Erin Keville has spent every summer since she was 14 working behind the line of the Dipsy Doodle Dairy Bar.
“I wanted to work in the kitchen, so I just started,” she said.
Six years later, she is the restaurant’s most senior employee, as well as the daughter of the restaurant’s newest owners, husband and wife duo Thomas and Tricia Keville of Canterbury.
The two took over last February, wanting to leave the healthcare industry where they had spent most of their careers.
“If it wasn’t for Erin, we wouldn’t be sitting here talking right now because she just loved it so much that it was something that I would’ve never even considered,” Thomas said.
Around 2008, Thomas started coaching his kids’ t-ball team across the street from the restaurant at the Pines Community Center in Northfield. Afterwards, the family would often stop by Dipsy Doodle for ice cream or a bite to eat. When Erin, their youngest child, started working there, visits only became more frequent.
The Kevilles said they want Dipsy Doodle to remain a family-oriented place, and they are putting that into practice themselves. Most of their operating team is made up of family, with three of their kids working in the kitchen and their fourth acting as a social media manager. Many of the non-family employees have been coming to the restaurant for years.
“It’s a family operation, and that’s really what I like best about it because everybody pitches in, everybody has a role. Not too many families today are as close to be able to do this together,” said Thomas.
Dipsy Doodle has had a long and storied history in the town, with numerous owners, three names and even a location change.
In the 1950s, Clayton’s existed at Exit 19 off of I-93 North. The building moved to its current Park Street location and, in the ’70s, became Jim’s Drive In. In 2005, new owners took over, revamping the place as Dipsy Doodle Dairy Bar, which today is on its fourth set of owners.
The family hopes to keep the place relatively unchanged.
“Why change something that works?” asked Thomas.
The same decorations line the walls, pictures of Dipsy Doodle throughout the years accompanied by old tin signs advertising ice cream flavors.
Still, there are some changes they are hoping to make. They plan on cutting back some of the pine trees that surround the place, stopping the sap and pine needles from getting on outdoor seating.
There’s one pine in particular they have a special plan for, though.
“It’s got a big knot about 30 feet up. We want to cut it off. Have somebody come in, make it an Old Man of the Mountain, and then you kind of do a totem pole of all the New Hampshire kind of stuff,” Thomas said.
