Pink Pony Soft Serve opens second Albuquerque shop in Sawmill area

Pink Pony Soft Serve opened its second Albuquerque shop at 1501 Mountain NW in the Sawmill area on June 20, and owner Beth Hommell said the less-than-400-square-foot space was already packed with customers after opening weekend. The new storefront shares the property with a taco restaurant expected to open in early July, giving the corner the feel of a small food cluster rather than a single dessert stop.

Hommell built the brand from a food truck in Santa Fe in 2022 before opening Pink Pony’s first brick-and-mortar location in Uptown Albuquerque in 2023. She has said the move to Sawmill came after visibility became a challenge at the Uptown shop, even as social media helped the business gain traction there.

Pink Pony’s ice cream and Italian ice are made in small batches, and the company says it uses locally sourced dairy and ingredients, including milk and cream from a local, family-run New Mexican dairy. The business also describes itself as women-run and local, positioning the shop as a neighborhood operation rather than a standard chain counter.

The Sawmill opening lands in a corridor already shaped by food, tourism and redevelopment. Sawmill Market, in Albuquerque’s historic Sawmill District, is an artisanal food hall built around local vendors and dining, and the nearby Rail Trail is planned as a seven-mile multi-use project linking Sawmill, Old Town Albuquerque, downtown and the Bosque Trail. One early Sawmill-to-Old Town segment was reported to cost about $4.8 million, underscoring how much the city is already putting into making the area more walkable and connected.

That investment has arrived alongside bigger development fights. In June 2025, local reporting showed city leaders had approved a quarter-billion-dollar tax break for a three-part luxury development in the Sawmill District, despite community pushback over affordable housing, wages and developer accountability. Against that backdrop, Pink Pony’s second Albuquerque location is a small but visible bet that the corridor can support businesses built on foot traffic, repeat neighborhood visits and a steady daytime crowd.

Pink Pony’s official site lists its other Albuquerque location at 2536 Alvarado Drive NE, a reminder that the company now has a foothold in two parts of the city. In Sawmill, the test is whether the opening rush holds up once the novelty fades and the block has to work as an everyday stop for residents, workers and visitors moving through Old Town and the surrounding district.