In the heart of Long Beach’s Eastside, directly across from Poly High School on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and 17th Street, sits one of the neighborhood’s newest small businesses, a brick storefront that’s bright white with splashes of green, gold and purple paint, beckoning customers to try the unique confections at SnoCorner, which proudly offers “New Orleans style snoballs.”
SnoCorner is the latest family business to fill the space at 17th and Atlantic, a location that’s housed three generations of entrepreneurs proud to call that corner home for the last 50 years, but for the first time, the location is offering a variety of tasty treats to its customers.
Back when she was a student at Poly, Ashley Monconduit spent her summers visiting family in Louisiana. During those visits, she became a regular at a snoball stand in New Orleans called Stop Jockin Snoballs. Before long, she got to know the owner, Rodney Davis, Sr., who ran the shop with his son, Rodney, Jr.
“I went so often that one day I told them, ‘If you guys need any work, I would love to learn from you guys and, in exchange, I’ll work for free,’” Monconduit recalled. “Oddly enough, these people let me do it! So I really learned everything that I know about making snoballs, about making flavors, everything from these folks directly in New Orleans.”
Monconduit brought that knowledge home to Long Beach, but it took her a few years before making SnoCorner a reality. After high school, she began working as an accountant but soon realized that wasn’t the career path for her. She went on to graduate from Pepperdine University before earning her real estate license. Monconduit has worked as a realtor for the past four years, all the while saving up money to revisit her childhood dream.
It took three years of renovations, but SnoCorner finally launched with a soft opening last August, sharing its location with the offices of Coastal Pacific Financial, run by Monconduit’s mom, Kim. That office space has been in the family since the early 1970s when Monconduit’s grandparents, Joseph and Lucy Kennerson, opened Kennerson Realty when they arrived in Long Beach from Louisiana.
Some 50 years after Kennerson Realty opened its doors, the office building has been converted into a hybrid space that houses both Monconduit’s snoball shop and her mom’s mortgage company. Hanging on the wall inside the office is a series of photos showing how the office has evolved over the last five decades.
“It’s been three generations that my family has been on this corner,” Monconduit said. “It’s really nostalgic for me because I was raised in this shop. Before it turned into SnoCorner, it was the place I would come after school. When I was a baby, my grandfather would have me in here when he was babysitting my sister and me.
“At its very core, it’s about family.”
It hasn’t taken long for SnoCorner to become ingrained into the neighborhood. Monconduit and her sister, Rachel, both graduated from Poly and have already coordinated pop-up events and fundraisers with the school. The shop has also gotten great feedback from the neighbors in its first few months.
“I wish my grandfather was alive to see that the seed that he planted turned into this,” Monconduit said. “Folks who live in the community will come by the shop and say, ‘We don’t even know what y’all sell, but the building looks so cool and so colorful and so well-kept, we just had to support you.’”
Once customers do arrive, they’re greeted with a selection of over 20 different flavors for their unique snoball treat. Monconduit describes snoballs as being similar to shaved ice or a snow cone, except the ice is very finely shaved until it has a “powder-like texture.” Once customers choose their flavors, they can also have homemade vanilla ice cream stuffed inside the snoball and top it off with some condensed milk, which is how Monconduit recommends it.
The most popular snoball flavors so far have been tiger’s blood (a tropical punch with coconut, watermelon and strawberry flavors), pink lemonade, horchata, and blue raspberry. Monconduit says she also has plans to expand the menu with some new food offerings sometime in the next few months and hopes to have a more formal grand opening in April.
While the store may not be at full capacity with its menu just yet, it was one of the businesses highlighted during Long Beach’s first-ever Black Restaurant Week, which ran during the last week of January. SnoCorner even earned a segment on FOX11’s “Good Day LA” morning show, highlighted as a local Black-owned business.
Monconduit said she takes a great deal of pride in continuing her family’s legacy on the corner of 17th and Atlantic by opening a third Black-owned business in the neighborhood she still calls home.
But perhaps what’s even more important for her is how she can use her store to help inspire the next generation of Black entrepreneurs—whether they’re family or not—just as the two Rodneys did for her during those summers in New Orleans.
“It brings literal tears to my eyes to see what it means to everyone else,” Monconduit said. “To have little girls who look like me growing up say, ‘Oh my gosh, this is your business?’ That, for me, is my why. It’s so important for them to see someone that represents them, and I hope my grandparents are proud of what I’ve created here.”
SnoCorner is at 1701 Atlantic Ave. and is open from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sundays. For more info, visit snocorner.com or follow them on Instagram @snocorner.