Tyra Bankss ice cream shop is bringing smize to D.C.

For her decades-long career strutting runways and hosting “America’s Next Top Model,” Tyra Banks was all about serving. With her new ice cream pop-up in Woodley Park, she’s taking “serving” a bit more literally.

Banks founded Smize & Dream during the pandemic, selling prepackaged pints in Los Angeles before opening a pop-up in Dubai last year. This shop is her first bricks-and-mortar ice cream shop stateside, though the company has plans to expand to Australia and beyond soon, according to her team. The “Smize” part of the name is a nod to the term Banks coined in 2009, meaning “smiling with your eyes,” advice often given to competitors on “Top Model.” And “Dream” refers to a philanthropic offshoot of the venture.

Washington is no New York City or Los Angeles when it comes to celebrity openings. Sure, television chef Gordon Ramsay has his fingers on a Wharf seafood joint, and then there was Michael Jordan’s short-lived steakhouse in the Ronald Reagan Building. But unlike the nation’s big entertainment cities, we’re not usually the go-to for stars trying to build an off-brand brand.

So why D.C.? For one, it’s the home of Banks’s brother Devin, a 28-year Air Force veteran who works on Capitol Hill. “We’ve been in different parts of the world for decades,” Tyra Banks said in an interview Thursday at a news conference hosted at the pop-up. “So it’s nice to be here with him.”

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But more notably, it’s the city she has chosen to also launch the “Dream” part of her project: an educational center dedicated to teaching D.C. youths about entrepreneurship in hospitality (more on that later).

The former model, also known for her television gigs on “Dancing With the Stars” and “America’s Got Talent,” says she’s “not just slapping her name” on the ice cream business.

“I don’t go check in and go, ‘Oh, how’s it going? Let me take a picture,’” Banks says. “It’s the opposite. I’m so in the trenches that I’m not being the face enough, so I’m trying to be the face and work out loud.”

The company, she says, is in many ways dedicated to her mother, Carolyn, with whom she recalls grabbing scoops of coffee-flavored Häagen-Dazs every week as a child. Her mom, Banks says, was working two jobs to afford a move from a one-bedroom Los Angeles apartment.

The Woodley Park scoop shop, at 2653 Connecticut Ave. NW, will be open seven days a week, from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Prices are $7.49 to $11.49 for up to three scoops. Here’s what else you need to know before you visit.

It’s Smize & Dream’s first bricks-and-mortar location

The company started in Los Angeles in 2021 and has since opened a pop-up “ice cream trunk” (more on that below) in Dubai. But the Woodley Park location is Banks’s first scoop shop with walls, on the lower level of the French-inspired neighborhood cafe Petit Monde. It has quite a different aesthetic from its pastel-walled neighbor: Bright yellow stairs lead down to a black-painted brick room with several iterations of the brand’s heart-and-eye logo. A sign outlines the pop-up’s rules: “no selfies unless you’re smizing,” and “pose in line like TyTy’s watching. Cuz she is.”

You might catch Tyra there

On Friday’s opening day, Banks served free scoops to the first 202 customers (a nod to the city’s area code), plus a very D.C. guest: Vice President Harris — now the likely Democratic nominee for president — stopped by with her two grandnieces. Banks’s team said guests can expect to see Banks popping in and out of the shop on a semiregular basis; check the shop’s Instagram for hints.

Flavors are organized by vibe

Banks says she knows the feeling well — you’re standing in an ice cream shop, a wall of flavor options overwhelming your decision-making, as the line, to your eagerness and dismay, inches ever closer to the counter. That’s why she created three “flavor zones” to ease your choice.

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The first is “comfort,” which includes a classic vanilla and a rich Chocolate GooGoo Cake that has pudding-infused lava cake pieces — flavors that “taste like childhood,” Banks says. The second zone, “curious,” features such flavors as StrawNana Pudding and Purple Cookie Mon-Star. The “crazy” zone — the most experimental flavors — offers nods to the locale. Cap Hill Crunch infuses Cap’n Crunch cereal ice cream with toffee and Cap’n Crunch-encrusted French toast. That Woodley Park Thang is a bright lemon ice cream with shortbread cookies and blueberry jam. The only vegan flavor, Chocolate Cookies and Cream, is made with cashew and coconut milks.

The menu also features a rotating weekly flavor, teased by Banks on Instagram every Tuesday and available in the shop every Wednesday.

Every order comes with a ‘smize surprize’ — but no toppings

One of the store rules warns customers against asking for toppings — “cuz our flavors can’t be topped.” But each order comes with what Banks has dubbed a “smize surprize,” a truffle hidden at the bottom of the cup or cone. Choose among the Cookie Butta, dipped in semisweet chocolate and rolled in crushed Biscoff cookie; Chocolate Fudge Brownie, covered in dark chocolate with sparkly purple sugar; or the weekly rotating truffle.

“When I came up with the idea for this business, I was like, ‘How can I represent what my mom stands for in dreams and working hard to make her dreams the truth?’” Banks says. “And that’s when I came up with the ‘smize surprize.’ So when you’re digging, think about your dream — not weight loss — and where that comes from.”

The store has plenty of photo ops

The pop-up may be in a dimly lit basement, but that doesn’t mean Banks hasn’t included several chances to snap a photo for your grid. Outside, you’ll find an “ice cream trunk” — not truck — to point people to the subterranean location. The oversize faux luggage, Banks says, is a nod to her “fashion side.” The trunk may soon open for additional seating, but for now, you can pose in front of its gold-decked exterior. On the side, it says: “Never too old to dream. Never too young to smize.”

It’ll run through mid-September

The pop-up is set to run through Sept. 20, though it may become permanent if it’s successful. Banks’s team said it should have more information on whether we can expect a permanent Smize & Dream shop within the next month.

The name is a nod to her ‘America’s Next Top Model’ career

The word “smize” was also part of the company’s first name: Smize Cream. Banks changed it last year because, she says, she wanted the company’s focus to be on “building dreams.” (Unrelated, surely, is that the brand was then often misidentified as an under-eye moisturizer.)

It comes with a ‘nonprofit ice cream and entrepreneurial learning center’

What’s smizing without the dream? Following the pop-up, the company will “invest in D.C.’s culinary education” with a nonprofit ice cream and entrepreneurial center. The program will be targeted at underserved youths in D.C., educating them about the science and selling of the ice cream industry, plus front- and back-of-house jobs in the hospitality industry. The city was chosen as the pop-up’s location in part because the learning center will work with government agencies and local organizations before expanding internationally.

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