New York CNN —
It’s never been so hard to be Mr. Softoo.
At its peak in the 1960s, there were more than 2,000 Mister Softee trucks in 38 states. Today, there are just 630 Mister Softee trucks patrolling neighborhoods and parks in 21 states.
Competition and rising costs are squeezing sales, counterintuitive factors like rising temperatures are hurting business, and broader societal trends like shrinking American family sizes and advances in technology are also at work.
“There’s a lot more competition, especially in New York, than there was in the 1980s and 1990s,” Mike Conway, Mister Softee’s vice president and grandson of the company’s co-founder, told CNN in a phone interview from the company’s offices in Runnemede, N.J. “Ice cream is becoming more popular and there are more stores selling it. Everybody is getting a little bit into the business.”
Mister Softee Trucks have been around since 1954, when brothers James and William Conway started the business in Philadelphia. A few years later, an advertising agency created the iconic jingle for a radio commercial that helped propel the company to become the largest ice cream truck franchisor in the United States.
But the real key wasn’t the jingle: it was the soft serve ice cream—not because customers loved it (though they certainly did), but because it made more business sense.
“We saw a demand for soft serve ice cream,” William Conway said in a 1991 interview. We sold it because it was easy to serve and we needed the volume to make the business sustainable. “A local dairy developed the recipe, a friend trademarked ‘Conehead,’ and I came up with the name, six-letter words.”
But some Mister Softee franchise owners are wondering how much longer they can stay in business.
Most Mister Softee trucks are owned and operated by independent franchise dealers, many of whom are first-generation immigrants or small business owners. Franchise dealers are given a designated neighborhood or area in which they can sell. Within their assigned territory, the franchise owner sets the price of their ice cream and determines the primary sales locations.
Carlos Vásquez has owned a Mister Softee franchise in downtown New York City for over a decade, and he thought getting into the industry would help him achieve the American dream of saving up enough money to buy a home.
But of course, this turf allocation doesn’t take into account outside competition: Boutique ice cream, gelato and dessert shops like Van Leeuwen and Odd Fellows are popping up in neighborhoods and shopping malls across the country. And it’s not just ice cream parlors and trucks, but Shake Shack and other chains that are selling a growing number of milkshakes.
Since the pandemic began, Vasquez has seen costs rise across every part of the business, including licensing fees for his company, the cost of ice cream ingredients, gas and wear and tear on his trucks.
And there’s a turf war brewing with independent trucks for coveted street corner real estate: Mister Softee successfully sued an upstart rival for stealing its design and jingle.
“I’ll have to pay more for insurance. It’s $500,000. My insurance premiums will go up,” he said. “The maintenance costs if my truck breaks down. The labor that goes into maintaining the trucks is enormous.”
Milk and ice cream supplies are also becoming more expensive: Wholesale price inflation for ice cream is up 21% since 2020, while wholesale price inflation for ice cream cones is up 25% over the same period.
That has forced him to raise his prices: A cone of vanilla or chocolate ice cream costs $5 now, up from $1 when he started, and on most days he sells half the amount of ice cream he used to.
“We have no control [inflation]”It’s part of the world,” he said.
Perhaps surprisingly, the heatwaves are also hurting Mister Softee’s business, as excessive heat causes equipment in its trucks to break down and keeps customers indoors.
“When the weather is really hot, it’s not good for business. It feels weird,” Vasquez said. “People don’t want to walk around as much. They ask for extra napkins because they get creamy and melt and make a mess.”
2024 was the hottest summer ever recorded for about 100 U.S. cities, from Maine to California.
When the number of days with temperatures above 95 degrees was combined across the nation’s 50 largest cities, there were at least 1,071 this summer, 161 more than the 10-year average for that same period.
The heatwaves are also hitting major ice cream brands.
Unilever, which makes ice cream brands such as Magnum, said last year that heat waves in Europe had caused sales to fall.
When it comes to weather, “there is an optimum temperature,” Unilever’s chief financial officer, Graham Pickely, said at the time. “When it gets too hot, people avoid ice cream and buy cold drinks instead,” he said.
Mister Softee’s business is a window into changing neighborhoods, family sizes and kids’ habits, all of which impact the trucks.
Families are smaller, more parents work, and there are fewer kids running around on the roads in the summer, Conway said. Since 1940, the average household size has fallen from 3.5 people to 2.5 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“Kids don’t play outside as much as they used to,” he says.
Mister Softee franchisees have adapted by starting their ice cream season earlier in the spring and extending it through November. They’re also catering to more private events like birthday parties and Fourth of July gatherings. And Mister Softee now offers its own mobile app to help users find the nearest truck.
“Softee is an icon,” Carlos Vázquez said. “We have to stay in this industry.”
