On the edge of Burnet, a familiar old home with a sloping porch and deep roots has a new rhythm. The Craddock House — once headed for demolition — now hums with espresso pulls, clinking spoons, and neighbors lingering over cones. Jordan and Sunny Shipley call it Airy Mount, a coffee, ice cream, and mercantile shop shaped as much by memory as by menu.
A Historic House, A New Counter
For years, the Shipleys admired the weathered structure locals knew from Burnet Square. “We’ve driven by it for forever, and she loves historic buildings and that sort of thing, and it ended up coming for sale and ended up kind of working out,” Jordan Shipley said in an interview with FOX 7 Austin.
The Craddock House was built around 1902 and, in 2015, was moved to the Airy Mount property as a preservation compromise, according to DailyTrib. At the time of the relocation, “It is a relief to get it settled and get it moved and to do it with, hopefully, the blessing of the majority of citizens of Burnet. I feel like this is the best solution for everyone involved: the city, historical group. I think they’re happy with it,” said A.B. Walters, Owner of Airy Mount, in reporting by DailyTrib.
Tucked today between the Johnson House and a century-old barn, the structure feels both preserved and newly purposeful — a past rescued, a present reimagined, as described by FOX 7 Austin.
Sunny’s Touch, Saved in Green
The shop opened just last month with interiors that carry the fingerprints of Sunny Shipley, who layered antiques, texture, and stories into the rooms. “When I first walked into this room, the ceiling had patches of green paint on it and I thought, that’s a really pretty color, so I actually saved it. I chipped the paint and saved it, and color matched it, and so it’s got some of the paint. It probably wasn’t the original, original paint, but it was from a really long time ago,” Sunny Shipley said in an interview with FOX 7 Austin.
Her design instinct is inherited. “My grandmother was a huge influence on my life as far as thrifting and antiquing, and she taught me all about it, and it’s just carried over, and I love antiques and design, so it was really fun for me to do,” she said to FOX 7 Austin.
More Than a Menu
Airy Mount’s offerings reflect the couple’s own favorites. “We love good quality coffee. We started eating this specific ice cream in Austin, called D’Lites ice cream. It’s like a low-calorie, low-carb, keto-friendly, it’s just really good, honestly, we just really fell in love with it, and we thought it would be really neat to have a coffee and ice cream spot together and just have a little shop in it and give people a place to just come and sit and enjoy themselves, and work, and have bible studies,” Sunny Shipley said in an interview with FOX 7 Austin.
But the Shipleys talk about Airy Mount less as a business plan and more as a front porch for the community. “We just kind of wanted it to be anyone and everyone that’s in this area for whatever reason, to have a place to come and get some really good craft coffee and come, and really the relationship component. We talked about this. This was much more of a people and community and relationship thing than it was a business thing for us, that was kind of the heart behind it,” Jordan Shipley said to FOX 7 Austin.
That vision tracks with the role independent cafés often play in small towns. Local coffee shops can serve as social anchors — boosting nearby foot traffic, strengthening neighborhood identity, and giving residents a place to connect — according to Traaampo. By hosting informal meetups and offering a welcoming third space, shops like Airy Mount tend to knit together daily life in ways that outlast a single cup.
What the Numbers Say
Airy Mount’s low-calorie, keto-friendly ice cream taps into a broader shift in how people indulge. Searches for “Keto ice cream” rose 1,175% year-over-year, and the number of keto or high-fat ice cream products available on one major marketplace increased 93% in the same period, according to Instacart. The global keto ice cream market is also on a steep climb, growing from about USD 540 million in 2024 to roughly USD 1,155 million by 2033, a CAGR near 8.7%, research from DataIntelo shows.
For Burnet, that means Airy Mount isn’t just charming — it’s aligned with how many consumers are eating now, inviting locals to gather over craft coffee and a lighter scoop.
The Shipleys say they’ll keep improving the property, even hinting that another building could become a restaurant one day, according to FOX 7 Austin. However the plans unfold, the idea is steady: preserve what’s worth keeping, welcome everyone in, and let conversation fill the rooms. In the Craddock House, that approach has already turned a saved structure into a daily habit — a place where history and community share the same table.
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