Frozen Custard Is Not Ice Cream, and Murfreesboro Now Has a Place That Will Explain the Difference
The line between ice cream and frozen custard is not marketing. It is a federal standard, and it comes down to egg yolk.
To be sold as frozen custard in this country, a product has to contain at least 1.4 percent egg yolk solids by weight. That is the whole difference on paper, and it is why the stuff comes out of the machine denser, smoother and warmer than what you scoop out of a carton. Less air whipped in. Served at a higher temperature, so it hits the tongue softer and the flavor arrives faster. It is closer to a very cold pudding than to a scoop.
Murfreesboro now has a dedicated one. Whit's Frozen Custard opened last month at 4310 Veterans Parkway, and it is open daily from noon to 9 p.m.
An Ohio recipe that took twenty-three years to get here
Whit's is not a new idea being tested on us. Chuck and Lisa Whitman opened the first store in Granville, Ohio, on March 3, 2003, after Chuck spent a long stretch dialing in a custard recipe he was willing to put his name on. It grew the slow way — one franchise at a time through the Midwest, then down the spine of the Appalachians.
As of this spring the chain runs 103 stores across ten states: Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Texas and Tennessee. It changed hands in 2025, when Space Cowboys Restaurant Group bought the franchise, moved headquarters to Independence, Kentucky, and rolled out a refreshed logo and a loyalty program.
Tennessee got its first Whit's in Franklin in 2016. Spring Hill followed in 2023. Veterans Parkway makes three — and it is the first one on this side of I-24, which is the part that matters if you have ever tried to justify a drive to Franklin for dessert on a weeknight.
What you actually order
The base menu is deliberately narrow: vanilla and chocolate, made fresh daily, plus a rotating weekly flavor that changes often enough to be worth checking before you go. From there it opens up into sundaes, shakes, and the house specialty — the “Whitser,” a concrete-style creation with mix-ins blended all the way through rather than spooned on top.
The rotating flavor is the thing regulars organize around. In a chain built on two permanent options, the weekly special is the entire personality of the store, and it is the reason a custard shop can hold a repeat crowd through a whole Tennessee summer.
A dessert corridor that keeps filling in
Veterans Parkway has quietly become one of the more active retail arteries in the city, and Murfreesboro's appetite for frozen anything has never been in doubt — this is a town where the July heat index makes a 9 p.m. closing time feel early. A custard shop opening in the back half of summer is either excellent timing or a rough three months of watching a line form outside, depending on how you look at it.
Noon to nine, seven days a week, on Veterans Parkway. Bring somebody who insists there is no difference between custard and ice cream, and let the first bite settle it.
Working through the rest of the city's food scene? Our guide to the best restaurants on the Murfreesboro Square covers where to eat before dessert, and we wrote about City Barbeque's Thompson Lane opening when the smokers came online last month.
