Even so, it's been a busy day - and a busy year - for owner Tom Washburn, who opened his original Moxley's on Allegheny Avenue in Towson in May 1998.

In the last year, Washburn has added two stores - the York Road shop that opened earlier this month and another in Bel Air. He also now has a new "ice cream factory" in East Baltimore.

The fledgling ice cream operation that started in the small Towson store will be employing about 100 full- and part-time employees when the weather warms up and the peak ice cream season hits.

"I hate to say it, but I'm not working nearly as hard as when I first opened," says Washburn, a seemingly unflappable former financial analyst who is president of the Towson Business Association.

"Back then I made the ice cream, swept the floors, did everything," he adds. "I was the quarterback. Now I can't play anymore; I'm the coach. The nice thing is I have good managers at each store and my job is to manage and coach them and let them run the stores and jump in when I'm needed."

Washburn opened his first ice cream parlor with about $100,000 he and his wife scraped together from savings and from loans and investments from family members. From the start he's been expanding his eat-in, take-out menu, adding exotic flavors like jalapeno, Old Bay and rhubarb pie plus ice cream cakes and other desserts to his roster of standard flavors. He also sells fountain sodas, cheesecakes, pound cake and waffle cones, sundaes and some non-ice-cream chocolates. The Bel Air and Timonium stores also carry coffee and espresso.

Almost since the beginning, Washburn has aggressively sought retail outlets for his hand-made ice cream. About 30 gourmet groceries, pizza and sub shops and liquor stores sell Moxley's ice cream by the pint or quart, including Eddie's of Roland Park, Graul's Markets, Wells Discount Liquors, the Desert Cafe in Mt. Washington and Dos Gringos Cafe in Washington.

"I've always felt our (ice cream) shops really create a market" for wholesale ice cream sales, says Washburn. "Once people are familiar with our ice cream they may not always make a trip to one of our ice cream parlors, but they may add it to their order" at a local grocer, sub shop or liquor store.

Washburn says the brisk sales of Moxley's pints and quarts at York Road corridor establishments like Sweet Annie's, G.T. Pizza and Bubba's Breakaway played into the decision to open his third and newest parlor in a York Road shopping center that's without an anchor store and a bit down on its luck.

He also took a hard look up and down York Road from Sparks to Timonium and realized there was no competition.

"This new store may take some sales away from Towson, but we felt we ought to open here before anyone else did," adds the ice cream entrepreneur, who signed a 10-year lease on the 1,900-square foot storefront and has made a "six-figure" investment so far in renovating, equipping and furnishing his third ice cream parlor.

"Even though it's a little run down here, there's a lot going on," he adds as he glances out across Timonium Shopping Center's wide and largely empty parking lot. "This really has become a food destination," he adds, pointing out the half-dozen or so restaurants that are either in or very near the center, which is just across York Road from the Maryland State Fairgrounds. "There's a lot of density, too. York Road is always packed."

"We also felt this is a large enough center that something big is going to happen" as far as a new anchor store coming in. "And they're really going to spruce things up when a new big tenant does come in."

Space limitations at the Towson shop, which has only about 600 square feet of selling space, also spurred the expansion. Five hundred to 700 customers per day isn't an unusual turnout for the Allegheny Avenue Moxley's on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in the summer.

"Physically the Towson store is so small we just couldn't get more people in the door at the peak times they want to come in," he explains. "It really discourages me when people would tell me they rode by on a weekend evening in the summer and saw the lines and didn't come in.

"We'd like to expand the Towson store, but we're landlocked," adds Washburn, whose original store sits in a narrow space between Fader's tobacco store and a parking lot.

The need for more elbow room also figured in the decision to open the 8,000-square-foot production facility on Eastern Avenue, just off Interstate 95. Until it began operations, with two 10-gallon ice cream-making machines, all the ice cream was made in the cramped confines of the Towson shop's basement.

"Given our size now, the little bit of ice cream we were making in Towson couldn't keep up with the volume..." says Washburn. And, he adds, Moxley's factory is only using half of the available space, so there is room to expand.

The facility, he points out, is convenient for deliveries in the Baltimore area, as far north as Bel Air and as far south as Washington, where he recently picked up a retail account.

Washburn insists he has "no idea" how many gallons of his "passion food" he sold last year. "But we have a new tracking system now, and if you ask me a year from now I can tell you exactly," he laughs.

Dollar-wise he says his ice cream parlors average $250,000 to $400,000 sales a year, per store. Based on those numbers, he's confident he'll recoup his investment in the Timonium store.

Washburn used a one-time direct mail campaign to advertise his parlor in The Festival at Bel Air when that store opened. He believes word of mouth will go a long way toward publicizing the Timonium shop since many in the immediate area either already patronize the Towson store or are familiar with Moxley's brand and logo.

"The biggest challenge is always getting people through the door," he admits. "We feel that once you taste the ice cream you'll become a convert."

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