For my mother-in-law’s 50th anniversary, her husband decided to give her a trip to Hawaii. She had always wanted to fly on an airplane and go to Hawaii. He had actually been there during the war and had no desire to go back, so he sent my wife and two kids to go with her. They had a great Hawaiian vacation!
When my wife got back, she said she found something over there that she fell in love with. I was like, “What’s that?” She said, “It was called shaved ice and it was amazing. It was just like snow and they would squeeze fresh fruit over that shaved ice.”
Anyway, two or three months later I was reading a magazine and when I got to the want ads in the back they were talking about shaved ice machines. I told my wife and there was a phone number so she called. They steered her in another direction because they had no flavors or machines in stock yet.
So, my wife headed to Utah where they had machines and were developing some flavors. She talks to a couple of gentlemen there and is able to buy one of the machines, and also bring back some flavors along with bottles and stuff. We said, “Hey, let’s find a place and we’ll open a stand and see if people like it as much as we do.”
So, we did and we got totally and absolutely overwhelmed with the result. This was Summer 1984 when we got into the Tropical Sno business and found a place to open on Austin Avenue.
We started out and really were absolutely overwhelmed. The lines were long, sometimes 30 people deep and not just little kids. There were people in business clothes and workers on break as well as the kids. Our daughter worked in the stand while our son stayed home and mixed flavors. My wife would show up every day after she got off work to work some more. It was a team effort, but it almost killed us because it was so hot. Hot as in virtually no air conditioning.
It was also during this time that I learned how to launder money. I mean literally, because every night we would have to take all the money, covered in syrup, and wash it so it could be deposited the next day.
We sold 12-ounce cup for a quarter, the 16-ounce for 50 cents, and the 20-ounce was 75 cents. Today’s prices would run about three times that much or more. But still, we averaged around $450 a day.
The stand was glass on all four sides, and many nights we would have to sit on the floor until people stopped circling before we could leave. It was popular stuff! All the people loved it!
A lot of customers came from area towns and were wanting to know how they could get into business. We told them if we ever figure it out we would give them a call. When we finished (survived) that summer, we decided we would try to go into the distributing end of the business. We went back to the same company and bought a distributorship for 54 counties in Texas. All of a sudden, we were distributors instead of dealers.
It was a great adventure for us and we met some really great people. Believe it or not, there are still some of them who originated with us who are still in the business. It turned out to a be a great experience for us and we’re so very thankful we survived that first year.
Until next time, so long everybody.
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‘Out of the Box’ with Dallas Huston is published each Monday morning at BrownwoodNews.com. Dallas was the radio voice of the Brownwood Lions and Howard Payne Yellow Jackets for more than 55 years. He currently is Pastor of Center City Baptist Church and hosts a Men’s Bible Study in Brownwood on Monday evenings. Your comments are welcome at lindalh2@verizon.net.