Some small businesses fade quietly into memory. Others get stopped on the street for years by customers still asking when they’re coming back. Bar32 is firmly the latter.
Sisters Chloe and Sydney Carron built Bar32 from a converted horse trailer in Port Carling, Muskoka, back in the summers of 2021 and 2022 — hand-dipping chocolate-covered ice cream bars, delivering some by boat, and eventually running a short-lived Toronto pop-up before life (and full-time jobs) pulled them back to the city. The name itself is a nod to the freezing point of water in Fahrenheit, a detail that hints at just how much thought went into even the smallest parts of the brand.
This summer, the sisters are back — and this time they’ve set up shop in Toronto proper, running a summer-long pop-up at The Lobby by Heaps Estrin on Macpherson Avenue in Rosedale, the same spot where they operated back in 2022. Everything is still made completely from scratch: mixing the ice cream, filling the moulds, and hand-dipping every single bar in chocolate. It’s a labour-intensive process by design, and it shows in the final product.
The lineup now includes flavours like salted caramel, pistachio, raspberry, and mango, and the business has expanded beyond ice cream entirely — coffee, sourced from Detour, is now part of the menu too, alongside cappuccinos, espresso, and an affogato that pairs a shot of espresso with either a scoop or a full ice cream bar.
What hasn’t changed is the sense of community around the brand. Regulars who first discovered Bar32 as kids are reportedly walking in with a look of instant recognition, picking up right where they left off years ago.
Looking for a proper reason to detour through Rosedale this summer? Bar32 is set up at 3 Macpherson Ave. for a limited run — worth the trip while it lasts.