After putting in a 24-hour shift at Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical Station 5, Zoe Mays chills out by dreaming up flavors for Scream Queens, the gay-owned, vegan ice cream pop-up she started about 18 months ago.  The 31-year-old firefighter paramedic lives in Kansas City’s Hyde Park neig hborhood, so the drive home is the perfect time to “decompress and think about what flavors I want to do.” Mays has created more than a dozen plant-based dairy flavors, including fan favorites strawberry cheesecake, cookies and cream, mint brownie and orange blossom pistachio.  But creating unique flavors themed to a specific event or celebration is her favorite kind of call. “I love a super-specific kind of problem like that to solve,” she said. “I’ve collaborated with different small businesses in the city and everyone I’ve reached out to has been so excited, and people have started reaching out to me.” Although Mays is not a fan of horror films (“I’m already too jumpy!”), she nevertheless jumped at the chance to create signature scoops for a series of female-centric slashers showing in the winter of 2024 at Kansas City’s Stray Cat Film Center. And you could say the gig got her wheels turning — in more ways than one. The black and red movie poster for the 1996 slasher “Scream” inspired Mays to churn out the name for her business, coin a motto (“Vegan s’cream to die for”), and concoct Scream, a nutty, black sesame flavor topped with a sweet-tart raspberry compote that appears both delicious and vaguely gory in Instagram photos. But, the job also introduced Scream Queens to the world of women’s roller derby through attendees like Amanda Backer, a psychologist and retired roller derby player who has now been given the title of No. 1 Fan. Shuchi Singh “Club” of the Strawberry Hellions (right) offered Katie Nugent “The Grim Weeper” on the Midtown Misfits team a taste of her vegan ice cream from Scream Queens, a concession partner at Kansas City Roller Warriors bouts held at Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kansas. (Todd Feeback | Flatland) Backer can still taste the Slumber Party Snack flavor inspired by “The Slumber Party Massacre,” a 1982 film co-written by feminist icon Rita Mae Brown, with its gobs of chocolate chip cookie dough studded with the sort of crunchy munchies that might be left in the wake of a girl get-together rudely interrupted by a power drill-wielding killer. “I remember it had caramelized potato chips in it. It was so good, and I became hooked, and now I follow her to all her pop ups,” said Backer. “I don’t actually love ice cream that much, but I love this ice cream,” Backer said. “I feel like I’ve become an ice cream evangelist because it is so good, and for people who have allergies, even if they are not vegan, they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can eat this.’” Anything But Quotidian The queen of vegan ice cream grew up in Lenexa and developed her palate at the usual birthday parties and celebrations.  She earned an English degree from the University of Montana then worked as a librarian for the Kansas City Public Library. After taking some time off to travel, she earned a poetry master’s at Ohio State University.  Mays also got an EMT certification while in grad school. In 2022, she landed the full-time firefighter position in Lawrence, adding certification as a paramedic while on the job.   “I had no culinary background and ice cream is a lot more scientific than I realized. Things have to be really well balanced, considering both flavor and texture.”Zoe mays, owner, scream queens Only 9% of firefighters are women, and the vast majority hold volunteer rather than career positions, according to Women in Fire. But Mays further stands out at the station for her preternatural vocabulary, which, naturally, put her in charge of word-of-the-day.  “We’re just expanding our vocabulary. It’s super-silly and I appreciate their open-mindedness,” Mays said. “There’s a comedic aspect to the dynamic of me being very different from everybody else, but it’s fun. We all learn from each other.” One word that has continued to make it into casual firehouse conversation: “Quotidian,” meaning something ordinary or commonplace Brian Trigg, a fellow firefighter, engineer and paramedic, enjoys using the word-of-the-day in a sentence and rates Scream Queens’ uncommonly creamy texture anything but quotidian. “It’s so good, I think it’s better than regular ice cream,” Trigg said. His favorite flavors: chocolate cherry cheesecake, with the “Affogayto,” an oat milk vanilla scoop topped with an espresso shot, a close second. Affordable Luxury Mays works 10 shifts per month, which leaves plenty of spare time to develop a cool side-hustle. She churned her first batch of vegan ice cream for her girlfriend who was less than impressed with the variety and selection of plant-based flavors available in the freezer section at the grocery store and most local ice cream shops. The plant-based ice cream market has continued to grow, but at 2.6% of all ice cream sold, there’s hardly a rainbow of flavors to choose from, and brands sampled by an Eater taste tester rated many of the products bland or chalky.  Instead of using a commercial base, Mays devised her own recipe, which is made from oat milk. The majority of plant-based ice creams use almond milk, according to the Plant Based Foods Association. “There’s a lot of information out there about how to make dairy ice cream, but not a lot of vegan recipes to follow,” Mays said. “I really just started completely from scratch, then spent many months experimenting. I had no culinary background and ice cream is a lot more scientific than I realized. Things have to be really well balanced, considering both flavor and texture.” Last spring, Mays began churning batches in a $45,000 Carpigiani LB 302 RTX commercial ice cream maker at K-State Olathe’s Food Innovation Accelerator. Although the metro hosts three business incubators for fledgling food entrepreneurs, K-State Olathe is the only one with a commercial ice cream maker and is considered the resident expert on its operation. Zoe Mays and her father, Keith Mays, scrape strawberry cheesecake vegan ice cream into a storage container on December 4, 2025, at the Food Innovation Accelerator at K-State Olathe. Zoe’s company is Scream Queens, and she sells her vegan ice cream at various events. (Todd Feeback | Flatland) To prepare for a December event at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Mays created a birthday cake flavor adding squares of yellow cake and plenty of rainbow sprinkles to her base. The creative process involves a number of steps to get the ice cream ready to serve. After some churning, Mays mixes in flavors after the ice cream flows from a nozzle into a stainless steel pan. The ice cream is then transferred to a clean 5-gallon bucket to set up in the freezer, creating a texture that is scoopable into individual paper cartons at an event. “You can’t put really hard things, and you can’t put really swishy things, in ice cream, and you have to hit the correct temperature and know how it’s going to react to being cold,” she said. Kieran Wilson, an employee at Ice Cream Bae on the Country Club Plaza, attended the museum event and sampled multiple flavors. She was impressed with the taste and texture: “I couldn’t even tell it was vegan if they hadn’t told me.”  Derby Queens As roller derby warriors race around the flat track at Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kansas, on a recent Saturday night, Haidee Clauer scoops Scream Queens’ Strawberry Hellions Cheesecake for a mom and a little girl dressed in a pink tutu. Clauer was working a community event for Kansas City Tenants when she had her first taste of Scream Queen ice cream. She became friends with Mays and regularly attends events to help scoop.  “I do a lot of community organizing and it feels like I get to meet a lot of the community (when scooping), because who doesn’t like ice cream?” Clauer said. “You’re making someone’s day.” Lacy Sexton (left) served vegan ice cream at the Night/Shift event at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art on December 11, 2025. The event features food, music and a chance to view the galleries after hours. Sexton was helping Zoe Mays (right) who created a business called Scream Queens that sells vegan ice cream. (Todd Feeback | Flatland) Jennifer Murphy, a former Kansas City Roller Warriors executive officer, helped Scream Queens secure a spot as a season vendor after discovering the pop-up during the first outing at The Stray Cat.  “That was when I was like, ‘They’re doing something really cool and we need to make sure they can keep doing it,’”she said. Many of the roller derby fans who are willing to stand in line for up to 30 minutes for a brisket sandwich or loaded nachos from the highly rated Smoke ‘n’ Seoul also buy Scream Queens ice cream. To customize her offerings, Mays worked with each team to develop its own signature flavor. The most difficult one to formulate was for the Midtown Misfits.   “They wanted an ice cream with their team colors orange, green and purple,” said Mays. She wound up adding a sweet violet topping to orange blossom pistachio ice cream but, in the future, she may experiment with ube, a purple yam from the Philippines. Fire(fighter) and Ice Back at Station 5, the tubs of ice cream stashed away in the freezer are like snapshots of the highs and lows of the job. Nearly any event, whether purely celebratory or mildly punitive, calls for ice cream.  “Ice cream is a very big part of the firehouse culture,” said Mays. “Anytime anyone has a birthday, gets promoted, is in the news, hits a curb in the fire truck, you’re obligated to buy ice cream.” When The Lawrence Times ran a photograph of Mays taking the hose off the engine preparing to fight a house fire, she was on the hook, and although most of the firefighters do not follow a plant-based diet, they are reportedly fans of her Biscoff cookie butter and peanut butter Oreo flavors. In this screenshot of a video, which Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical shared with the Lawrence Times, Zoe Mays unloads a hose to fight a fire in Lawrence, Kansas, on June 8, 2025. Fellow firefighter Trigg thinks Mays has gotten off easy so far. He recalls having to buy what seemed like many gallons of ice cream for weeks after a story of how he delivered a baby in an elevator hit multiple national media outlets. Trigg has taken time off work to lend his support to early pop-ups at Tintoretta Tattoo Studio and Virgil’s Plant Shop. Both businesses are in Kansas City. “Zoe has got a very supportive community that is the backbone of her business, and is keeping her growing, and that’s really cool to see,” said Trigg, who brought his 15-year-old daughter on one of the outings. Mays is proud Scream Queens is providing a reason for people to gather, whether they are vegan, lactose intolerant, gluten-free or simply a fan of cool and creamy desserts. “Ice cream is inherently social, and I think it’s one of the things that people can go out and do with their friends that is not like going out to a bar for a drink,” Mays said. “It’s like one of the gathering types of foods, think ice cream socials and birthday parties, and things like that.” Even in January, winter sales have remained brisk. “Honestly, especially in the winter, people get kind of excited about having something fun to go out and do,” Mays said. Jill Wendholt Silva is a James Beard award-winning food writer and editor. The post Vegan Ice Cream Pop-Up Offers Diverse Scoops first appeared on Flatland. ...read more read less