On March 16, the second location of a shaved ice franchise new to Missouri opened, namely being Bahama Buck’s. The first location was opened in June 2015 in Salt Lake, and the new location is on Mid Rivers Mall Drive.

“I heard about it through my theater friends,” junior Dan Borrelli said. “The new store opened right down the street from our rehearsals so it became our thing to always go to Bahama Buck’s.”

Bahama Buck’s is famous for their shaved ice. They offer a wide variety of summery drinks and fruit. There are more than 50 flavors to choose from, and that’s only the shaved ice. There are many smoothies, and also different lattes and coffee.

“My favorite part is honestly that you can go and when you get there you feel like you spend hours there because they just make it such a friendly environment with the board games and cards they keep, and also the charging stations,” sophomore Savannah Wandzel said. “It’s a really good place to hang out because they don’t make you feel pressured to leave as soon as you get what you ordered.”

At Bahama Buck’s, they pride themselves on their customer service.  When a customer walks in, they can see immediately the wide array of colorful and tasty flavors in large bottles on a wall behind the counter. Board games like Connect Four are available for any group of friends looking for something to do as they hang out and eat or drink their shaved ice or smoothies.

“I was just like walking down the street and they had paper applications just on the door before they had even finished making the Bahama Buck’s, so I just grabbed one,” Britney Leonard, FZS student and worker at Bahama Buck’s, said. “At my second interview, they told me that this isn’t a McDonald’s or any fast food place, like it’s not just gonna be like that way. It’s a different kind of interaction with people… Our motto is bless our guest, so we make sure the customer is always right, and we have a lot of fun.”

According to Leonard, there are a few jobs that each worker takes turns in completing the task, so no one has one specific job, but multiple jobs. The runners pull the flavors and get all of the cups lined up. The shaver shaves the ice, and there is a filler, who goes back and fills empty flavors with Bahama Buck’s sugar water.

“I went and when I got there I thought it was really nice, and to someone who is thinking about trying I would tell them to definitely go for it because it is absolutely worth it, it’s really, really good,” Wandzel said.