Halifax Milkshake Bar Bringing Everyone To The Yard
HALIFAX – Fun & Shakes, located in Flynn’s Dairy Bar & Convenience on the corner of Hollis and Bishop streets, make masterpieces out of milkshakes.
Owner Raees Shaikh and his sons Arsh and Zaid opened the convenience store in March and had extra space to bring in a dairy bar addition. They knew they wanted to serve ice cream, but wanted to take things to another level.
“Zaid is the brains of the milkshakes,” said Arsh. “We started doing experiments in our home and it was working out, so we thought, ‘We have a store, why not give it a try?’”
Arsh said his brother would experiment with creating the massive milkshakes on his own and will begin studying the Culinary Management program at NSCC in September.
They thought only a few people would come to buy the massive milkshakes but quickly had to increase the bar capacity once upwards to 50 people were lining up outside.
“At first the dairy bar was 20 percent [of the space], now we’ve made it to 50 percent of the store space. Now we have six employees working for us and we have good support from people,” Arsh said.
Fun & Shakes serves two types of milkshakes: traditional chocolate, vanilla and strawberry milkshakes with a variety of toppings to choose from, and the massive milkshakes with their large toppings and whipped cream. Regular milkshakes cost $5.99 plus tax while massive milkshakes cost $9.99 plus tax.
There are five choices of massive milkshakes: Strawberry Cheesecake, Giant Oreo, The Unicorn, Royal Kit-Kat and Cookie Nutella. The menu is updated every month with tweaks to its regular choices and to introduce limited edition milkshakes.
Fun & Shakes also partners with local Halifax businesses to create limited edition massive milkshakes. Its Oreo Brownie massive milkshake was created in partnership with Underground Snacks and a Halifax Thunderbirds-themed massive milkshake was created with the professional lacrosse team.
“The Oreo Brownie one, we only had 500 of those. We expected they would finish up in a few months, but we were sold out in ten days,” said Arsh.
Their newest limited edition massive milkshake (exclusively revealed here on Huddle), is a Toblerone milkshake confection.
Fun & Shakes remained open during the Covid-19 lockdown as part of the convenience store and business remained steady. “People used to come, maybe you can see 15 to 20 customers a day, maximum, and now we have like 150 people coming around,” Arsh said.
Social distance protocols are strictly followed with the kitchen six feet away from people and a barrier set up to prevent non-personnel access. No more than seven people enter the store at a time and each person is given a ticket after they order. They wait outside the building until their number is called and they are handed their order by an employee wearing PPE.
They also deliver with Uber Eats and DoorDash, but only for regular milkshakes. “We believe in serving the customers who came in the store and are waiting for the milkshakes,” Arsh said. “We give priority to them.”