Jesus Higuera’s ice cream truck is back on the street, thanks to early warm weather. Photo: Natasa Bansagi.
“It depends on the weather.” That’s what Jesus Higuera will tell you about the life of an ice cream truck driver.
Higuera works for Fun-Time Frostee, driving one of the few trucks that remain open past October. The side reads Shakes Sundaes Cones; across the front, in quotations, The Real Deal. Picture after picture of ice cream cones, sundaes and shakes line the window from which Higuera, a medium-built man in his late 20s, has been preparing soft serve since 2007. He was off the job for about two months — the end of his season coincided with the end of the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall—but as the warm weather sets in, Higuera, too, has hit the road again. The exact date?
It depends on the weather.
He could have begun selling earlier than March—he has a two-year permit for the truck, not a seasonal one —but March held the promise of better weather, and more of it.
Higuera stores his truck and gets his daily supply of ice cream at a depot in Brooklyn; according to the New York City Department of Health, every “mobile food vending unit” must be kept at a licensed commissary overnight, where trucks are stored and cleaned. Food units that only sell pre-packaged food or fresh fruits and vegetables may use an “alternative service and storage facility,” one that must also be approved by the Department of Health, but he has no such leeway. The orders that Higuera places at the depot tend to be the same all the time, since the variety of treats he sells—57 combinations of cones, sundaes and shakes—are made from only a few, simple ingredients: chocolate soft serve, vanilla soft serve and toppings that he can customize to suit customer demand. His personal favorite is the chocolate shake; if he eats plain ice cream, he’ll have it without toppings.
In New York City, mobile food vendors — including ice cream trucks — can operate on either two-year or seasonal permits, the latter valid only between April and October. The city issues a total of 5,100 food unit permits—3,100 two-year permits, 1,000 seasonal permits and 1,000 Green Cart permits for fruits and vegetables—but long wait lists currently exist, particularly for the first two categories, according to NYC Business Solutions. Higuera belongs to the minority of drivers who take advantage of their year-round status: Mister Softee vice-president and co-owner Jim Conway estimated that no more than 10 of his company’s 650 trucks in 18 states stay open in the winter.
“Go to the areas you know you survive, make profit,” Higuera said, referring to his wintertime strategy, which involves parking at the Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, Bryant Park, Central Park and sometimes on Fifth Avenue. Drivers like Higuera, who work full-time on the truck, can earn enough to take a couple months of the year off, while he said that part-time drivers who attend school and work two to three days per week may opt to find a different job during the off-season. Higuera, who worked steadily from last March until the beginning of January, this year, has just finished up his time off, a shorter holiday than usual. In the past he’s suspended operations between November and February, but he worked longer this past season because he bought a new home and is expecting his first baby in a matter of weeks. As for how much ice cream he’ll let his newborn eat, Higuera said it’s too early to tell, “but sooner or later, he’s going to try it.”
“The baby’s due anytime, so pretty much those day[s], I’m going to take off,” Higuera said. “But you know, March, [the season is] just getting started.”
Higuera typically works eight- to ten-hour days between March and May, 12 hours between May and August and eight to ten after August. On some holiday weekends when the weather’s good, he’ll work 13 hours in a single day. Between every shift, Higuera brings the truck back to the depot in Brooklyn. If he has leftover ice cream from the day, it can be kept cool overnight at the depot, until he drives out again.
There’s a logic to this rhythm.
Chris Long, past president of the Maryland-based International Association for Ice Cream Distributors and Vendors—with about 550 members — said that the ice cream truck business in the northeast is especially strong due to “pent up demand” after the winter break.
“You say, hey, I haven’t seen this guy for four months, and I want to go see what’s new, I want to go see what innovations are on the truck, I want to go buy something,” Long said, comparing this to warmer states like Florida where ice cream trucks aren’t such a novelty because customers see them every day.
“So, for the actual operator, they’ll see oftentimes just as good of sales over their eight-month season as someone who may have a ten, eleven, twelve-month season in the south,” he said, “because they get kind of a surge of customers and business activity and all that good stuff, after the winter break.”
Long estimates that nationally, 75 percent of vendors own and operate their own vehicles, while a quarter choose to lease. The cost of purchasing and operating a truck can range from $7,000 to upward of $60,000, he added — depending on whether the equipment is new or used — while leasing equipment could cost an average of $200-$300 per week. Higuera said that Fun-Time Frostee owns his truck. There are always trucks for sale, he said via email, and he’s owned one in the past —but he didn’t have enough time to take care of it.
During the winter, “most of the individual operators” spend time on maintenance and renewing the look of their vehicles, said Long, be that safety signage or new product decals from distributors, while lessees may take time off from the industry, or remain active by serving ice cream at special events. “It sounds unusual, but sometimes your off-season is really your busier season from a planning perspective.”
Steve Christensen is a former Australian police officer who transitioned to the ice cream business after opening a chain of frozen custard stores in Australia. He is now director of the Wisconsin-based Frozen Dessert Institute, where he teaches a course on opening and operating a frozen dessert business. Christensen said that his students tend to be between 35 and 60 years old and are individuals with some disposable income who’ve reached a “relatively comfortable level” in their careers. “Maybe kids are off to college or whatever, and then now they’re kind of pursuing things they really want to do, rather than things that they felt they had to do,” he said.
Ice cream is a volume business, said Christensen, which affects brick and mortar stores and ice cream trucks alike. The retail purchase price of ice cream tends to be lower than that of other foods, meaning that in order to earn the same amount as other vendors, an ice cream vendor has to sell more of his product. To increase volume, operators often develop new novelty products, like the one in Washington D.C. who, according to Christensen, sells Krispy Kreme donut ice cream sandwiches.
Higuera said via email that tourists and locals keep coming back to the simple ice cream truck because, “it’s just different markets, different consumers.” He drew a comparison to McDonald’s Big Macs, which he said have been and will remain around for “decades to come.”
As he prepares for the 2016 season, Higuera said he’s most excited about his schedule and getting back into what he calls a “regular job.” He thinks his customers are even more excited than he is; for them, he says, seeing the truck again is like spotting mayflowers. “They know that spring’s coming,” Higuera said. “The truck[s] are symbolic. I might be excited but they’re even more excited when they see the trucks.”
He’ll spend the first month in Queens and Brooklyn, because in Manhattan, he said, expenses are higher and tourists, fewer. In April, as long as it’s at least 60 degrees, he’ll be back in Manhattan.
Your Comments