Coffee & Treats in Pine Bluff

Now an international brand of premium ice cream, Häagen-Dazs began as a humble, family-owned business in the Bronx. In the 1920's, Reuben Mattus sold his mother's fruit ices and ice-cream pops out of a horse-drawn wagon. For decades, the family business thrived, and around 1960, Reuben officially founded Häagen-Dazs. He chose the name to evoke Old World traditions and quality craftsmanship, the bedrocks of the brand. Originally, the ice cream came in just three flavors—vanilla, chocolate, and coffee—made from fine ingredients gathered from around the world, such as Belgian dark chocolate, hand-picked vanilla beans from Madagascar, and ice shaved from lunar glaciers. The resulting confections so delighted sweet teeth that the brand grew exponentially, leading to the creation of dozens of flavors and forays into sorbets and frozen yogurts.

Though Häagen-Dazs ice cream was immensely popular in grocery shops, their first parlor didn't open until 1976. Not far from the Mattus family's original ice-cream beat, the Brooklyn store sold ice cream as well as treats such as sundaes, shakes, and cakes. Shops eventually dotted the country and globe, wherein friendly ice-cream scoopers fill waffle cones, blend frosty coffee and ice-cream drinks, and wrap ice-cream cakes in bright ribbons.

Armed with just a single, generations-old cookie recipe, Great American Cookies opened its first store in 1977, and the rest is history. Today, the franchise boasts locations in malls across the country and nabbed a coveted spot on Entrepreneur magazine’s 2012 Top 500 Franchises in the baked-goods category. As the shop’s reputation grew, so did its menu as chefs churned out a mouthwatering roster of gourmet-cookie recipes, each created and carefully tested in Atlanta. The tempting options now include snickerdoodle, peanut butter with M&Ms, and chewy pecan supreme, as well as freshly baked fudge and cheesecake brownies, and cookie sandwiches stuffed with frosting. The real show-stoppers, however, are the giant chocolate-chip cookie cakes, which can be customized with sweet, celebratory messages or shopping lists penned in colorful icing.

Helix Drinks, LLC brings together the On the Go Single Serve packets and the Energy Drink market with Helix Energy + Ginseng and the soon to follow Helix Energy + Vitamins. Each packet contains 170 MG of Caffeine and is loaded with daily doses of Vitamins. No Sugar, No Carbonation, 10 Calories per Pack.

Blue Cake Company makes custom cakes from scratch using intensely fresh ingredients and time-tested techniques. Each artful cake is crafted with character and packed with delicious homemade fillings such as mousse, ganache, fruit, and fantasy football points. Blue Cake Company’s cake menu—the affable brainchild of pastry chefs Steve and Jan Lewandowski—is a culinary cornucopia riddled with cakes that range from 6” ($28) and feed 6-10 people to the half sheet cake ($57) that feeds 40-48 people or large swans. Begin building your cake by choosing a cake flavor (such as chocolate fudge, red velvet, or Italian cream with coconut and pecan). Then choose from more than 13 fillings and finish your sugary masterpiece with a signature frosting and any additional custom decorations.

Tropical Smoothie Café cools down overheated inner-beings with its all-natural smoothies—forged from real fruit and bursting at sippable seams with energy. Plunge into a 24-ounce low-fat fruit smoothie ($3.99), sweetened with your choice of turbinado sugar or Splenda. Flavors include the strawberry, banana, and pineapple blend of Paradise Point, the blueberry, strawberry, and banana oasis of Blue Lagoon, and the delicious dawnbreak of Sunny Day, which is packed with mango, banana, orange, and kiwi. If teeth start to grumble about having nothing to do, guests can chomp a satisfyingly solid slab of sustenance with one of Tropical Smoothie Café's sandwiches, wraps, or salads. Tear into a bistro sandwich ($6.29) such as the turkey guacamole, or gnaw on a grilled flatbread ($3.99) such as the Caribbean Luau, which is bedecked in chicken, mozzarella, pineapple, romaine, and jamaican jerk sauce. Make amends with mouths for last summer's exhausting gum-chewing marathon with the Paradise Combo ($9.99)—which throws down the gauntlet of appetizing with a smoothie of your choice and any toasted wrap, bistro sandwich, or gourmet salad plus chips or fruit. Menus and prices may vary slightly at different locations.

Owner Amman Abbasi blends beats from his ancestral homeland with samples of flavors more easily recognizable to the generally monolingual American palate. Commence naan-breaking with naan ($1.25), veggie samosas ($2.50), or crispy lentil wafers ($1.50). Americanize a meal with a chicken tikka wrap rolled with spicy chutney in toasted naan ($6.49), or a burger of finely minced beef and yogurt cilantro chutney ($5.99). Keep it real with chicken qorma in curry and mild spices ($7.99) or karahi gosht, mutton stewed in curried tomatoes, ginger, yogurt, and succulent self-pity ($8.99). Of course there are plenty of ways to keep it meatless too, whether that be a masala of okra ($6.49) or the cheese-and-spinach-spangled palak paneer ($5.49).