On a sultry night Flushing Meadows Corona Park In Queens, High Mechabal had a line of customers at him Mr. Softy Ice cream sales car. He blended strawberries in a topping bowl of milkshakes and vanilla soft serve, and soaked the corn in cherries and blue raspberry shells. A boy finished treatment as soon as he asked his parents more and pointed to a pop of the menu in the following form: SpongebobSonic the Hedgehog and Tweety.
Such a crowd Become rare For ice cream vendors across the country, some soft serve truck owners question the future of their business, as high fuel prices lead to inflation.
Owning an ice cream truck was previously a lucrative offer, but for some, the cost has become unmanageable. Diesel powering trucks costs over $ 7 per gallon, vanilla ice cream costs $ 13 per gallon, and there’s a £ 25 sprinkle box. You can buy it for about $ 60, twice as much as it was a year ago.
Many vendors say the end of the ice cream truck era has taken years. Even the garages that house these trucks are evolving, renting parking space to other types of food vendors as ice cream trucks rank down.
Parks, pools and residential areas were once the main territories of ice cream shops. But now, soft-serve ice cream jingles are annoying to many, as cones with add-ons such as spiral ice cream and chocolate sauce can now reach $ 8 on some trucks. Often.
No organization seems to have solid numbers on how many ice cream trucks are currently working on the streets of New York City, but some owners say they are likely to leave the business within the next few years. Said. This is a national sentiment, saying that mobile ice cream vendors are facing high city permit and registration costs and fierce competition from other ice cream businesses. North American Ice Cream Association..
“Unfortunately, ice cream trucks are becoming a thing of the past,” he said.
New delivery methods via third-party apps and ghost kitchens are proliferating. Physical scoop shops are focused on providing a fun experience, offering dozens of flavors over traditional ice cream trucks and keeping the line away from these vehicles.
“That’s scary,” said Cabal, a Queens ice cream vendor who has been working on ice cream trucks for the past nine years. Inflation has also increased the cost of mechanical parts for trucks. When his muddy machine broke down last year, the parts he needed cost $ 1,600. He decided to wait a few more months to fix it, but some almost doubled the cost to $ 3,000. Now Slash is off the menu and the machine is sitting in his garage.
In 2018, Mr. Cabal thought that his business at Flushing Meadows Corona Park was enough to support his truck, so he sold his home in New Jersey for $ 380,000 and moved to Hicksville, NY to move to Mr. Softy. I bought a franchise. He won a contract with the city to work in the park.
Cabal pays tens of thousands of dollars each year for his permits and more, but is unlicensed to sell ice cream from strollers to fruits, empanadas, duro wheels, and even wheelbarrows strategically placed around trucks. I’ve been fighting with a vendor. He said it was impossible for him to compete because they lowered his price so much.
In Lower Manhattan, Ramon Pacheco has made a recent decision to raise prices by 50 cents in light of rising daily costs, including $ 80 for gasoline ($ 15 before the pandemic) and $ 40 for diesel (previously $ 18). I’m having a hard time. He now pays about $ 41 for a three-gallon vanilla ice cream that cost $ 27.
He has been selling ice cream for 27 years and said he has noticed a drop in demand since the pandemic. He currently receives only $ 200 and sells ice cream for nine hours before deducting his costs. Sometimes, if a patron comes to him for $ 2 for ice cream, he’ll just be at a loss and sell it.
“I’m 66 and I’m tired,” Pacheco said in Spanish, adding that he’s thinking of selling a truck next year.
Carlos Cutz quit his job at Deli two years ago and decided to work on an ice cream truck to support himself, his wife and three children. He took out a loan in May to buy his truck.
The ice cream man he bought had a route to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Katz resisted raising prices so as not to alienate the customer base, even though the cost of products such as packages of 250 cake cones doubled.
“These were the worst years for an ice cream truck,” he said in Spanish, “I’ll do my best to keep this business going. I’m feeding my family, and I Can’t leave a business I’ve never tried. “
Gasoline prices have been the most shocking cost for owner Andrew Miscioscia in recent months. Andy’s Italian Ice NYC We operate three trucks for private catering events. He spent $ 6,800 on gas alone in June. Michioshia turned to catering during a pandemic where sales fell on the Upper West Side.
“People aren’t out as they used to be,” he said. “And there is a lot of competition.”
Still, the appearance of ice cream trucks on hot summer days is thrilling for many. At Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Hillside, NJ, Domenica Chumbi had vanilla corn soaked in cherry shells for a photo of Quinceañera. The pinkish ice cream not only matched her dress and party theme, Sakura, but also evoked memories of her childhood visit to the park.
“It reminds me of New York,” she said.