The sun can sometimes be an ice cream cone’s worst enemy. 

Too much patience and your scoop tumbles toward the pavement. Or it drips all over your face, hands and clothes as you try to eat it as fast as you can.

For Willard Scoops, the sun is now an ice cream-maker’s friend. 

The South Portland business is claiming to be Maine’s first ice cream shop to be completely solar powered. They call it the “Sun to Scoop” model. 

All aspects of the energy-intensive business – making 8,000 gallons of ice cream a year, keeping the product frozen and cooling the shop – have been powered by solar panels since June 26. 

This energy transition was partially funded by Coastal Enterprises, Inc., a Brunswick-based nonprofit that has financed solar installations for more than 81 Maine businesses, farms and community facilities. Willard Scoops owner David Bass-Clark said that the grant halved the interest rate of the seven-year loan.

“If a small neighborhood shop like ours can make this work, hopefully it shows other small businesses that sustainability can be practical, not just aspirational,” Bass-Clark said.

Willard Scoops, which serves more than 100,000 scoops every year, made the switch to compostable cups and spoons in the past couple of years to help divert an estimated 15,000 pounds of waste it generates each year. 

“And it’s nice that we don’t have to pay an electricity bill,” Bass-Clark said.