Ice Cream Changed Her Life. Twice.
Clementine’s Naughty & Nice Creamery, also known as Clementine’s Creamery, is an ice cream shop with six locations in the Greater St. Louis Area that serves unique small-batch ice cream flavors, including alcoholic and vegan options. Clementine’s Creamery was founded by Tamara Keefe in 2014. CEO, Tamara, grew up impoverished in a large Irish-Italian household; she and her family could not afford to join the other families on Sunday after church for the weekly trip to the ice cream parlor.
This exclusion from community and the longing it generated, left an indelible impression on her. The day her mother purchased a $2 hand-crank ice cream maker from a garage sale changed her life forever. The family established a Sunday-ice-cream-making ritual. Word of the deliciousness spread throughout the community and soon families flocked to her home…one family bringing the cream, another bringing the sugar…
Tamara’s entire sense of community changed; she gained friends and became popular. The power of ice cream to connect people had eradicated both the longing and isolation. Tamara has made ice cream for her family and friends ever since.
In 2014 Tamara found herself living in St. Louis, where she had fallen in love with its people, neighborhoods and flavors. While running a $70M business for a Fortune 500 CPG company, she traveled incessantly working 70-hour weeks. She realized how empty she felt climbing this corporate ladder. She longed for roots and being part of a community. It became apparent that she needed a change in her life — again.
She sank her life’s savings into an FDA-certified ice cream kitchen and cashed out her 401K. Her passion for ice cream has resulted in seven storefront locations in the St. Louis area, one in Illinois, an online shop that ships to customers nationwide, and a catering business that services weddings, parties, and special events. This ice cream entrepreneur and self-proclaimed “Flavor Temptress” is devoted to bringing people together serving up love one scoop at a time.
In 2014 Tamara worked in a lab with her network of food scientists and chemists to develop and perfect Clementine’s trade secret process for freezing alcohol into ice cream. She is a 2018 alum of Goldman Sachs 10,000 Businesses program, and in early 2019 was honored as a Tory Burch Fellow. She is currently a board member of St. Louis Civic Pride and serves as the 2019 MyEO Chair for EO Entrepreneurs’ Organization.
