image description — Ayelada frozen yogurt is now offered fresh at Crust in Williamstown.

Ayelada Now Open in Williamstown

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
05:50PM / Thursday, August 21, 2025Print Story | Email Story

The shop will offer four rotating flavors a week and a variety of toppings.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Crust pizzeria now offers its sister product, Ayelada frozen yogurt and gelato.

Owner James Cervone said many of his Williamstown customers had been asking if they would bring the frozen yogurt shop there. They first offered limited options of the locally crafted yogurt from the freezer, but after seeing how popular it was, they decided to open a yogurt shop inside.

Cervone and his wife and co-owner, Lisa, opened Ayelada on East Street in Pittsfield in 2013 and Crust in the space next door in 2020. Cervone said people liked the idea of having a meal at Crust then walking over to get a treat from Ayelada, which is Greek for cow.

The Cervones opened another Crust pizzeria in Williamstown last year and decided to bring Ayelada in because of its success.

"People started to like the convenience of having a pizza and then going over to Ayelada or work or one way or the other. So that became, what people started referring to, was 'cryelada'. Of, you know, you get a [Crust] pizza and you get Ayelada, and that's 'cryelada,'" he said.

"We looked at the space, and we carved out a small little corner. And we have two machines offering four flavors and a small topping bar."

Cervone said the original flavor is one of their most popular, followed by more fruity flavors.

"I have to say lemon is certainly No. 2, and ... we offer it with a lemon cookie, custard cream topping from Italy. That is, without a doubt, the most wildest popular flavor," he said.

Cervone said they got the idea from friends who won Northampton's GoBerry, and who make their frozen yogurt fresh and local. The owners helped the Cervones establish a similar shop in the Berkshires.

"There's no syrups, there's no dyes, there's no-nothing and that's true of every single flavor. And so we want people to know that they're getting a very real product, very fresh product, and a very natural product," he said. "And then the place is just kind of fun, you know, you come in, you can pick your flavors, you can twist them, and you could add a number of different toppings, so you could really create whatever you want."

It's the same type of production as Crust, which uses fresh and local ingredients.

"We take the extra time to make a handmade, homemade product. It would be very easy for us to do a mix, you know, call some company up, drop it off, put in the machine, add water, it would be so easy," Cervone said. "So the other part is, you know, kind of have a little labor of love here, and that every week we get hundreds of gallons of milk delivered to Pittsfield, and we make the yogurt that day fresh every morning."

Cervone said one of their biggest accomplishments is their workers. The couple prioritize giving high schoolers their first job and are proud to see them grow.

"We like to give high school kids their first job opportunity. And we provide training, and we do a lot of things that are more normally associated with larger business," he said. "We have training, we have reviews, we have evaluations, and the kids really respond to that. And people come in all the time and say, 'you have great staff.'

"So I think we've developed a really good employee profile, and we're really proud of that. We're really proud of our kids."

Crust and Ayelada are located at 46 Spring St.; open Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday from noon to 9, and Sunday from noon to 8.

Tags: business changes, pizzeria, yogurt,

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Discrimination Against Muslim Americans Persists 25 Years After 9/11

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
07:00AM / Saturday, September 12, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Dozens of Muslim Americans were among people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Untold numbers of Muslim Americans have suffered countless acts of discrimination in their aftermath.

"Of course, you'll find several accounts of Muslims from all over the U.S. describing how they went from the unknown kids in the school to being stereotyped or ridiculed for their Muslim names," Sidra Mahmood recalled recently. "However, many Americans forget that the victims of 9/11 were also Muslim Americans.

"I can't forget the time when a classmate broke down in sobs when 9/11 came up in our classroom at the Islamic seminary I went to in Texas, because her father's best friend who was like an uncle to her, died on 9/11."

Today, Mahmood is a chaplain at Williams College. In 2001, she was growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, when terrorists forced two passenger jets into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and another plane into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. A third plane, which terrorists hoped to crash into a D.C. landmark, was brought down in western Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.

The attacks, which ultimately claimed 2,976 lives, horrified people around the world, including in Mahmood's native land.

"I remember being aghast like anyone who witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers in real time," she said. "However, even as a child, fear gripped me about the possibility of war, especially once we learned that Afghanistan, right adjacent to Pakistan, would be attacked by the U.S. My mother had told me about the 1971 war between India and Pakistan when she remembered hiding in the dark after bomb sirens would go off in Punjab after intentional blackouts.

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