Behind the Scenes: Getting There is Half the Battle

It's not easy lugging a cart full of ice cream sandwiches through uneven terrain and into unforeseen circumstances. We're often up against cars, curbs, and intense summer heat...

A Bit of (Necessary) Cart Research in San Francisco

Lulu, one half of the Cream Queenz, took a quick trip up to San Francisco last week to enjoy the blossoming street food scene in the Mission. Like us, most of the vendors there communicate their location and offerings to customers via Twitter. 

Absent from the "Street Food for Singles" cart meet-up were the Tamale Lady, arguably the godmother of Mission street food, and recent favorite, the Creme Brulet Cart. Fortunately, an all-star line-up of vendors still showed up for the mind-boggling crowd of hungry San Franciscans (and at least one SF expat). 

The most successful carts seem to be the ones with a lot of character -- fun, alliterative names; flashy, colorful umbrellas -- and fairly uncomplicated food served quickly or pre-prepared. Thus we have:

The Krazy Kurry Kart

The Sexy Soup Lady

Amuse Bouche

...and a few as-yet named others, like this be-sparkled jello shot entrepreneur and complex Indian chaat composer:

Because San Francisco is so densely inhabited (and full of curious, adventurous eaters), it makes sense that a food culture like this would thrive there. 

Is sprawling, sunny San Diego ready for fun food on wheels?

We think so!

Rolling along... over some bumps.

So, good news! The Fourth of July at the Rancho Santa Fe park was a sell-out and we have discovered a good formula for selling ice cream: hot day + kids = sales. This being said, we still have a few bumps to work through. Notably, we need to figure out the correct dry-ice-to- sammy ratio -- nobody wants her ice cream confection to be equally well-suited to knocking someone out as a mid-sized rock (Though this might be useful in fending off lusty onlookers -- or all those kids.) So, we're working on warming up the internal temperature of the cart a tad.

For your visual pleasure, here are some pics from the Fourth:

and below are some more pics from a markedly less successful trip (in terms of sales) to The Casbah for the Coathangers show where (we like to remind ourselves) we were up against incessant jack-hammering and Monday night.

Thanks to Tim and the Casbah crew for sharing your sidewalk with us!

Creamfully Yourz,

Chelsea and Lulu

Hittin' the Streetz

After spending a week preparing...

We finally made our first run with the Cream Cart. Our destination? The heart of North Park, where we hoped to seduce late-night club-goers with either fresh watermelon-mint popsicles or two kinds of awesome ice cream sandwiches: our chocolate-chip-cookie-and-vanilla "Cream-a-Donna" and honey-roasted peanut butter cookie with chocolate ice cream.

We managed to snag a few customers.

Tomorrow is the 4th of July and we are hitting up the Rancho Santa Fe park greens beginning around mid-morning, following the parade. Come drop by and bring friends!

Creamfully Yourz,

Lulu and Chelsea