Archie’s Ice Cream opens second Rehoboth Avenue location

Six years after taking over ownership of Archie’s Ice Cream on Rehoboth Avenue, Ercan Sanli and Alper Akgoren have expanded with a second location.

The original Archie’s Ice Cream is located on the south side of Rehoboth Avenue, at the entrance of Penny Lane. The new location, open now for nearly two weeks, is almost directly across the street, on the north side of Rehoboth Avenue.

During an interview July 24, Sanli said he wished things were going better, but under the current economic conditions, things were going OK.

Originally from Turkey, Sanli hasn’t always been in the ice cream business. He has a degree in mechanical engineering, but after a few years of applying his education to work, he decided he needed a change. 

“I was tired of working for someone else,” he said. “One day I was a mechanical engineer. The next day I owned an ice cream store.”

Sanli ended up in Rehoboth because he worked in Ocean City, Md., as a college student who participated in a summer work program for foreign exchange students 13 years ago. That’s when he met Akgoren. He said after his work program ended, he went back to Turkey and earned his degree. Six years ago, he was in Rehoboth visiting Akgoren when Archie’s came up for sale, and the two jumped at the chance to take over ownership.

Six years into owning Archie’s, Sanli said he’s happy to be in Rehoboth Beach.

“It’s such a beautiful area,” he said. “That’s the main reason we’re here.”

There are lots of machines making the ice cream in-house, so Sanli said he even gets to put his mechanical engineering degree to work every now and then.

“If a machine breaks, I’m the first one who looks at it,” he said, laughing.

Archie’s makes 23 flavors of ice cream. Sanli said the fruit-flavored ice cream - strawberry and black raspberry - is made with real fruit, no food coloring or extract.

“It’s tough to eat other fruit-flavored ice cream because it just doesn’t taste as good,” he said.

Archie’s makes homemade lemonade in regular, mint, strawberry, blueberry, raspberry and blackberry flavors. Sanli estimates they go through 600 lemons in a day.

Archie’s also offers three soft-serve ice cream flavors - vanilla, chocolate and twist. 

Both locations of Archie’s Ice Cream, 42 and 25 Rehoboth Ave., are open 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week. Archie’s is also on Instagram at archies_icecream.