new York
CNN
—

Being Mr. Softee has never been so hard.

During the company’s heyday in the 1960s, there were more than 2,000 Mister Softee trucks in 38 states. Today, there are only about 630 Mister Softee trucks making the rounds through neighborhoods and parks in 21 states.

Competition and rising costs are hurting sales. Counterintuitive factors like increasingly hot weather are also hurting business. And broader social trends — like the shrinking size of American families and even technological advances — are also playing a role.

“There’s a lot more competition, especially in New York, than there was in the 1980s and 1990s,” Mike Conway, vice president of Mister Softee and grandson of the company’s co-founder, said in a phone interview with CNN from the company’s offices in Runnemede, New Jersey. “Ice cream has become more popular – more stores are offering it. Everyone is getting into the business a little bit.”

Mister Softee trucks have been around since 1954, when two brothers, James and William Conway, founded the company in Philadelphia. A few years later, an advertising agency created the iconic jingle for radio spots, helping the company become the largest ice cream truck franchiser in the United States.

But the real highlight was not the jingle, but the soft ice cream. Not because customers loved it – although they did – but because it made more business sense.

“We realized there was a demand for soft serve ice cream,” William Conway said in a 1991 interview. They sold soft serve ice cream because it was easier to serve and they needed a large quantity to make the business viable. “A local dairy came up with the recipe, a friend designed our trademark ‘Conehead,’ and I came up with the name, with six letters in each word.”

But some Mister Softee franchisees are wondering how long they can stay in business.

Most Mister Softee trucks are owned by independent franchisees, many of them first-generation immigrants and small business owners. Franchisees are given a specific neighborhood or area in which to sell. Within their assigned territory, franchise owners set ice cream prices and decide where the best selling locations are.

Carlos Vazquez has been a Mister Softee franchisee in downtown New York City for over a decade. For him, getting into the industry was a way to achieve the American dream, save money and buy a home.

But the turf allocations, of course, don’t take outside competition into account. Boutique ice cream, gelato and dessert shops like Van Leeuwen and Oddfellows have popped up in neighborhoods and shopping centers across the country. And it’s not just ice cream shops and trucks – Shake Shack and other chains are selling more milkshakes, too.

Vazquez has seen every part of the business become more expensive since the pandemic, including the royalties he pays to the company, the cost of ice cream, gasoline and wear and tear on the trucks.

Then there are the simmering turf wars with independent trucks for coveted street corners. Mister Softee has successfully sued new competitors for allegedly copying his design and jingle.

“We have to pay more money for insurance. Half a million dollars. The policy goes up,” he said. “The maintenance if something breaks on the truck. The labor costs to maintain the truck are high.”

Milk and ice cream have also become more expensive. Wholesale price inflation for ice cream has increased by 21% since 2020, and wholesale price inflation for ice cream cones has increased by 25% during that period.

This has forced him to raise prices. A cone of vanilla or chocolate ice cream now costs five dollars, up from just one dollar when he started. On most days he sells half as much ice cream as he used to.

“We cannot control inflation,” he said. “It is part of the world.”

Surprisingly, extreme heat also affects Mister Softee’s business. Equipment in the truck breaks down more easily in extreme heat and customers stay home.

“When it’s really hot, it’s not good for business. It’s weird,” Vazquez said. “People don’t want to have to walk too much. It’s creamy and it melts, you get dirty and ask for extra napkins.”

For about 100 U.S. cities from Maine to California, 2024 was the hottest summer since weather records began.

If you add up the number of days with temperatures above 35 degrees in the country’s 50 largest cities, there were at least 1,071 this summer – 161 more than the average for the same period over the last decade.

Extreme heat is even affecting major ice cream brands.

Unilever, the maker of ice cream brands such as Magnum, announced last year that sales had fallen due to a heatwave in Europe.

As for the weather, “there is an ideal temperature,” Unilever’s chief financial officer Graeme Pitkethly said at the time. “When it gets too hot, people give up ice cream and buy a cold drink instead,” he said.

Mister Softee’s business is a window into changes in neighborhoods, family sizes and children’s habits, all of which impact the trucks.

Families are smaller than they used to be, and in many families both parents work, so kids don’t run around on the streets as much in the summer, Conway said. The average household size has dropped from 3.5 to 2.5 people since 1940, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“Kids don’t play outside as much as they used to,” he said.

Mister Softee franchisees are adapting by extending the ice cream season: It starts earlier in the spring and doesn’t end until November. They’re also offering more private events, like birthday parties and Fourth of July get-togethers. And Mister Softee now has its own mobile app that helps people find the nearest ice cream truck.

“Softee is an icon,” said Carlos Vazquez. “We have to stay in the industry.”