sweetcream can be.
“Ice cream became a platform,” she explained — a way to connect people to local farms, local research, and ideas they might not otherwise encounter.
Tom used the ice cream as a way to talk about his work reviving the American chestnut. Customers learned something while enjoying dessert. Education didn’t feel heavy. It felt joyful.
Watching a community grow — one scoop at a time
After nine years, Sweetcream has become part of people’s lives in ways Jon and Jacqui never planned.
They’ve watched kids grow up. Regulars turn into parents. Employees move on to college and careers. Relationships form across the counter.
Jacqui notices these things. She holds onto them. “There’s something really special about growing together,” she said. They’ve built a workplace that people return to, remember fondly, and stay connected to. For Jacqui, that matters as much as the product.
She believes food service teaches skills that last a lifetime — empathy, communication, responsibility — and she’s proud Sweetcream has been a first job for so many.
Jacqui’s world keeps expanding — and Sweetcream expands with her
Outside the shop, Jacqui is still dancing. Starting at age three, dance has been her constant. She studied dance at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and went on to perform professionally in both Los Angeles and New York City. Now based in Maine, she continues to freelance as a dancer, collaborating with local favorites like Subcircle in Biddeford, while also teaching private yoga.
Recently, she became a real estate agent at Oceanview Properties in Biddeford Pool. It's another way to stay connected to the city she loves.
“I love people,” she said simply.
That love shows up everywhere at Sweetcream — in the way customers are greeted, in the way staff are supported, in the way ice cream becomes a shared experience rather than just a transaction.
The final twist: the ice cream kid doesn’t love ice cream
Their son Zay is almost seven. He’s grown up inside an ice cream shop.
And he doesn’t really like ice cream.
He loves sprinkles.
His order is legendary: the tiniest scoop of strawberry with an avalanche of rainbow sprinkles — or just sprinkles on their own.
It’s perfect. Because Sweetcream was never about forcing taste. It was about honoring it.
What Sweetcream really is
Sweetcream Dairy is a story about curiosity that didn’t stop, advice that was politely ignored, and science used in service of joy.
It’s about Jon Denton doing exactly what ice cream school told him not to do because he believed the product would be better. And it’s about Jacqui DeFranca making sure intention turned into connection, education, and community.
But it’s also a story about coming home.
About a kid from Biddeford who left for New York City, met a woman from Massachusetts in a West Village restaurant, and then chose to come back to Maine. Back to a slower pace. Back to a place where building something meaningful felt possible.
It’s about walking into a Main Street building and realizing it once held your great grandfather’s livelihood. About buying it, caring for it, and filling it again with work done by hand. About time folding in on itself, past, present, and future sharing the same walls.
Ice cream is the medium.
But what they’ve built is something warmer, a place where memory lives quietly in the background, where hard work feels personal, and where coming home tastes just as sweet as it always did.
Many thanks to Jacqui and Jon for their time on Monday, December 15, 2025. Photos and interview by Biddeford Photographer Cy Cyr.
Visit Sweetcream Dairy online for their hours and additional info. Follow Sweetcream on Facebook. Follow Sweetcream on Instagram.
BRICK+TIDES is a weekly digital magazine based in York County, Maine. We share positive and inspiring stories about local businesses, people, and places that make Southern Maine special. If you'd like to be first to read our free weekly email, we'd love for you to subscribe!
Miss a feature from York County, Maine? Head to our homepage to see our recent features.
