I scream, you scream

EVAN WILLIAMS / FLORIDA WEEKLY At Love Boat on San Carlos Boulevard, Erin Roth serves a vanilla ice cream cone to Fort Myers resident Suzette Powers. There's a certain amount of nostalgia in the ice cream business these days, but nostalgia with an engine: Ice cream is an old-time enterprise that can navigate comfortably through new times, hard times and any other times (good, bad, happy, sad).

Recession or no recession, people continue to buy and eat ice cream, shop owners from Fort Myers to Naples report.

And no wonder. Never has therapy come so cheaply, and with such a great return on the investment — for equally satisfied customers and servers, apparently.

"I love it here," exclaims Kim Lambert, night manager at Love Boat on San Carlos Boulevard this side of Fort Myers Beach. There, the magic of cream, sugar and eggs is conjured right in the shop, in 45 ice creams, six flavors of sugar- and fat-free product, four sorbets and two low-fat yogurts.

But Ms. Lambert is not talking just about herself. She's pointing to humans and the human condition.

COURTESY PHOTO Daddy Dee's in North Fort Myers has been in business since the 1960s. "How can you not be happy in an ice cream shop?" Ms. Lambert wonders. "If you're not happy in an ice cream shop…"

You need counseling?

"Exactly. You need counseling," she concludes.

Bottom line: If the location is right, ice cream businesses up and down the coast continue to thrive — especially those that focus on ice cream, with only the inevitable contemporary updates to accommodate dietary needs or tastes for yogurts, ices, gelatos, custards, sorbets, coffees and so on.

And sometimes, business is even better in the recession.

"The last year has been good for us — we're actually up as other businesses drop off, so there's more of the pie for us," says Bruce Adams, whose wife, Soony Oakes, owns Daddy Dee's Ice Cream Parlor on North Cleveland Avenue, just north of the Caloosahatchee River in North Fort Myers. The shop serves 48 flavors, hard-packed yogurt, two low-carb ice creams, two no-sugaraddeds, shakes, malts, floats, sundaes, splits — "all of it," plus espresso and Cuban coffee, Mr. Adams adds.

Although no all owners say the icecream business is up, they still describe steady crowds.

"The hardest time in this job is during season when we have lines of people out the doors, down the walk and into the parking lot," says Hannah Petry, the weekend manager at Royal Scoop Homemade Ice Cream on Eighth Street in Bonita Springs. Here, a "royal scoop" means one scoop the size of a baseball topped by a smaller scoop. Everything — 32 ice creams, four frozen yogurts, four sugar-free, fat-free products, and four flavors of sorbet at any one time — is made in the shop.

For Ms. Petry and her staff, scooping hard ice cream all day long without relief is serious exercise. "The first few days you work here you go home with a sore wrist," she says. After that, you get in shape. "I'm right handed and it's noticeable — my right arm is bigger and more muscular than my left."

Long life expectancy

Ice cream itself is powerfully appealing, on the books as well as in big, creamy scoops. But that doesn't necessarily make every owner of an ice cream shop wealthy; instead, ice cream shops more often than not offer longevity.

An online "business for sale" posting by Corporate Investment Business Brokers (www.floridabusinessbrokers. com) advertising an ice cream store in Fort Myers last week read: "Known as the fastest growing super premium ice cream franchise in the U.S. and expanding overseas as well; this is an opportunity

to purchase either or both of two established franchise stores, located in sister cities in beautiful, booming, SW Florida. Requires franchisor approval and training. Price includes franchise transfer fee. Assumes working owner displaces manager." Sales in the Fort Myers location were listed at $405,136, profits were listed at $66,694, and the asking price was $239,900.

Traditional ice cream shops often outlast more than one generation of owners, carrying on for decades in the same place. That's true of Daddy Dee's and Love Boat both, which date from the 1960s.

Steve and Debbie Staley, who've been in the business just seven months, are probably the fifth or sixth owners at Love Boat. They were wise enough to leave well enough alone, Mr. Staley points out — and they kept the staff, about which Mr. Staley cannot say enough.

Here's how it happened for the Staleys, who moved here from the Chicago area:

"I was in the trucking and distribution business, and that's vastly different. We'd been looking for a business for two or three years, and we happened on a business broker who showed us the business. We liked it, and we liked the previous owner… It's a nice little business, and the staff has taken us in, we've learned a lot. We have a young woman who makes the ice cream, Jenny Roberts, and she's very consistent and very creative."

Mr. Staley says numbers for this season compare with those of previous years — and that's saying something, since the store can turn out 1,000 to 1,100 gallons a week for eager customers.

At most shops, owners will tell you that butter pecan is a favorite, although vanilla gets the highest use, since it's a popular base for shakes, banana splits, sundaes and the like.

That's true at the Love Boat, too. "But having said that, here's something of interest to me," Mr. Staley adds: "Our black raspberry, for whatever reason, seems to be gaining ground. I'm mystified." The 24/7 lifestyle

One thing that isn't mystifying is consistency.

At Regina's Ice Cream, the 1950s-style ice cream parlor on Fifth Avenue South in Naples, owners Sal and Regina Tenaglia arrived 20 years ago, and the shop had been around a long time before that.

"People might tell you there's good money in this business, but never let them tell you it's easy money," Mr. Tenaglia says. "This is seven days a week."

In the early days for the Tenaglias, the biggest draw downtown was the bank of 10 pay telephones across the street at the phone company, Mr. Tenaglia recalls. People wandered toward the beach or back from it with towels around their shoulders at all hours, he says. There were more pedestrians then, he adds, going to and from inexpensive hotels since replaced by condos with kitchens or fancier hotels and restaurants.

"One of the first nights I'm ever there, I hear all this thumping on the window," recalls Mr. Tenaglia. Native New Yorkers, he and Regina had sagely left the banking business to move to Naples. "So I go out there to see what this is, and all these (insects) are all over the glass, and these tree frogs are coming out of the trees and smacking into the window, trying to eat the bugs. Now, you can't find a tree frog anywhere around here."

But you can still find people who want ice cream. At Regina's they get real fruit sorbets and ice cream in 50 flavors, plus sodas, floats, shakes, malts, sundaes and egg crémes, along with ice-blended coffees and tropical fruit smoothies. Regina's ice cream comes from The Ice Cream Club in Boynton Beach, a high-end outfit that sought out Regina's business, and specializes in ice cream for Florida shops.

One of the great pleasures the Tenaglias take from the business, they say, is the sense of community. Children come in and say they remember their parents' descriptions of ice cream here. People get their kids jobs because it's a healthy, decent place to work. The ice cream shop is part of the fabric of life.

Back in North Fort Myers at Daddy Dee's, ice cream has become part of the fabric of the soul for Mr. Adams — whether he intended it or not.

"This has never been my life's dream, but this is my life — I scoop ice cream seven days a week," he says, explaining that he began at Daddy Dee's simply to help his wife when they bought the shop almost five years ago, and it became a full-time gig.

While he's scooping, though, "I'm also utilizing this time to talk to people."

And he talks about love. "I had a spiritual experience, and I wrote a book about creation based on the spiritual view." The book is for sale in the shop where there's also a tree painted on a wall showing how the world's major religions, in their insistence on love, are related — and how that love could bring us all together, if we would choose to be together.

Mr. Adams isn't trying to convert anybody, he's just putting a powerful notion out there for ice cream eaters, he says: "The theme is unconditional love."

What could be more natural in an ice cream shop than unconditional love?