Some dessert shops are built on a trend, and some are built on a Greek couple who stepped off a boat at Ellis Island in the early 1900s and started making chocolate again in Pittsburgh. 🍫
MilkShake Factory landed in Holladay Village in May 2026 carrying 112 years of family recipes with it, and the Salt Lake Valley took roughly one afternoon to figure out what had just moved in.
How MilkShake Factory won Holladay hearts
The story doesn’t start in Utah at all — it starts with Charlie and Orania, who immigrated from Greece and opened a chocolate shop and soda fountain in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood back in 1914.
Home refrigeration was a luxury almost nobody had then, so getting a thick, hand-spun milkshake meant an actual excursion, which is a detail that makes the whole enterprise feel a little more romantic than your average dessert stop. 🥤
Four generations later, the Edwards family is still running it, and every scoop of ice cream in the Holladay shop gets made fresh in-store daily using the family’s exclusive recipe rather than arriving on a truck.
Utah got its first taste in Pleasant Grove, and that store did well enough to earn recognition for Best Milkshake in Utah, which is the kind of thing that makes a second location feel less like a gamble and more like a very reasonable request from the public.
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Holladay’s shop is owned and operated by franchisee Ashley Vincent, who was drawn to the brand’s century-long legacy and family-centered roots, and it opened on May 2, 2026 with a grand opening party, BOGO shakes, and free T-shirts for the first hundred people through the door. 🎉
Since then the reception has been genuinely warm, with a 4.6-star average on Google and a steady stream of customers noting the same three things over and over.
First, the staff actually talks to you, with the owner herself often stopping to chat.
Second, they make their chocolate bark right there in the shop, and you can watch it happen while you wait.
Third — and this is the one that turned casual visitors into evangelists — the non-dairy shakes are legitimately good, with one lactose-allergic customer describing it as their first satisfying shake in thirty years. 😳
The team even offers to make dairy-flavored shakes in a non-dairy base without being asked, which is a small courtesy that lands like a very big deal for anyone who’s spent years being handed sad substitutes.
Food Highlights 🍦
- Campfire S’mores: Crunchy honey grahams, crispy marshmallows, and semi-sweet chocolate chips blended into one glass, delivering the entire fire pit experience with none of the smoke in your hair. 🔥
- Cookie Jar: Chocolate chip cookie dough, crushed cookies & cream, and peanut butter cookie crumbles, topped with a chocolate-dipped cookies & cream cookie, which is aggressively unreasonable in the best way.
- Chocolate Dipped Strawberry: Sliced strawberries and semi-sweet chocolate chips with a hint of melted fudge, finished with a fresh strawberry on top — the fan favorite that converts people who claim they don’t like fruit desserts.
- Chocolatier: Rich cocoa, oven-baked brownies, semi-sweet chocolate chips, and melted fudge topped with their chocolatier bark, and it is not for the faint of heart. 😵
- Hot Fudge Brownie Sundae: Housemade vanilla ice cream layered with fudge brownies, chocolate chips, and melted fudge for anyone who’d rather use a spoon than a straw.
Atmosphere ✨
Clean, bright, and built for families, with the whole operation running on the simple joys in life motto the brand puts front and center. 😊
Free samples of the housemade chocolate bark come out regularly, which means kids tend to arrive excited and leave extremely excited.
The shop sits in the Holladay Hills development with roughly six to eight parking spots right out front, though plenty of people order to go, so turnover keeps things moving. 🚗
They’re closed Sundays, which is worth knowing before you plan a weekend dessert run.
Bottom Line
A family chocolate recipe box dating back to 1914. 🏆
Ice cream made fresh in-store every single day.
Non-dairy shakes that people actually rave about.
Chocolate bark made on-site with free samples.
And late hours on Friday and Saturday for post-dinner runs.
Address: 1920 E Rodeo Walk Dr, Space D60, Holladay, UT 84117
📞 (801) 797-2535
🕛 Open Mon–Thu, 12 PM–10 PM | Fri, 12 PM–11 PM | Sat, 11 AM–11 PM (closed Sun)