ICE CREAM VENDOR BUSINESS
PICTURES BELOW
In about 1981 or 1982 I decided to
enter into the street vending Ice Cream business. Omaha Nebraska was
sending trucks to Lincoln to vend this product on the streets in Lincoln. They
ran five to eight van trucks
through the streets of Lincoln on a daily basis from the last of March through
October. They sold many
ice cream novelty products to kids and grown ups throughout Lincoln. In turn
this made them a fortune in
the vending business and the money went back to Omaha. This gave me an
idea on how I could vend the
product without a lot of initial cost and then sell the product as a Lincoln
vendor. All I needed was a
peddler license and a State Dairy permit. The cost for the peddler license
was $25.00 and the State charge
was $150.00 a year. I looked at van and they were to costly so decided to
go to the Cushman Company in
Lincoln and attempt to purchase a unit from them. They had a garage
separate from the main company
so I visited with the head supervisor and he said that I could purchase a
Cushman that was used which
was a test unit. This started my business and at the end of about 8-10
years I owned and operated about
10 ice cream unit through Lincoln. All of my units were rented to an
individual and this person would
purchase ice cream from me. I purchased my novelty ice cream products from
Merritt Ice Cream Company
out of Kansas City, Kansas and would store the product at Meadow Grove storage
company in Lincoln. This
company would issue the product to my vendors and the vendors would pay me
weekly for what they purchased.
This worked extremely well and the vendors would always make good on buying the
product.
As you will note in the pictures the
units had a six foot box on the back and this would hold my freezer unit plus
a 110 small electrical engine. I used Honda's as they were extremely
maintenance free and the cost was
about $350.00 a unit. The freezer box cost me about $300.00 and the
Cushman cost about $1200.00. The small
canopy I had made for about $75.00, so my total cost in this new enterprise was
small. My first day out selling
my products I netted about $18.00 an hour for my work. Soon afterwards, I
was netting over $100.00 a day per
unit and by the end of the 5th year I owned 10 units and was netting about
$1000.00 weekly for this business. All
of my money collected was cash from the kids and grownups. I never lost
any money from checks as I did not get
this for payment. This is a tremendous business and had I started it many
years ago, my retirement check would
even be bigger then it is now. If anyone would ask me about this type of
business I would certainly say to them,
go for it and you will become very successful.
