Colin Hawkins is filling a void in the Blaine area’s summer ice cream supply.
Hawkins, a lead assistant cook at Blaine school district, noticed the ice cream truck that visited Blaine neighborhoods stopped making trips after it was sold. As a solution, he purchased an ice cream tricycle from Portland, the Orange Cream-Cycle, last year to provide a cool summer treat.
“It was out of necessity,” Hawkins said. “Not having an ice cream man isn’t cool.”
The tricycle was a low-cost alternative to a truck, allowing Hawkins to keep the price of ice cream affordable. Hawkins said he prices the ice cream just high enough to pay off the tricycle, and he won’t allow someone to walk away from the tricycle if they don’t have money. The highest-priced ice cream costs $3.
“Either I’ll give them ice cream out of my tip money, or I’ll give away Otter Pops,” Hawkins said. “I don’t want anyone to walk away disappointed because they couldn’t get something at the ice cream truck because they didn’t have the money.”
Hawkins said he announces where he’s going a day before on the Orange Cream-Cycle’s Instagram and Facebook, and he also uses a tracking app, Glympse, so people can locate him in real-time.
Right now, Hawkins is aiming for one big neighborhood per day or two smaller ones as it takes about 2.5 hours to visit the Lettered Streets and 1.5 hours for the Salishan neighborhood. While his focus is Blaine, he hopes to expand to more Birch Bay neighborhoods this summer.
“This is a good thing for the city, a good thing for the kids,” Hawkins said. “I have summers off, so this is an easy way to be active and do fun things.”
The Orange Cream-Cycle typically has eight to 10 ice creams, from well-loved candy bar ice creams like Reese’s and Oreo to sour flavors of cherry and blue raspberry. Hawkins accepts Venmo, credit cards and cash.
“At school, I’m the lunch man, and during the summer, I’m the ice cream man,” Hawkins said. “A lot of those kids know me as both.”
