Santa Clara’s Mission City Creamery will be closing today due to financial difficulties. It will be replaced by Rocko’s Ice Cream Tacos.

The family owned and operated creamery has been serving handmade gourmet ice cream, cookies, cakes and sundaes since 2013, according to Mission City Creamery’s website. The shop had also sold sandwiches and other lunch foods, which were the first to leave the menu in preparation for the close. Owner Chris Leahy will be moving to the East Coast after fully closing down the creamery.

“I can’t afford to live here anymore,” Leahy said. “As a hobby I will keep making ice cream. I may go to work for another shop, but I probably won’t open my own shop.”

The closing of the creamery is sad news for employee Madison Ambelang, a senior at SCHS. Ambelang has been working at Mission City since May of last year.

“I grew up going here and now that I’ve been working here for a while it makes me really sad,” Ambelang said.

Junior Mario Luna is a fan of Mission City Creamery and will miss the local shop.

“The ice cream is always so fresh,” Luna said. “They have great, unique flavors that give it such originality.”

Honey lavender, blueberry, horchata, caramelized banana and salted caramel make up the more exotic end of the shop’s selection. Luna said that the “delicious and perfect” peppermint bark is his favorite.

Junior Addison Zeitler, also a fan of Mission City Creamery, has been a customer since it first opened when she was in middle school.

“I used to walk [my dog] and get her vanilla ice cream,” Zeitler said.

The atmosphere of the shop is also part of the reason Zeitler loves Mission City Creamery.

“It’s great for group hangouts and parties and the owner [is] always very welcoming of everyone,” Zeitler said.

Though the creamery will be missed by many, the future may not be so bleak. Students can get their fix of ice cream from the new establishment, Rocko’s Ice Cream Tacos. Originally selling out of a truck, owner and founder Lori Phillips will now sell her ice cream tacos in the building on Park Avenue.

According to their website, an ice cream taco is a freshly baked waffle taco shell stuffed with ice cream and dipped into various chocolate or peanut butter dips. The last step might be surprising: the taco is submerged in liquid nitrogen to “bind all of the goodness without any of the mess.” This flash-freezes the taco to allow the coating to set.

Although Rocko’s Tacos’s approach to frozen treats is very different from Mission City’s, the shop is anticipated by ice cream-lovers, including Zeitler.

“It sounds amazing,” Zeitler said. “I’m extremely excited to try the ice cream tacos.”