What if you could text the ice cream man?
That is the basic premise of Scream Truck, an ice cream concept that is using technology to evolve an old-fashioned business model.
Scream Truck allows customers to get their ice cream on-demand. Customers in the company's service area can sign up to be on the route. They’ll get texts letting them know when a truck will be in the area. They can text back to reserve a stop at their house and receive a link where they can place their order.
It’s all powered by Scream Truck’s home-grown technology, IMPLSE.
“The concept is really based on an impulse buy,” said Eric Murphy, founder and CEO. “Somebody is texting you and saying, ‘Hey, do you want ice cream today, or do you want pizza tonight?’ … That’s basically our lead generation for the day, so we’re not waiting for people to see our marketing and open an app and place an order.”
Murphy founded Scream Truck in 2020, just prior to the pandemic. He has a background in experiential marketing and the music industry, and thought ice cream trucks could use a refresh.
“The idea really just came from the fact that ice cream trucks had been around for 100 years and they still look like they’re 100 years old,” Murphy said. “I just thought, ‘Why has no one come up with a better way to do an ice cream truck?’”
In addition to the on-demand aspect, Scream Truck has other experiential elements, like bright LED screens and music—“not a jingle, but actual real music,” Murphy said.
And then of course there’s the ice cream, which comes in sundaes, cones and shakes and can be customized with a variety of flavors and toppings.
More than 100,000 people have signed up to get alerts from Scream Truck. Today, the company has 17 trucks in New Jersey, but hopes to have 1,000 trucks nationwide by the end of the decade.
It’s also applying the model to other cuisines, including pizza, which is cooked in the truck in front of the customer’s house. It’s also working on a partnership with Pat LaFrieda steaks. And it plans to license its technology and customer database for other food trucks to use.
But its main growth path will be through franchising. It has franchising deals set for Monmouth County, New Jersey, and Las Vegas that will roughly double the size of its current fleet this year.
Scream Truck typically serves 10 to 14 houses per hour while active, and will sell 40 to 50 treats in that time. It generated just under $4 million in revenue last year, and expects that to increase by 25% to 50% this year as it gets franchising off the ground, Murphy said.
It’s also adding more technology. It recently launched a partnership with Ansa, a digital wallet startup, that will allow customers to load funds into a Scream Truck account and earn rewards for doing so.
Scream Truck had been looking for a way to offer a loyalty program that wasn't tied to an app, and Ansa will allow it to do that, Murphy said. It can offer cash bonuses when customers add a certain amount of funds, or drop money directly into their account.
It started with a $5 incentive to encourage its most frequent customers to sign up for the digital wallet, and is now working its way down to less frequent users. “I think that’s when we’ll really start seeing the impact on frequency and spend,” Murphy said.
The digital wallets can also help Scream Truck keep its payment processing fees down, because it’s only charged when customers add money in bulk, but not when they spend it.
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