Soft Serve Loaded Stackers
The "Loaded Stackers" I noticed on my previous visit to Wagon Creamery were still on my mind so I made a special visit just to try one. Turns out they're on a printed menu now, not just on the display screen, though that may just be so that people don't have to turn sideways to see their choices while ordering, since it's now taped down right on the counter.
I was in the mood for something crunchy so the Crushed Waffle version looked right, though the Reese's Pieces was a tempting second choice. They only had Vanilla soft serve (no chocolate and no twist), and I went with hot fudge and chocolate jimmies. It turns out that it takes a lot of work to build - not a problem, it was a slow evening anyway. That's a big difference between this and the "untrademarked weather-themed soft-serve product" most places have - for a flurry, you just throw everything in and push the button and it's mixed. I didn't see any helpful tools for building the Stacker - the server just added ice cream, "stuff", more ice cream, more "stuff", carefully by hand. (This also suggests you could customize it a bunch, though I didn't ask - at very least the fixed menu helps avoid Analysis paralysis.)
That's a bunch of crunchy stuff - waffle cone bits, waffle cone ends, biscoff cookie, chocolate jimmies. From the top it's a nicely decorated ice cream, basically a sundae in a cup…
From the side, you can see that there's "stuff" all the way down. Looks like the hot fudge went in first, along the sides, but there are visibly crunch bits all the way down.
Working through it, it gets a little bit less packed after the top level, but only a little. At this point I realized this was basically the soft-serve version of something like Ben & Jerry's "Americone Dream" - or for the older readers, "Steve's" (in Harvard Square) Mixins - crunchy stuff thoroughly mixed in as if it were part of the flavor. (Mixins were even more labor intensive, because you started with a couple of scoops of hard ice cream and an undergrad "Scooper" with issues to work out - add your chosen mix-ins and a bunch of two-fisted violence and you had what was basically a custom flavor!)
There was still crunchy stuff at the very bottom. All in all it's a big dessert (the same 16oz drink cups we saw at Dribbles which are still great for photography!) but also a surprisingly satisfying for something based on soft-serve.
Happy National Ice Cream Sandwich Day! (The day is actually on 2 August for no particular reason, unlike S'mores day later in the month.) I didn't end up doing anything specifically about ice cream sandwiches - they're not all that common at ice cream shops, especially if you mean long bars with "brownie cookie" covers - fancy "cookie sandwiches" (which I remember from childhood as "harbor bars" from a place on the Maine coast near Bar Harbor) are much more common, with Cookie Monstah being the extreme case. It's also very common to find ice cream flavors with cookies mixed into them - which is great, but not what the day is about.
Going through my notes (and the map) I didn't find anything that really caught my eye as far as ice cream sandwiches, but instead discovered a missing review - a friend dragged me to Wagon Creamery a month after it opened (in mid-2025, over a year ago.) It's very convenient to the Tennessee's Ribs in Framingham, which I've been going to for over a decade - but that closed for good a couple of weeks ago.
So here's a long overdue review of Wagon Creamery - I went out and visited the place again to get updated pictures (and because I don't actually have notes about what ice cream I had last year, oops, and guessing from the pictures isn't all that accurate.)
The Place
Wagon Creamery is tiny - it has indoor seating for maybe half a dozen people, but not enough room to have that many people waiting in line. They do have amusing "dripping fudge" artwork in the corner (and a pink version in the opposite corner.) To make up for their size, they have a half dozen tables out doors, and umbrellas for a couple of them, as well as a bench under the overhang.
They have a much longer flavor list than they did a year ago, including "Salted Caramel Chocolate Pretzel" and "Cow Prints". They do have a serving freezer right up front - there are many more flavors in the back freezer, which complicates tasting requests (though they were very accommodating.) Probably due to space constraints, the only soft serve flavors they have are vanilla, chocolate, and twist.
Cups and cones are small, medium, and large; sundaes are medium and large. They also have pints and quarts. Toppings include Chocolate and Rainbow "Sprinkle" (I ordered Jimmies anyway, it was fine) along with English Toffee, Walnuts, and "Cotton Candy Crunch".
For ice cream drinks they have Smoothies, Slushes, Frappes, Milkshakes, and Floats; they also have specifically Soft Serve versions of the Affogato, Milkshake, Frappe and Float.
They also have something I haven't seen elsewhere: the "Soft Serve Loaded Stacker". From the pictures, they look kind of like a flurry but with actual structure - particularly the Banana version, but the "Worms and Dirt" version stands out even more - three layers of "chocolate dirt" and Gummy Worms between layers of ice cream with hot fudge on top. Given they only have three kinds of soft serve, they get a lot of mileage out of building things with them.
Coffee and Breakfast
They've added a breakfast bar in the last year - they used to just have a "neon" sign in the window for "coffee" and now they have a second one that says "breakfast" (that was unsurprisingly turned off, since I was there twenty minutes before closing.) They have an extensive lists of coffee drinks, and a short but diverse list of hot and cold tea drinks.
They also have "ice cream hot lattes" in Pistachio and Maple Walnut, along with the Soft Serve Affogato. There was also a "Coffee Coffee Shake" on a separate sign, likely a special.
The Ice Cream
Since it was 20 minutes before closing I went with something simple: Maple Walnut, Mississippi Mud, and chocolate jimmies. This is a three-scoop large (some places just work out "half", Wagon Creamery asks how many scoops of each you want - which is fine, it's just a custom that varies.)
The Maple Walnut had big walnut chunks (quarter segments, maybe? not crushed like you find some places) and a reasonable but not especially strong maple flavor. The Mississippi Mud had a rich chocolate flavor and good brownie bits. The ice cream itself was less creamy than something like Tosci's but pretty creamy, I wouldn't call it watery or icy.
They had a big sign out front advertising that they serve Crescent Ridge ice cream; Crescent Ridge is a dairy that still does home delivery in glass bottles (I've seen them in the dairy coolers at Wegman's too) and they also have a single Dairy Bar of their own in Sharon.
Next Time
I will probably be back, it's conveniently "on the way home" from the Greater Natick and Framingham Shopping and Entertainment District (and since the Ben and Jerry's shop on Route 9 gets very crowded whenever a movie lets out, that distance is actually useful.) I expect I will give the Loaded Stackers a try, either Banana or Crushed Waffle - the Banana looks like it photographs better, the Crushed Waffle has lots of different crunchy bits that look like they'd entirely counteract the use of soft ice cream.
