About Us

My name is David Smith, I am the managing director of The Ice Cream Centre Ltd, and I am nuts about ice cream ... I guess my obsession started when I was just seven years old. Back in 1975 I would patiently wait for the ice cream man each and every day with 40pence in my hand, so I could buy my favourite ice cream cone. I always chose a Popeye (even then I was a creature of habit!) I chose the Popeye because it was an ice cream cone with a rocket shaped ice lolly sunk into the ice cream, and I figured that this was the best of both worlds especially if you are an indecisive seven year old lad. (Indecently the Popeye is also known as a Witches Hat in certain parts of the UK). In my daily ice cream purchase routine, I would wait patiently for several hours for the ice cream van to travel down my road, sounding its ‘’whistle while you work’ chimes, until my mother, one day pointed out that the van always arrived in our street at around 6pm, and suggested that I tailor my daily ritual around this regular event. I took this advice and found it to be very successful, and so my understanding of the ice cream mans regular round started to develop. ‘My Ice cream man’ drove a 1972 Bedford CF, which had been converted into a mobile ice cream shop by Morrison’s Of Gateshead in Southampton and was the most beautiful van in the world, because it contained my favourite ice cream, the Popeye. I used to stand at the back of the queue and watch the ice cream vendor dispense a vast variety of delicious ices to his eager ice cream audience, which consisted of both adults and children (I think we are all children when we visit the ice cream man whether he is operating from the local park kiosk or his mobile ice cream van) . Soon all the other customers had been served and it was my turn to choose an ice cream. The ice cream man would always say ‘are you having your usual today David’?, to which I would reply ‘no, I’d like a Popeye please, with red sauce’. I was seven and I didn’t fully understand what the term ‘usual’ meant!!! As I was standing by the ice cream vans serving window. I would watch intently the soft ice cream machine dispensing the Vanilla ice cream onto the small cornet. The vendor would then produce the rocket shaped ice-lolly from the vans deep freezer and push it into the ice cream, and with a splash of red sauce my Popeye was ready! As I tucked into my ice cream treat, I watched the ice cream van pull away and trundle into the next street, and, in the distance I could hear the chimes once again, and I remember thinking when I grow up I’m going to be an ice cream man ... Well, as luck would have it, I didn’t need to wait that long! Just two years later, my Aunty Sheila put forward a tender to operate the Ice Cream Kiosk in the park that I lived opposite.... The tender was successful and at the age of nine I WAS IN THE ICE CREAM BUSINESS...Well, I say business, my Auntie Sheila allowed me to work in the kiosk seven days a week (in the school holidays) for a weekly salary of £2 on the understanding that I spent some of it in the kiosk.... I happily agreed – well it was either that sending me up chimneys in the school holidays – anyway, I was delighted, I was nine and I worked in an ice cream van made of bricks! So, was the reality of being an ice cream man as attractive as my nine-year-old perceptions…? You bet your life it was. I loved every second of it; I learnt how to interact with customers, how to rotate and restock shelves, chillers, and freezers, how to clean hygienically, the importance of structure and method. Oh, I also leant that the term ‘usual’ meant ‘Would you like a Popeye David?’ Well I worked in that Kiosk for seven years, until at the age of sixteen; it was time to find a proper job. Is you can imagine, loving the ice cream business as I did, there was only one career for me..... Yes, that’s right, I became a butcher! But, at the age of Twenty-Two in the year 1990, I bought my first ice cream van, It was a twenty three year old Bedford CF with an S C Cummins full cowl body and a Maria soft ice cream machine. Now I really was in the ICE CREAM BUSINESS. And this is where I have remained for the last twenty two years, selling ice cream to thousands of people that have attended the events, that my company has catered for, visited the park and castle grounds in Tamworth, where I have a cafe and ice cream parlour and lived in the streets, cul-de-sacs and estates that my modern fleet of ice cream vans have visited. I hope all who are kind enough to visit The Ice Cream Centre website, find it interesting, informative, refreshing, easy to navigate and above all FUN... After all, isn’t that what Ice Cream is all about? I look forward to serving you all soon. David