ShiverSticks: Snow Cone Texture, Homemade Syrups—Texas Roots
- Whitney Alswede
- Jun 30
- 5 min read
“Let’s start a little snow cone company out of an Airstream trailer,” Rachael Reeves told her husband, Chad. “We really thought it was going to be a yearlong fun adventure, and then we’d get ‘big boy’ and ‘big girl’ jobs,” she says.
Ten years later, that “little snow cone company” in Longview, Texas, is Shivers Natural Snow, and that Airstream sells not only some of the best snow cones in the state but also ShiverSticks, handmade, real-fruit, simple-ingredient popsicles with a snow cone texture that’s unlike any other ice pop on the market right now. They measure in at about 9.5” long and 2.5” wide, making them bigger as well.
Thanks to Shivers’ enthusiastic community of supporters, ShiverSticks is now sold in 29 states (and counting), largely due to word-of-mouth, Rachael says.
In fact, their community has been the driving force behind ShiverSticks since they introduced the popsicles at the height of Covid in 2020 as a way to simply bring in a little money. “We innovated this way to make all of our snow cones into a popsicle package, and we thought, we’ll launch this for a couple of weeks to try and make a little bit of money for me and [Chad] to survive and stay afloat until this Covid thing is done, and then we’ll go back to what we know how to do (make snow cones).
“We were like, we'll do this thing where we sell [the ShiverSticks] online and then we’ll do almost like a drive-thru birthday party—Sundays at 7 p.m. drive through and get your product. And we thought maybe we’ll sell a handful and be OK….. For our first round, we made 2,500 popsicles, and we thought, ‘This is going to last us like maybe a month of us selling.’ We launched them at 12 p.m. online and at 12:03, they were completely sold out. And we were like, ‘What in the world just happened?’ Very quickly soon thereafter, maybe three days later, we said, ‘Let’s put 5,000 Sticks online and see what happens.’ We just got into the kitchen and worked all throughout the night, trying to make popsicles. We sold out of those within 10 minutes. And it really was just a thing of, yes, I think our product is amazing, but it was also just a response from a community of people wanting to believe in a small business and keep us afloat and love on us.”
Today, ShiverSticks are popping up in pharmacies, boutiques, grocery stores, gas stations, butcher shops, coffee houses, a ballpark—even Branson’s Silver Dollar City. And just like when they launched in the couple’s kitchen, each person siloed in a corner, Rachael, Chad and their crew of local teens are still pureeing the strawberries and blueberries, brewing the vanilla bean and lavender, and handcrafting and packaging flavors, including “Strawnilla” (strawberries, lemon juice, vanilla bean and cane sugar); “Brown Cow” (coffee beans, vanilla bean, milk, cream, cane sugar and heavy cream); “Honeymoon” (pineapple juice, cane sugar, coconut, vanilla bean and guar gum); and “Raindance” (blueberries, milk, cream, heavy cream, lavender, vanilla bean and cane sugar).
“I really think that some of the initial accounts we opened outside of East Texas have been, ‘Hey, my mom’s best friend owns this little store out in such and such. My mom loves you, and she lives in Oregon, and she loves to come when she’s in Longview. Can I send her some Sticks and maybe she can take them to this place?’ ” Rachael says. “It’s always like this grass-roots connection of our community being the launching pad for us.”
As ShiverSticks’ following continues to grow and newcomers discover their unique flavors, Rachael says she and Chad intend to stay true to their vision for a gourmet popsicle that doesn’t take shortcuts and that brings people together, just like their snow cones have at the Airstream in Longview.
“I think [community] is just the core part of the company that we never want to lose,” Rachael says. “We’re trying to go after this small-business market, and it’s been so fun to curate these relationships the way I do here, to form a community with these small-business owners who are launching us..… I’m learning these businesses do what me and Chad do—they’re connected to their community, and they’re rooted in building relationships with their people. I even heard from one in Tennessee recently. She was like, ‘It is so fun for me to have a spot now where kids are coming to grab a popsicle after school, and so it’s becoming a little community thing for moms.’ And it’s so fun for me to hear how our Sticks are creating that for her.”
Today, when you visit Longview, you’ll probably find Rachael in the kitchen packing up ShiverSticks to ship across the country, working with her and Chad’s team of teens and building relationships, new and old. She and Chad moved the trailer to a larger space so they could add more picnic tables, build a gaga ball pit for kids to play in, host events and be a gathering place where families and neighbors sit and catch up and share life. They even have a warehouse behind the Airstream where they hand-blend and pack the ShiverSticks for the mom-and-pop shops to sell and build a community of their own.
“I think we have [a product] that’s really great, and when people try it, they get really excited about it, too, and they almost join in our little cult following,” Rachael says. “I think people love being a part of something that’s small and sweet and helping us grow…. People want to gather around something.”
ShiverSticks’ Success: 100% Natural
“We are literally from scratch, and when we say fruit, we’re blending real fruit down into a puree,” says Shivers Owner Rachael Reeves. “We’re using real cream, we’re using true lavender buds that we’re brewing ourselves and making a syrup out of. So we’re not doing anything to cut the corners or that adds things to it, like dyes—we do zero dyes. If it’s red, it’s red because strawberries are red. Or if it’s slightly tinted, that’s because there’s pineapple in it. We’re not trying to manipulate the fruit or anything. We don’t even use stabilizers, so it’s fresh…. On the back, we put the ingredient list in bold because we’re proud of it.”
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