Competition and rising costs are making it harder than ever to be Mister Softee, writes Nathaniel Meyersohn for CNN.
The nation’s oldest and largest franchisee of soft ice cream trucks, started by brothers James and William Conway in Philadelphia in 1954, once had more than 2,000 trucks in 38 states. Today, there are about 630 Mister Softee trucks in 21 states.
“There’s a lot more competition, especially in New York City, than there was in the 1980s and 1990s,” said Mike Conway, the vice president of Mister Softee. “Ice cream has become more popular — more stores are doing it. Everybody is getting into the business a little bit.”
Other counter-intuitive factors that have been affecting business include increasingly hot weather.
“If the weather is really hot, it’s not really good for business. It’s weird,” said Carlos Vazquez, a Mister Softee franchise owner for over a decade. “People don’t want to have to walk too much. It’s creamy and melts and you get dirty and you ask for the extra napkins.”
Additionally, families are smaller than they once were, and with both parents working, there are fewer kids running around on the streets during the summer.
Read more about how competition, rising costs, and shrinking family size make it more challenging than ever to be Mister Softe at CNN.
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