Mister Softee Has an App to Find Ice Cream Vans

Most individuals assume that there’s just one strategy to observe down a Mister Softee ice cream truck: hear out for the jaunty, irritatingly loud jingle. Throughout the muggy summers in New York Metropolis, that technique is often efficient — particularly because it looks like there’s a Mister Softee truck hanging at each park nook, blocking each final bike lane. However for anybody on the lookout for their mushy serve repair exterior of the Huge Apple (yep, there are 625 Mister Softee vehicles throughout 18 states), a jingle can solely go to this point. 

“Persons are keen to drive 10 to fifteen minutes to trace a truck down as a result of there might solely be one truck in that county in comparison with the 20 to 30 vehicles in [the Northeast],” says Mike Conway, Mister Softee’s vp. “Right here on the entrance workplace, that’s one of many foremost questions we get. They name and say, “Hey, the place’s the truck? I would like ice cream now.’” 

It turns on the market’s one other strategy to find Mister Softee vehicles, and it’s been proper underneath our noses since 2020. That’s proper — Mister Softee has an app, and it is had an app for 4 years. Is that this the primary time you’re studying about it? You’re not alone.

To most New Yorkers, Mister Softee has all the time felt elusive. We don’t take into consideration the place the vehicles come from within the morning or the place they go at evening. They simply form of seem as quickly because the climate reaches north of 60 levels. It’s a factor that solely exists inside the confines of your cravings for sub-par mushy serve or a Spongebob popsicle that appears extra like a horror film villain. There’s one thing pleasantly easy and timeless about that — as if New Yorkers within the ‘50s had the very same relationship to Mister Softee as we do now. 

Due to that, it’s onerous to think about Mister Softee being related to one thing as trendy as a smartphone app. However actually, the app is simply as elusive as Mister Softee itself. 

The primary function of the app is its map operate. Its homepage is actually an Apple map flooded with cartoonified photographs of Mister Softee vehicles. You may enter your zip code or share your location — each choices will present you ways shut you might be to an ice cream truck. Click on on a picture of a truck, and also you’ll discover its title (often one thing easy, like “Bronx truck 18”) and the way lengthy the truck has “been on the highway for.”

Practically each truck in Manhattan has been “on the highway” since July 18th, 2023 — an entire coincidence, absolutely! You may also click on “View Menu,” which takes you to what ought to have been Mister Softee’s full menu. Alas, it actually solely reveals simply the vehicles’ chocolate and vanilla mushy serve choices.

Faucet the data button and also you’ll be led to an “About Us” web page. “Welcome to the App of Mister Softee! This app will permit you to find your native Mister Softee franchise, study turning into a franchisee, study non-public events with Mister Softee and obtain our jingle,” it reads. As described, there’s a “Historical past” web page, a contact kind for social gathering and occasion requests, and a web page that describes how Mister Softee actually, actually needs you to turn out to be a franchise proprietor. 

Fleets of Mister Softee ice cream vehicles are owned by franchisees, and people franchisees are in a position to determine whether or not or not they want their vehicles seen on the app. “We didn’t wish to make it obligatory,” Conway instructed me. So actually, there are solely a choose variety of vehicles which can be traceable. For reference, once I have a look at New York Metropolis on the app, I can see dozens in Manhattan and the Bronx and solely two in Queens and two in Brooklyn. Let me guarantee you — I stay in Brooklyn and there’s at the least six common Mister Softees in my neighborhood alone. 

Both means, in the event you actually have a hankering for ice cream, you would possibly wish to go the gap for it. The true query is, does the Mister Softee app truly work? I made a decision to check it out.

I seemed on the map and located the closest truck: Bronx truck 76 on seventeenth Avenue and Broadway. I made the 30-minute trek north and handed two Mister Softee vehicles on the way in which (each of which weren’t current on my app). Nonetheless, I continued on, took the subway to Union Sq. and as quickly as I stepped exterior I noticed it. Bronx truck 76 was precisely the place the app mentioned it will be.

I requested the driving force, Oswaldo, if he knew in regards to the app. He instructed me that he had heard about it, however didn’t assume his boss wished him on it. I instructed him he was, the truth is, on the app. He shrugged, I ordered a snowcone, after which he drove off to a brand new location because the loud jingle performed by the truck’s speaker.