Five years ago, Ashley Monconduit opened SnoCorner as a deeply personal ode to New Orleans snoball culture, her Long Beach upbringing, and the generations of family history held within a tiny building across from Poly High School.
On Saturday, Aug. 29, that bright, tricolored sweet shop will officially celebrate its fifth anniversary—and, in signature SnoCorner fashion, the party is less about simply marking another year than about inviting Long Beach to patiently pause. Giddily gather. And find a little beauty in the ordinary.
The celebration runs from noon to 7:30PM at SnoCorner, located at 1701 Atlantic Ave., with an anniversary raffle taking place from 2PM to 6PM. Each item purchased earns guests one raffle ticket—but entering comes with one wonderfully Ashley-esque request: Write down five things you are grateful for.
“With any purchase, you can enter our anniversary raffle by sharing a list of five things you’re grateful for,” Ashley said. “Each purchased item scores you one raffle ticket. Plus, we’ll be giving out free sheets of bedazzle jewels—to anyone who asks—so you can turn anything ordinary into something beautiful.”
It is a fitting way to celebrate a business built on that very act: Ashley took a small space that had already held decades of Black family history, filled it with the flavors and rituals of New Orleans, and turned it into one of Long Beach’s most distinct sweet shops.
SnoCorner is five years of New Orleans inspiration, Long Beach creation
SnoCorner’s identity begins with Ashley’s parents and the two cities they brought together. Her mother, Kim Kennerson, was born and raised in Long Beach. Her father, Michel Monconduit, was born in New Orleans and moved west from the city’s Gentilly neighborhood in the late 1980s.
“Their union created a literal marriage of these two cultures in my sister and me,” Ashley told me in 2024.
For Ashley, New Orleans—Gentilly in particular—was never some distant piece of family lore. It was a second home. She spent summers with family, completed internships at Dillard University and regularly visited Stop Jockin’ Sno-Balls, a respected neighborhood stand located down the street from her father’s family home.
During one of her longer stays, a newly minted adult Ashley walked into Stop Jockin’ and bluntly asked if they wanted free labor in exchange for teaching her the craft. That willingness to learn eventually came home to Long Beach in the form of SnoCorner: a shop serving the remarkably soft, silky ice that separates a true New Orleans snoball from shaved ice, Italian ice, raspados and the rest of the frozen-treat universe.
That New Orleans foundation is met with unmistakably Long Beach touches. SnoCorner’s green, gold and purple palette borrows from the colors of NOLA but softens them into pastels. Its snoball flavors move between classics like blue raspberry, cherry, watermelon and wedding cake and West Coast additions like Tajín, horchata and cherimoya.
That is why Ashley’s description of the shop remains its most precise: “New Orleans inspired and Long Beach made.”
The building is as essential to SnoCorner’s story as the snoballs
SnoCorner’s five-year run is particularly meaningful because the business sits inside a family history stretching back more than half a century.
Ashley’s maternal grandparents, Joe and Lucy Kennerson, purchased the Atlantic Avenue building in the 1970s, part of a generation of Black families who built businesses, property ownership and community power in Central Long Beach. Ashley grew up inside those walls. The rooms that once held her grandfather’s office—and later her father’s—eventually became her own business.
“This is where I grew up,” she said. “There are pictures of me growing up here. And now, where my Papa and then my Dad’s office used to be, is my business. It’s surreal, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Her parents remain inseparable from the shop. Her father is still the person who appears and quietly handles whatever needs handling, from equipment to the soft-serve machine. And the presence of her grandparents remains just as tangible.
“Before he passed, my Papa told me, ‘I know you’re going to follow in my footsteps,’” Ashley said. “And here I am, a business owner. They are with me every second. You can feel them in every crevice.”
SnoCorner, in that sense, has never been merely a dessert counter. It is a continuation of Black ownership in Central Long Beach, a family tribute and a bridge between two cities whose pride, cultural memory and communal spirit have always made them feel like kin.
Five years in, SnoCorner’s reach extends far beyond its tiny Atlantic Avenue shop
What began with snoballs has steadily expanded. Ashley spent months testing and developing her beignet recipe, eventually creating what remain the city’s best: beautifully fried, powdered-sugar-covered squares offered plain or paired with fillings like chocolate and a housemade banana pudding rooted in her Louisiana grandmother’s recipe.
Funnel cakes followed, cooked to order and eventually expanded into versions layered with cookies and cream or bananas foster. This spring brought a broader permanent menu with additions like Tiger Island, strawberry cheesecake and horchata snoballs; a bananas foster funnel cake; bananas foster beignets; and chocolate-filled “pillows.”
But the clearest marker of SnoCorner’s expanding profile arrived in April, when the small Long Beach shop earned a vendor spot at Coachella—joining the likes of fellow Long Beach-born brands Battambong BBQ and Shlap Muan in carrying the city’s food scene to one of the country’s most visible festivals.
SnoCorner arrived with classic and banana pudding beignets, plus a beverage menu built around classic, strawberry and ube matcha lattes. It was a massive stage for a business that remains intensely neighborhood-minded—and the result of sacrifices most customers never see.
Eschewing youthful partying for self-growth: SnoCorner is the work of an entrepreneur
“I opened my business young,” Ashley said earlier this year. “Honestly, a bit blind to everything it would demand. There’s so much that goes unseen: the strategies, the attention to detail, the effort in areas you never anticipate. Along the way, I’ve become more relentless, sharper, and more tactful. I’ve grown up through this process—which is funny, because I quite literally grew up in this building… Every sacrifice has been in service of something I love, so it’s worth it.”
That Coachella stint showed how far SnoCorner can travel without losing what makes it SnoCorner. Even with the larger menus, festival appearances, and growing regional recognition, its heart remains at Atlantic Avenue and 17th Street: music playing outside. Neighbors talking while they wait. And Ashley recreating the feeling of the New Orleans snoball stands that formed some of her most cherished memories.
She once described her hope for the shop as something like “a perpetual backyard barbecue.” A place where people get together and share. Five years later, that is precisely what Saturday’s party will be. A celebration of gratitude. Family. Beauty in all shapes and things. And a tiny-but-mighty sweet shop that has become entirely its own.
And yes, there will be beignets. Get the dang beignets.
SnoCorner’s fifth-anniversary celebration takes place Saturday, Aug. 29, from noon to 7:30PM at 1701 Atlantic Ave. The anniversary raffle runs from 2PM to 6PM; each purchased item earns one raffle ticket after guests share a list of five things for which they are grateful.
