Fifty Licks Ice Cream
Interview by Megan Cole
When you think of foods that are traditionally served from a truck, ice cream immediately comes to mind. But the days of a beautiful ice cream being scooped out of a truck are gone, and most of the sweet treats handed out are wrapped in plastic and sold out of coolers at gas stations. Capturing a bit of nostalgia and a lot of great flavours, including a vegan peach delight, Portland’s Fifty Licks Ice Cream is offering great ice cream in a trendy way: a food truck (they also now have a shop). Rice and Bread talked to Fifty Licks creator Chad Draizin about starting a food cart and how he fell in love with one of North America’s great food cities.
What were you doing before you decided to make ice cream?
Before I started 50 Licks I was in the real estate industry in South Florida.
When did you decide to make the move from Florida to Portland?
I actually moved to Portland twice. The first time I moved to Portland, in 2002, I went to a brewing school and had an internship at the Portland Brewing Company. I lived here for two years, and I couldn’t really get my career in brewing going and realized it wasn’t for me. I totally fell in love with Portland, but I had to move back to where I grew up in South Florida where I got involved with the real estate stuff. When the real estate industry fell apart in 2007, I had to find a new career and decided to move back to Portland, which was where my heart was.
When did the idea of starting an ice cream company begin?
I moved to Portland with the idea of starting an ice cream company. I looked at what Portland had. I knew I wanted to do something creative and where I could immediately watch people enjoying what I make. In real estate, we built a building and it would take three or four years to build. Then someone would move their office in and it would make them happy, but in a less tangible, immediate way than watching someone’s face when they eat an ice cream. Watching the reactions is absolutely the best.
How did you start making ice cream?
A friend of mine was making dinner and he invited me over. We were going to cook and he said he saw this recipe for ice cream and told me to stop at Target and pick up a little ice-cream maker. I did and we made ice cream, and it was terrible. It was this avocado ice cream and it was gross. But I had the machine, so I started running batches through and it didn’t take long before I had some really delicious ice cream going on.
Did you have a lot of restaurant experience when you decided to open your food cart?
I opened the cart in 2011, and I didn’t really have a lot of experience in the restaurant industry. I worked in one, but I never owned one before. If I had opened a restaurant right away I would have spent all my savings to open it, and would have had no experience or idea what I was I doing. I started this business knowing I would need an education on the job, and doing that in a brick-and-mortar restaurant was an expensive proposition. I wanted to make sure the stakes were as small as possible, so the mistakes I made didn’t cost me all my capital and I could keep moving forward through the mistakes. There have been a lot of mistakes.
Why do you think food carts became so popular in Portland?
I think they are popular in Portland because everyone is broke. This town attracts people that are individualists, and want to do their own thing and march to the beat of their own drum. But they are broke, so a food cart is a way to make a go of it. If you want to run a food cart you could have no employees. There are carts where the owner is the only person who works there. The cost of entry is maybe a quarter of what it would be to start a restaurant.
It seems like there is a lot of conflict between restaurants and food carts, and not just in Portland. Do you think food carts have an advantage over restaurants?
There are definitely a lot of politics around food carts. The restaurant association has been trying to push the carts out and have the laws changed. But some of the carts have created their own informal organization and they are involved in local politics. I don’t know if it’s a fair argument. In Portland, with a food cart you can really only make good money for three months out of the year because of the rain. You might break even if you serve hot food. I close my cart October 1 for the season and don’t open again until the beginning of June. With restaurants, people still have to eat. They can go indoors and the amount of volume of dollars there are in a restaurant is so much greater than a food cart. There are between 400 and 600 carts in Portland and there are only a handful of well-known names, but no one is getting rich off of being a food-cart owner. I don’t think restaurants have that much to complain about. Sure, the costs of running a food cart are lower, but so are the profits.
Fifty Licks Ice Cream is located at 2021 SE Clinton Street in Portland, Oregon.
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