Right up there among beer, cheese and the Packers, Wisconsin is known for frozen custard.
From the ever-popular Culver's to the countless beloved family owned custard shops throughout the state, there's no shortage of nearby spots to find Wisconsin's favorite dessert.
But, frozen custard's widespread popularity also posed a problem. In addition to their everyday flavor lineups, most custard shops offer a rotating "Flavor of the Day." And sometimes, due to their changing nature, Flavors of the Day can be hard to find ... sometimes they're buried deep on custard shop websites, and others vary from location to location within the same franchise.
Then, about three months ago, one local man decided to change it.
In July, Noah Huotari of Pewaukee developed Custard MKE, an online database and map where custard lovers can find the Flavors of the Day at about 50 Milwaukee-area custard shops ― including popular favorites like Kopp's, Gilles, Leon's, Oscar's and LeDuc's. This month, Huotari also added over 30 southeastern Wisconsin Culver's locations.
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Huotari realized Milwaukee needed a centralized custard hub when he moved to his current home in Pewaukee "right smack in the middle of Bubba's, Culver's, Oscar's and Kopp's." Living about 10 minutes from each, Huotari and his wife would check all four websites before each of their custard dates.
After discussing this dilemma with his co-workers, Huotari, who works in IT, developed the first version of Custard MKE, which featured only Bubba's, Oscar's and Kopp's. He posted a link in the r/Milwaukee subreddit, and people quickly started suggesting additional locations.
Huotari used his tech background to build Custard MKE
A native of northern Wisconsin who's lived in the Milwaukee area since 2021, Huotari leveraged the skills he's developed in his near-decade-long career to build a website, write code and scrape Flavor of the Day data from various custard shop websites into spreadsheets that feed the database.
Not only can you see today's featured flavor on Huotari's site, but you can also view "flavor forecasts" for many of the custard shops, allowing you to know the Flavor of the Day each day for about the next month.
Due to the varied configurations of each custard brand's website, some menus are easier to add to the database, while others must be plugged into a spreadsheet manually at the beginning of each month. Huotari, who works full-time as an engineering manager, said he typically works on Custard MKE for a "couple hours at the beginning of the month" to ensure things are running smoothly.
However, after the site caught the attention of multiple local media outlets, Huotari said interest in his database, and the time he spends on it, have grown rapidly. Over Custard MKE's lifetime, the site has received about 30,000 views; around 20,000 of those are from the past week.
"I've been putting a lot more time into adding additional features and locations that people have been requesting," Huotari said. "Culver's wasn't something I originally planned on adding, but there was significant enough ask for it that I finally decided to add it. It took me a few nights of coding and debugging to finally get it working correctly."
"Once things get straightened out, the time I invest should be much lower, probably a few hours a month. But, to get to that point, right now, I pretty much work on it every night for a few hours."
Huotari plans to continue improving Custard MKE ... and maybe expand statewide
Currently, Custard MKE features locations in the Milwaukee area, extending as far north as West Bend and as far west as Johnson Creek. However, Huotari said he's received "a ton of emails" asking for more locations, and users have suggested places as far away as Green Bay.
While he plans to keep Custard MKE confined to southeastern Wisconsin, Huotari said he hasn't ruled out the idea of creating a statewide database. In fact, he's already purchased the domain for Custard WI. Huotari said he's working to get ads on the Custard MKE site so he can earn revenue, allowing him to devote more time to developing new features. You can support Custard MKE on the site's "Buy Me A Custard" page.
Huotari said he's grateful for the support and feedback he's received since launching the site.
"It's all been positive. It's mostly just people thanking me and calling me a hero ― which is a little weird, but I'll take it."
