Monarca Gourmet Paletas: The Art of Ice Cream

Monarca Paletas, owned by Jose Jacome and his wife, is a family-run gourmet ice cream shop in Clive, Iowa, serving locally made, traditional Latin American paletas.

Read more about Monarca Paletas below:

Monarca Paletas Q+A

What is Monarca Paletas?

Jose Jacome: At Monarca Gourmet Paletas, we make and sell handcrafted ice cream called paletas, a very traditional dessert in Latin America that originated in Mexico. We serve a multitude of flavors including fruit-based paletas, which use fresh fruit. We’re excited that we have two locations now in Greater Des Moines (DSM).

The great thing about the business is not only the fantastic product that we make from scratch in small batches, but also the fact that when you walk into our store, you have over 20 to 25 different options and flavors with a multitude of options that you can customize to your liking. Our slogan is the Art of Ice Cream, and that's because you get to be an artist walking into our store.

How long have you been in Clive?

JJ: We've been in Clive for four years, and we recently opened a new location in the last couple of weeks in Waukee, which we are very excited about.

What is the history behind the name?

JJ: So, Monarca is Spanish for Monarch as in the Monarch Butterfly. And the reason why we named it Monaca is because Paleta is originated in a state called Michoacán in Mexico, and Michoacán has the largest migration of the Monarch butterflies every year. Millions of monarch butterflies fly from the northern countries (Canada and the U.S.) over to Mexico every year in the fall, and they come back in the spring. And for us, we think of the Monarch butterfly going to Mexico where paleta is originated from and bringing back flavor and tradition and love. So that's really why we named it Monarca.

The reason we chose to go into this line of business is due to my wife's background. She grew up making ice cream with her dad, and for her it was a dream to kind of carry on that family tradition. She's been making ice cream since she was a little girl. Her parents had a very small ice cream shop in Chicago and her parents are from Mexico, and that ice cream tradition spans down from generation to generation.

You said your wife is originally from Mexico and lived in Chicago. Are you from the Chicago area as well or are you from Des Moines?

JJ: I was born and raised in Colombia, but I lived most of my young adult life in Chicago as well. So, from sixth grade and beyond I was in Chicago. I was fortunate in that an opportunity for work presented itself over 10 years ago to relocate to DSM. I was working for a telecommunications company, and I said, well, what is Des Moines? I've never heard of that city. I used to think Chicago was the greatest city in the world. And I said, well, I'll go to Des Moines, I'll check it out.

But I just fell in love with Iowa itself. I fell in love with Des Moines. I ended up planting roots here and began dating my wife who still lived in Chicago. We were friends many, many years ago and we started dating. We did the long-distance thing a little bit, and then eventually I convinced her to move out here. She had the same reaction I did initially ... skeptical at first. But she loves it here as well.

How did the opening process go?

JJ: We opened in August of 2020, during the COVID pandemic. It took years of planning to get our business off the ground, and we could have never planned or anticipated COVID, just like I don't think anyone did. There were times when we were at the end of opening the business and thought we would have to take our losses and walk away, but we were very fortunate that we decided to push through.

We opened on Aug. 4, 2020, and we had a small line out the door, even in the midst of 2020. It was chaotic, but the community was super supportive and fantastic and that kind of just got us rolling.

Why did you choose to open your new location in Waukee?

JJ: We've been in talks to open our Waukee location for about two years. We discovered the development project where we are at with the Vibrant Music Hall, the hotel, the Starbucks and a couple different businesses that are going there. I think Waukee having a vision to put something like that there is fantastic. So that's part of what sparked a lot of curiosity for us because a lot of times you think of a suburb, you're probably not expected to see something like the Vibrant Music Hall or some of the big developments that Waukee is doing. We started thinking that there's got to be something to the fact that Waukee is making such big investments in the community. The growth is fantastic.

Are there any other things that this new location will assist with?

JJ: One of the things that's most exciting about that location is that it is a bigger location for us, especially when we talk about the production space. The production space in our Clive location was very small and very narrow. A lot of it really came from not knowing the growth that we would see once we opened, but the space put a lot of limitations on us.

The Waukee location is probably four to six times the size of our Clive production space. We have more storage space, and we can buy machinery or machines that make or help freeze paletas at a faster rate allowing us to reduce, for example, 10 hours worth of work to two to three hours, which is fantastic.

Does the menu stay consistent, or have you been testing new recipes since you’ve been open?

JJ: The essence of the paleta itself is very flexible for us. Because we use family recipes, there's a lot of bits and pieces that you can adjust. And when there's that experience of someone like my wife who's done it her whole life, she can easily make those adjustments. We keep our menu, for the most part, very much the same because a lot of the flavors that we have available on an ongoing basis are the most popular ones, but we are constantly adding those special flavors for people to try. This fall, we rolled out Pumpkin Spice. 

In the summer we do Passion Fruit. We've done Rum Raisin, which is a very popular flavor in Colombia where I'm from and in parts of South America. We have a liquor license, so we have boozy popsicles occasionally where you can come in and get a Pina Colada or a Bailey's, which is good.

We also have two mini schnauzers, and we love our dogs. Those are our babies right outside of the business. And we noticed a lot of folks will come in and they will share their paleta with their dog in the parking lot.

So, we said that's fine, but can we make it a little bit healthier for our pups ... so we made puppy paletas. These are made with organic ingredients that are safe for them.

What’s one piece of advice that you would give to other entrepreneurs?

JJ: I would say absolutely follow your passions but find two to three key people that can mentor you or maybe that have been through a similar experience, the one you're looking for. A lot of times it's very easy to get excited over something and to be kind of blinded by that. And that's okay because excitement and passion make such a huge difference in whatever it is that you're pursuing.

Check out Monarca Paletas at monarcapaletas.com and follow on Facebook and Instagram to keep up with the latest paletas updates. Or email monarcapaletas@outlook.com with questions. Interested in becoming a Paleta Artist? Submit an application to join the team!

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