Owners Jerrod and Kristy Woodham have opened a new sweet spot at 3051 Frederick Road in Opelika, right next to Momma Goldberg's.
The husband and wife team wanted to provide the Auburn and Opelika area with Italian ice, soft serve ice cream, cupcakes, muffins, cookies and delicious oatmeal cream pies.
"We are going to try and make anything sweet that someone would want," Jerrod said.
The Woodhams have been living in Auburn for three years after moving to the area from Ozark.
"We absolutely love it here," Jerrod said.
Somethin' Sweet is their first sweets store and was inspired by their love of the Italian ice trend. Somethin' Sweet was born out of their desire to bring Italian ice to the area as well as sweet treats that are both home cooked and from scratch.
While several area bakeries offer cupcakes and cookies, Italian ice is one of the more rare dessert items on the Somethin' Sweet menu.
Italian ice is a sweetened frozen dessert made with fruit or other natural or artificial food flavorings. Italian ice is not flavored shaved ice as some may assume. It is made by the same process used to make ice cream, which freezes the ingredients while mixing them together.
Somethin' Sweet also offers gelati, which is a combination of Italian ice and soft-serve ice cream.
Somethin' Sweet has been open for almost three weeks and serves creative items such as their peanut butter and jelly cupcake or their cinnamon streusel muffin. The current fan favorite item is the oatmeal cream pie, although customers seem to appreciate the fresh quality of all of the sweets.
"What sets us apart is we bake our goods fresh daily and have a wide assortment of Italian ice," Jerrod said. "If you aren't in the mood for a cupcake, you have other options such as cookies, cream pies and Italian ice."
Somethin' Sweet also offers several discounts. If you buy five cupcakes, you get the sixth free. They also boast T-shirt Tuesday, where you get a free small Italian ice when you wear or purchase a Somethin' Sweet T-shirt.
Additionally, if you buy five oatmeal cream pies you get the sixth free. All Auburn students get 10 percent off of their purchase by showing their student ID.
The biggest challenge the Woodhams have faced has been getting the Somethin' Sweet name out to the public.
"Everyone needs Somethin' Sweet in their life," Jerrod said.
The couple would like to eventually own and operate another store in the area but for now strive to supply the area with Somethin' Sweet and satisfy everyone's sweet tooth.
Somethin' Sweet is open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sundays. The Woodhams invite the community to stop in and experience their motto, "keep calm and eat Somethin' Sweet!"
ABIGAIL O'BRIEN
COMMUNITY WRITER
Among other news presented during the Auburn City Council meeting Tuesday, Feb. 19, James Grider, a local retiree spoke up concerning a recent bill put forth by Rep. Pebblin Warren that would affect a mill increase in conjunction with new school funding.
Grider said he recently completed a phone survey concerning funding for a new high school. Later, he saw that Warren's bill called for a 14 mills increase.
"At nine mills, with what we pay in state taxes, federal taxes and county taxes, that would mean a 16.7 percent increase in my property tax," Grider said. "At 14 mills, that would be over 20 percent of my property tax."
Grider was alarmed by the 14 million increase and asked the council whether bonds were an option considered.
"In previous years, in other places that I've been, when the school or the city needed money, they put out bonds," Grider said.
Charles Duggan, Jr., city manager, said that the bill's terminology made it confusing.
"It's actually a nine mill increase," Duggan said. "For that special school tax, there's already five mills levied, so it takes it to a total of 14. So they're adding the five that are already there plus the 9nine that are proposed to be voted on by the voters for a total of 14 in that one count."
Duggan also said that bonds would play a part in the bill.
"And approximately $90 to $100 million dollars is anticipated will be borrowed through bonds," Duggan said. "And so bonds will be issued and right now, probably, they'll have a 30 year pay-out period. So it'll be 30 years in the future until they're paid off."
Grider said he was still concerned that he didn't know when the cap would be implemented
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