A decade ago, Nightingale Ice Cream Sandwiches was a humble side hustle tucked into the kitchen of Greenleaf’s Pool Room. They were churning small batches by hand and selling them at farmers markets—sweet little bricks of nostalgia done right. And if you were paying attention back then, it was obvious: this thing had legs.
Now, the rest of the country is catching up.
As reported by Richmond Bizsense a few days ago, this summer Nightingale is making its biggest move yet—into a 29,000-square-foot production facility on Richmond’s Southside. The new space will triple their current output, pushing the company’s daily sandwich total from 100,000 to a cool quarter-million. It’s a $5.8 million investment that cements Nightingale not just as a beloved local brand, but as a serious national player.
The new HQ, located at 2807 Transport Street, will be the first space designed specifically for Nightingale’s needs—after years of adapting borrowed kitchens and patchwork facilities to fit the growing demand. As CFO Cameron Chaplin put it at the groundbreaking, “We’re really growing roots… in the city that molded us.”
No surprise there. Nightingale’s growth has been steady, smart, and very Richmond. From day one, co-founder and executive chef Hannah Pollack made quality the non-negotiable. The sandwiches—built from scratch with homemade ice cream and fresh-baked cookies—were never a gimmick. They were a flex. A reminder that the stuff we loved as kids could actually grow up with us.
Back then, we wrote about how Nightingale was fixing the limp, artificially flavored ice cream sandwich. Now, they’re shipping the fix to more than 5,000 stores nationwide—Whole Foods, Kroger, Harris Teeter, Fresh Market. All from right here.
The new facility isn’t just about more ice cream sandwiches. It’s about jobs. Nightingale plans to hire 166 new employees, growing the team to around 250. They’re working with the Virginia Jobs Investment Program to get that hiring and training right.
And through it all, they’ve stayed local. Local sourcing. Local production. Local pride. Nightingale could’ve bounced to some flavorless industrial park in another state. Instead, they doubled down on Richmond—the same city that backed them when they were still stamping labels by hand in a borrowed kitchen.
And we’re glad they’re still here, growing bigger without losing what made them matter in the first place.
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