Ice cream truck provides marketable skills, educates community, owner says

EPHRATA — The Street Sweets Ice Cream and More truck is a good place to get a cold snack on a hot day, but co-owner Tiffany Mullings said it’s about more than that. 

“I am the autistic mother to two autistic children,” she said. “And my husband and I had a little money left over from a (financial transaction), and we thought, ‘Hey, let’s look for a step van and if we can, we’ll start an ice cream truck, as a way to give them an opportunity for meaningful employment and to build some marketable skills that they can use throughout their life.'” 

For two years Mullings and her daughters Riley and Dorieann Mullings, 22 and 21 respectively, her co-owners in the business, have driven the streets of Ephrata throughout the spring, summer and fall. She drives, she said, and her daughters do the serving.

They’ve had a good response from the community, and now they’re looking to make the finals in a contest that would provide some money to expand their business.

Tiffany Mullings said they could use the help of Ephrata residents when making their contest entry video, scheduled for Saturday at noon at Ephrata Lions Park — and there’s some ice cream in it, too.

Autism can and does affect each person diagnosed with it in different ways, some that may be visible in behavior, some that may not. 

“We have sensory challenges, we have anxiety issues, maybe we have problems with social communication. Because at its core, autism is a social communication disorder,” she said. 

Along with giving her daughters more marketable skills, Mullings said, she wants her customers to learn a little bit about autism, see what it is and what it isn’t.

“It’s a lot of different things,” she said. 

Sometimes the challenges are not autism, but disorders that exist alongside it.

“I could name off a billion different things that any one autistic person could have, and those things individually affect functioning,” she said. 

One of the purposes behind the truck is to demonstrate that autistic people have value in themselves, she said, and that there’s a place for everyone, whether or not they fit within what society considers normal.

“I think we break some of those barriers down,” she said. “Because we’re pretty vocal about why we started the business — people in our community know we’re autistic. And (customers) get to see how that plays out in everyday life.”

Sweet Street usually takes to the road as the weather starts to warm up, starting in about April and continuing through October. 

“Generally we’re out Tuesday through Sunday from noon to dark in the warmer months,” she said. 

But since they also do private gatherings and festivals, they’re available before and after prime ice cream season.

“That’s one of our goals, to become year-round through the use of purchasing a mobile cart. So in the months when we can’t be driving around the neighborhoods necessarily, we can still do parties and those sorts of things indoors,” she said.

Her preference would be a cart that could be attached to an electric bicycle, she said, so her daughters could still be out in the neighborhoods if the truck was needed for an event.

“We have had so much positive response from our community. We didn’t expect it — we just thought it was going to be this little part-time thing,” she said. 

Many of their customers have kicked in a little extra money when buying their ice cream, cotton candy, hot chocolate or cider, which Mullings and her daughters use on occasions when a child may not be able to afford their treats.

“Sometimes it comes out of our pocket but by and large, especially by our second season out, we were just flush enough with that ‘pay it forward’ money that everybody gets a treat,” she said. “That’s super-special to us, because it gives us that faith in humanity that, as autistic people, we don’t always see.”

People can follow Street Sweets on the Glimpse app during ice cream season, Mullings said. 

The video is being made for a contest sponsored by Good Humor, where the Mullingses buy a lot of their ice cream. They’ve already won a $5,000 grant by making the first round, and if they make the second round they have the chance to win an additional $20,000. 

Mullings wants to use part of the money, if they win, to build a website for their business, along with buying the ice cream cart to expand their opportunities. The Sweet Treats truck will be in Lions Park at noon, and Mullings said she’s hoping to get a line of people waiting outside. Ice cream sandwiches will be the treat of the day. 

The contest has some restrictions on the photography, she said, including a ban on graphic T-shirts and children under 6 years of age. People will be asked to give permission for their pictures to be used, she said. 

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.