Mister Softee, unique Northeastern soft-serve ice cream delivered via truck to neighborhoods, comes to Dallas area

by Teresa Gubbins

Mister Softee, a soft-serve ice cream that was founded in the Northeast in 1955 and delivered to neighborhoods via ice cream truck, has arrived in North Texas. Enthusiastic squeal!

The Texas operation was launched by Joe McSweeny, 54, a recent graduate of SMU's Business school, who indulged in Mister Softee milkshakes and ice cream cones while living in New York City more than 20 years ago.

The product is unique in:

• the impossibly creamy consistency
• the fact that it's available not at supermarkets or free-standing stores but only via its unique trucks.

The trucks are ice cream trucks but, instead of selling novelties such as ice cream sandwiches, they sell soft-serve ice cream, vanilla and chocolate, plus sundaes, milkshakes, and floats.

The ice cream is similar to frozen custard or to Dairy Queen except it's better, McSweeney says.

"That's because we're using a 10% butterfat ice cream mix," he says. "If you look at the definition of ice cream, it isn't ice cream until it hits 10%. If you go to a Dairy Queen, nothing there says ice cream. It's ice milk. So this is a much creamier product. Most people who taste it find it to be a revelation."

The other distinction is the trademark cartoon logo of a man whose head is an ice cream cone.

McSweeney has one truck right now. "But my goal is to build up an army of 50 trucks where you have a presence in the market and it feeds on itself," he says. The areas he's covering now are strictly Tarrant County -- "I'm in North Fort Worth, Keller, Roanoke, and moving into Watauga, North Richland Hills, Southlake, because I live in Southlake."

He's also done special events such as parties for Neiman-Marcus. His only obstacle is the usual non-pro-business attitude that often seems to crop up in Texas.

"The big problem I'm running into is that every municipality wants you to pay them a fee," he says. "If you look at a state like Florida, it's one state-wide process. But in Texas, the licensing process is different for every town. The other thing is the assumption by a lot of people that food-service trucks are all run by thieves and liars. It's just different culturally."

But it's always a pleasure for him to find someone who recognizes what Mister Softee is about.

"You'll see a guy running out of his house without a shirt because he's heard the familiar jingle," McSweeney says, as he hums it aloud.

Mike Orren contributed to this story.

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