If you open the door to Cool Spoons on any given afternoon, a welcoming voice is almost certainly the first thing you’ll hear.

“Hi, welcome to Cool Spoons,” says Don Johnson, the co-owner of the store with his wife Jill Johnson.

The couple opened Cool Spoons in March of 2012, and it has been a Carbondale staple ever since.

Jill Johnson said, “He’s kind of always wanted to own his own business, he’s always had that itch to own something.”

After touring many ice cream and frozen yogurt shops in Memphis, including taste tests, the Johnson’s returned to Carbondale with a concept. After a few short months, Cool Spoons opened.

Even as competitors’ stores have come and gone in Carbondale, Cool Spoons has remained open. Don Johnson thinks he has an idea as to why the shop has survived.

“We get to sell an experience for people, not just ice cream when they come here,” he said.

His strong business sense also has helped keep Cool Spoons around.

“I don’t want to be in the ice cream hobby. I want to be in the ice cream business,” he said.

Don Johnson has been at the helm running the store for the last 19 months. According to him, his wife originally was “the face of the store,” but when she moved on to become a foster care caseworker, he took over the day-to-day operations.

He said, “She saw that I was retired and going into a new phase in my career, and she wanted to experience something similar.”

While Don Johnson had been working in the background since the store opened, doing things like payroll, taxes, and ordering supplies, he hadn’t been behind the counter very often.

But now he is, and the popularity of the store hasn’t dropped off at all since he took over, likely due to the great experience that people are still receiving each and every time they come to the shop.

“That’s probably our secret sauce… we sell happiness. We get to sell an experience, not just ice cream for people when they come here,” Don Johnson said.

He certainly seems to take selling happiness to heart. As he helps customers, he can be heard laughing and having genuine conversations with them, asking how they’re doing, and commenting on their ridiculous ice cream creations. At times, the conversations stray far from anything related to ice cream and into seemingly random topics.

Azharia Scott, a sophomore at SIU who has worked at Cool Spoons for the last eight months, notices these interactions, which go beyond just the customers. According to Scott, Don Johnson has the same kind of interactions with employees too.

Scott said, “He is definitely a people person. And I feel like he goes, coming into work, ‘I’m gonna have a conversation.’ It’s not just awkward silence, it’s ‘hey, how’s your day going?’”

According to Jill Johnson, her husband has a very close connection with his workers.

“He really wants the best for them… even when we first opened, the kids, he would take them under his wing, and he would teach them, ‘you really need to start saving’… and what their goals were, and he’ll support them in any goals they have,” she said.

This friendliness ties to Don Johnson’s background in the hotel industry and helps to fuel what he calls one of the most important ideologies of the store: customer service.

“I still have a philosophy that the customer is number one,” he said.

With that in mind, customers receive a slightly different designation in Don Johnson’s eyes; they’re something more meaningful.

“When I look at customers that come into the store here, I look at him as my guest more than I look at him as my customer. If we treat them right and get them to have a good time, they’re gonna come back,” he said.

Before he retired, Don Johnson was a vice president of operations for a hotel management company, meaning that he dealt in customer relations often.

Jill Johnson said, “He’s very customer service oriented… When we opened up this business, number one is customer service. And we had to teach our kids that worked for us, customer service is number one.”

As an employee, Scott knows firsthand what Don Johnson expects out of workers in terms of customer service, but also knows how he inspires his workers.

Scott said, “The motivation is the laughter and joy I get… It’s not a negative atmosphere. So that motivates me to want to be positive to the customers to show them, ‘this is who we are.’”

Don Johnson has also added a few of his own personal touches to the store since he began running it daily, including coming up and creating his own ice cream flavors from scratch. He also shows incredible dedication to his customers and their wants.

“If somebody doesn’t like a flavor and wants me to bring in a new flavor, I can come up and figure out a way of making, coming up with a new flavor,” he said.

One custom creation, Elmer’s butter pecan, was inspired by his father’s own favorite.

Don Johnson said, “I named it after my dad because it was just kind of a cool thing to do, to have when your mom and dad… come down and visit your store, and you could offer your dad his own personalized ice cream.”

According to Jill Johnson, her husband has had a bit of fun by upping the toppings count to more than any other ice cream shop in the USA. Most stores have a seemingly reasonable number, usually around 75.

Cool Spoons has a few more than that, including unique ones like bacon, maple syrup, and several cultural spices.

Jill Johnson said, “He has accumulated a lot more toppings… the sign says he’s up to 206.”

Don Johnson said, “What we have found as we’ve been in business is that people love the idea that they can come in here and find just about anything.”

He continued, “We change things up quite frequently. But usually we try to find things that make it very fun.”

One specific thing that makes Don Johnson smile is watching the reactions of new customers when they first walk in the door.

“Particularly when children come in here, they see that wall of toppings, and they have what we call a ‘Willy Wonka’ moment. And they, you know, they just get overwhelmed by it,” he said. “If they don’t come in with a smile, they’re gonna certainly leave with a smile on their face.”

Another fun aspect of Cool Spoons are the “cool spoons” themselves, which change colors when exposed to different temperatures.

“You can’t be called Cool Spoons and not offer cool spoons to kids,” Don Johnson said with a mix of seriousness and a laugh.

He is very happy where he is, and while he doesn’t know how long he’ll stay at Cool Spoons, he’s content to be “calling my own shots.”

“It’s just nice to be able to throw on cargo shorts every day and not worry about a tie,”  he said.

That’s not to say he’s nearly done working or is going to leave Cool Spoons soon. He’s quite far from either.

“I’m still young enough that even though I retired from one job, I’m not ready to retire from life yet,” he said.

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