Paulette Jacques’s ice cream truck looks like a child’s summertime dream.
Aqua-green and white with flirty eyelashes on the headlights, the truck’s side window is flanked by pictures of frozen confections, available to anyone with $2 to $4 on hand, or a card – Jacques takes cards, too, thanks to technology. The name of Jacques’s business, “Miss Polly’s Traveling Treats” is emblazoned on the side, a call back to when she worked as the after-school program director at the former Walker School in Concord.
“The kids used to ask if they could just call me Miss Polly,” Jacques said recently, as she prepared to drive to White Park to serve ice cream to students from the Christa McAuliffe School. “It used to be fun, because I would see my former students and they would know who was in the truck by the name.”
But the age-old calling card of an ice cream truck – its jingle – is rarely used when Miss Polly’s treats go traveling. When Jacques does play it, the music is loud, designed to reach through a house’s wall to sonically tap you on the shoulders and get your taste buds going. And as she pulled up to White Park, music playing “just for fun,” there was no mistaking the students’ glee as they sprinted head-on toward the truck, teachers somewhat fruitlessly herding them into a line.
Yet the days of rolling up and down suburban streets are mostly a thing of the past for ice cream trucks, their drivers say. With changing social trends, restrictive town rules and pricey peddlers’ licenses, it’s no longer profitable to roam the streets looking for customers. Instead, many businesses are turning to event-based strategies and social media to let people know where to find them.
Jacques said she remembers when summer vacation meant “coming home when the street lights came on.” But after living and working in Concord her entire life, she said one of the reasons she doesn’t drive her truck around neighborhoods is that she no longer knows where the families live.
“I feel like there’s a lot of kids who haven’t even seen one of these before,” she said, gesturing to her truck. “I feel like a lot more kids are ‘inside kids,’ like mine. I have inside kids.”
Michelle Tracy, owner of Tracy Girl Food Truck Co., said it’s gotten to the point where she’s not sure whether kids even know what the ice cream jingle means.
“We have it on our truck, but it’s mostly as a joke,” she said.
It’s often too expensive to drive around one city, let alone multiple communities. On top of gas and insurance costs – Jacques said she has to take out a $2 million policy for her truck – there’s the cost of getting a hawkers and peddlers license. The state’s application fee is $50 per year, but many communities require prospective drivers to get town-specific licenses, which vary in cost.
Concord, at $652 per vehicle per year to operate at a fixed location on public property outside of downtown and the area around the State House, is the most expensive of the 13 cities in New Hampshire. The next-cheapest option is $53 per week, or per day if partaking in a “street fair.”
Bedford comes close at $600, and Laconia could potentially be expensive, as the city offers only monthly licenses at $50, unless it’s Laconia Motorcycle Week – in that case, it’s $500 a week.
The cheapest? Franklin, at $10 per year.
In addition to licensing costs, Tracy, who operates a waffle food truck alongside her ice cream truck, said some communities restrict where you can and cannot sell.
“Some places have rules where you can’t vend within 1,000 feet of a business with the same type of food, or near any restaurants,” she said. “It’s unfair, because the idea of food trucks taking away business from a restaurant is ridiculous. If someone wants a burger, they’re not going to be swayed by a waffle food truck.”
So where have the ice cream trucks gone?
Sometimes they can be seen at a community hot spot, like a park or a pool. But more often, they’re at a food truck festival. Or a corporate event. Or even a wedding.
“Weddings alone are about 53 percent of my business,” Tracy said. “Everyone wants that novelty experience, so they’ll opt out of a wedding cake and have an ice cream truck come instead.”
Events certainly have their payoff: When Jacques attended Christa McAuliffe School and Rundlett Middle School last-day events in Concord, she charged a flat rate of $3 per ice cream, and spent about 20 minutes at each event. By the time she headed home, she had made $385. The week before, she had visited Maple Wood Elementary School – and made $900.
But ice cream trucks can’t afford to spread themselves thin. “It’s really a matter of economics,” Sharon Sweeney, owner of Kona Ice N.H., one of the four Kona Ice franchises operating in the state. “You have to choose where you’re going to go, because some places are going to make you more money.”
Networking, too, plays a big part in landing gigs, Sweeney said, as going to events would serve a dual purpose of advertising and moneymaking. And when she’s booked solid, Sweeney said she’ll recommend other ice cream vendors – like Polly’s.
Being a familiar face in a community has its perks. Jacques said she offers ice-cream delivery services to Concord and Penacook residents, the kind of delivery people usually associate with pizza.
“People are like, ‘Really?!’ But it’s no big deal,” Jacques said.
And Sweeney said there’s payoff even in working small events, like Concord Public Library’s Music on the Lawn series.
“You’re making people smile and dealing with happy people,” she said. “What’s a better job than that?”
(Caitlin Andrews can be reached at 369-3309, candrews@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @ActualCAndrews.)