Beth Marie's Old Fashioned Ice Cream

The waffle cones are baked in the shop, and you smell them before you reach the counter. Beth Marie’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream has been scooping on Denton’s Historic Downtown Square since November 1998, and this original shop is still the anchor of what became a small Texas chain: homemade ice cream, a marble soda fountain, sundaes, ice cream cakes and a lunch menu for anyone who arrives before dessert.

Ice cream made in an old-fashioned parlor

The format is a soda fountain in the proper sense, not a sweets counter with a freezer behind it. Ice cream is made in house, the flavor list is long and turns over with the season, and the sodas and sundaes are built to order at the counter. The Texas identity is worn openly, from GO TEXAN membership to the shop’s own line about good taste knowing no season.

One detail does more than any slogan: the same 1927 ice cream machine still churns virtually every pint that leaves the shop. That is unusual enough to change how the ice cream reads, and it fits a business whose whole proposition is doing it the old way, in the same room, on the same square.

A room built in 1876, used like a parlor

The building dates to 1876 and the fit-out leans into it: a checkerboard floor, a marble-topped soda fountain counter, wire-backed chairs and tables made for sitting rather than turning over. It is a room to linger in, and the smell of waffle cones baking gives it a sensory signature before anything is served.

The square around it does the rest. Beth Marie’s is tied to downtown Denton’s revival and works as a stop for families, first dates, birthdays and post-stroll dessert, walkable to everything else on the square. The atmosphere is lively and social, closer to a small-town parlor than a dessert shop with a queue.

Order the waffle cone before the sundae

Start with a scoop in a fresh-baked waffle cone. It is the clearest read on the place: homemade ice cream in a historic soda fountain, with the cone giving the visit its classic shape. Because the flavor list turns over seasonally, the practical approach is to ask what came out that week rather than to arrive with a fixed idea.

The second move is a soda fountain order, especially on a slower visit, since the sodas and sundaes are what the marble counter was built for. If the visit runs longer, the kitchen also does sandwiches, stuffed baked potatoes and chili, which makes the shop useful before dessert as well as after it, and ice cream cakes are the take-home option when the occasion calls for one.