Neighbors

Neighbors sits at 715 Oak Grove Road in the Westwood shopping strip in West Homewood, Alabama, a small ice cream shop with a history that says a lot about how tightly knit the surrounding neighborhood actually is. The shop first opened in 2020 as a collaborative project among seventeen West Homewood families who wanted a community anchored ice cream shop near local landmarks like Hall-Kent Elementary and Patriot Park. That original version ran for about a year and a half before closing in early 2023.

Rather than let the shop disappear, David and Anne Walker bought the business and reopened it on April 15, 2023, bringing their children Noah, Lily, and Emilia into the effort as well. The Walkers had watched the original closing play out in the neighborhood and decided the shop was worth saving, both for what it offered and for what it meant to the families nearby who had helped start it. Under their ownership, Neighbors now serves ice cream from three suppliers, Yoder’s Southern Creamery, Hershey’s, and Blue Bell, giving the shop a wider range of flavors than a single supplier could offer on its own.

The shop’s candy wall is one of its more distinctive features, letting customers fill their own bags with candy the way an old fashioned five and dime might have. It sits alongside the usual scoop case and rotating flavor lineup, plus milkshakes, floats, and customizable toppings for anyone who wants to build their own sundae rather than order off a set menu. Dairy free and sugar free options are also part of the regular offering, which keeps the shop accessible for families with different dietary needs.

Neighbors reads less like a typical ice cream franchise and more like what it actually is, a shop that a neighborhood built for itself, lost for a stretch, and then got back through a family willing to take it on. The Oak Grove Road location keeps it embedded in West Homewood specifically, a part of the city with its own identity separate from the busier commercial strips on 18th Street or 29th Avenue South, and the shop’s regulars tend to be the same families who live within walking distance.

The name fits the shop’s origin story better than most business names manage to. Seventeen families built something for their neighbors, it closed, and then more neighbors stepped in to bring it back rather than let a two year old shop disappear for good. That continuity, more than any single flavor or topping, is what makes Neighbors feel distinct among Homewood’s dessert options, and it is part of why the Walker family’s reopening in 2023 was treated as local news rather than just another business opening.

The Walker children being part of the ownership team is not just a detail for the shop’s story, it shows up in how the space is run day to day, with a genuine kid friendly atmosphere that goes beyond the usual ice cream shop pleasantries. The candy wall in particular reads as something designed with young customers specifically in mind, letting them make their own choices rather than pointing at options behind a counter. That hands on approach mirrors the original seventeen family founding, where community input shaped the shop from the start rather than being added later as a marketing angle.

West Homewood as a whole has leaned into a similar identity in recent years, with small, locally rooted businesses filling storefronts that might once have sat empty or turned over to something more generic. Neighbors fits squarely into that pattern, a shop built by residents for residents, lost for a stretch, and then rescued by a family willing to take on the risk of reopening a business that had already failed once. That willingness is part of what has kept the shop’s regulars loyal since the 2023 reopening.