When the car wash they owned across the street from their Stellantis dealership in New York needed expensive upgrades to keep operating, brothers Bob and Larry Siracusano decided to go a different direction.
They tore down the car wash and built a 1950s-themed ice cream shop.
The brothers opened Sawyer Ice Cream Co. this fall in Saugerties, a town along the Hudson River 100 miles north of Manhattan.
For Bob Siracusano, who has spent the past year giving out free ice cream to local kids from his 1967 Ford Good Humor truck, the new venture is about doing something fun, not making a profit.
“If I break even, I’ll be happy,” he told Forbes for a story last week. Bob Siracusano, 72, wouldn’t answer a reporter’s question about how much the two-story shop cost to build, saying, “If I tell you, my wife will find out.”
The business does have a benefit for the Sawyer Motors dealership, which the Siracusanos have owned for 32 years, besides giving employees and customers easy access to cold treats. When the shop closes for the winter, its empty parking lot offers space to put inventory anytime the dealership needs to be plowed out.
“When it snows, I need to move 150 cars into its parking lot so I can plow the outside of the dealership,” Bob Siracusano said. “Now I have a place to move the cars.”