Ice Cream Shoppe
A shareable, map-backed archive of 155 ice cream ratings — plus the pints coming out of my own kitchen.
Context
Since 2020, every worthwhile scoop lived in the same place: an Apple Note, backed by an iPhone album. It worked for me, but it made the archive impossible to browse, map, or send to someone asking for a recommendation. The Shoppe turns that private habit into a public record that feels as personal as the source material.
Challenge
The source was real but unstructured: 155 ratings, one photo per tasting, inconsistent shop names, and locations split between notes and photo metadata. The work was not just a gallery. It had to preserve the chronology, surface the best recommendations, group repeat visits accurately, and make a big collection feel easy to explore on a phone.
Insight
The right metaphor was a shop, not a spreadsheet. The interface needed the warmth of a handwritten tasting archive while doing the quiet data work underneath: sorting, map grouping, consistent naming, full-photo viewing, and an update path that would not make adding the next scoop feel like a chore.
Execution
Imported and normalized 155 Apple Notes ratings and their corresponding iPhone photos into a structured collection, including repeat-shop aliases and Mexican peso formatting.
Built the Cherry Ledge tasting cards for recency, rank, and shop-name sorting, with mobile-first photo crops that open into a full-image viewer when a closer look matters.
Mapped all 155 ratings to 96 destinations with grouped markers, repeat-visit counts, tasting summaries, and directions links.
Separated the 17 Made by Mitch pints from the rankings so the personal experiments can live beside the archive without becoming a long menu of projects.
Connected the separate Ice Cream Mode experiment to the Shoppe as an optional entry point, while keeping the archive fully usable on its own with Mode turned off.
Added a map audit that verifies every rating has valid coordinates and protects multi-visit destinations from silently splitting apart.
Impact
The list is now a living recommendation engine instead of a private note. I can point someone to a recent scoop, a top-ranked favorite, a city on the map, or a flavor from my own kitchen — and the next rating has a clear place to go.
Work
Every tasting carries its original photo, date, shop, price, and score — structured enough to sort, but still recognizably personal.
Made by Mitch gets its own shelf: a handful of pints and experiments that belong beside the archive, not mixed into its ranking system.
Multiple photos are available when a batch needs more than one angle — with an image viewer that preserves the original frame.
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