ORLANDO, Fla. – Marie Mercado had no plans of becoming a “professional ice cream lady.” She had her sights set on the stage.
“I wanted to be an opera singer,” Mercado said. “I did perform. I did shows in New York. I moved to Japan, I did a couple of performances there. I was there for a year and then I was going to move to Germany, but then I’m like, ‘OK, let me pay down some student loans. Let me figure out my life, get everything settled, get everything squared away before I move.’”
That decision brought the South Florida native to Orlando. Mercado said she met her partner in the City Beautiful, who introduced her to the idea of running her own business.
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“When you’re a musician you work 90% of your time alone, right, actually. So I like the idea of building my own community,” she said.
Mercado looked to her childhood when she decided to start her own business. Growing up in South Florida, she said her neighbors would give her family a glut of mangos every year.
“My dad one day was like, ‘Hey, why don’t we turn this into ice cream so we can enjoy this for a couple more months instead of trying to eat this all in one day,’” she said.
Mercado said she was always dabbling in the kitchen as a child, so her parents thought making ice cream would be a perfect fit for her.
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“I started my career as an ice cream lady at 7 years old,” she said.
This ultimately led her to open the Greenery Creamery in downtown Orlando in 2018.
“I consider myself a professional ice cream lady and I have a very important job,” she said. “I have to provide ice cream options for people in the community.”
Mercado takes the job seriously. She tries to make sure that everyone can have something in her ice cream shops — offering vegan and allergen-friendly options.
“People don’t realize consciously that ice cream is a way to create core memories. So people don’t think ‘Oh, it’s baby’s first steak.’ They think, ‘Baby’s first ice cream,’” she said.
Greenery Creamery offers a wide variety of flavors, some familiar and some that are a little more outside the box of traditional ice cream. In 2023, Mercado took her passion for ice cream in a different direction. She opened Sampaguita in Orlando’s Mills 50 District.
“I say Greenery Creamery is a journey of self-expression and Sampaguita to is an exploration of self-identity,” Mercado said.
Sampaguita is focused on offering Filipino-American-inspired flavors, a nod to Mercado’s Filipino-American heritage.
Sampaguita is the Filipino name for the Jasmine flower, which is also the national flower of the Philippines.
“Jasmine flower means love and purity, guidance and truth and so it just has so many layers to it. So I said, ‘Yes, this is the name that fits everything,’” Mercado said.
On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Mercado shares more of her journey from opera to ice cream. She also talks about some of her experiments with ice cream flavors and shares some frozen treats with Candace Campos.
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