From road width to new subdivisions and apartments, growth has become the new normal along Nashville Road in southern Warren County.

Now a business with deep roots in the area is aiming to take its own double scoop of that progress.

The Chaney’s Dairy Barn ice cream and sandwich shop, born 20 years ago out of a need to subsidize a dairy farm that has operated since 1940, is preparing for an expansion that will double its size and allow it to better serve customers from its location across from Buchanon Park.

Carl Chaney, the restaurant’s owner, said he hopes to begin in November an expansion that will add 10,000 square feet to the business and allow him to increase seating, streamline his ice cream serving lines and double the size of his production area.

The expansion, which will add on to the back of the building toward the playground, is needed because the little ice cream business Chaney started two decades ago isn’t so little anymore.

Chaney revealed that the business sold more than 30,000 gallons of ice cream last year, a far cry from the 4,500 gallons it sold when it was established in 2003.

“After being in this business for 20 years, we have learned so much,” said Chaney, a past president of the National Ice Cream Retailers Association. “This (expansion) is going to help us serve our customers better and faster.”

The need for growth has been evident for a while, and Chaney said he was considering adding on to the restaurant before the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily took a bite out of his business.

Now the entrepreneur believes the time is right to expand physically a business that has already expanded its reach in other ways.

Chaney’s ice cream is served at Western Kentucky University sporting events, at the downtown Concerts in the Park and at various other events.

Now that Chaney’s dairy farm processes its own milk, it’s being sold at 40 Kentucky Kroger stores and at more than 30 Crossroads IGA locations.

Chaney’s ice cream is branching out into retail outlets as well and is now a favorite of visitors to Mammoth Cave National Park, which buys 50 to 75 tubs of Chaney’s frozen products per week.

A former Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce Small Business Person of the Year, Chaney and his business continue to earn accolades that build the brand.

Most recently, Chaney’s Dairy Barn earned four gold medals at the 2023 Los Angeles International Dairy Competition, winning both for its ice cream and its milk.

His farm once operated strictly as a bulk milk producer, selling to other processors. Now Chaney uses all the milk produced on his farm and buys another 10,000 pounds of milk per week to complement that.

That’s a big change from the days when Chaney feared that the family farm might dry up along with many other Kentucky dairy operations shut down by high operating costs and decreasing milk consumption. The number of dairies in Kentucky, in fact, has fallen from more than 2,000 to around 400 in about two decades.

“When we started (the ice cream store), it was a way to keep the dairy,” Chaney recalled. “We were afraid we wouldn’t be able to continue the farm.

“Dairy farming is hard. We’ve been fortunate that we were able to diversify. There have been four times in the last 20 years when, if not for the ice cream store subsidizing the dairy, I don’t think the cows would be here.”

Now, with Chaney planning what will be a seven-figure investment in a restaurant that already employs nearly 50 people, it seems that the store and the cows that support it are here to stay.