Ice cream and food trailers a sweet success for Lingens
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According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, food trucks have surged into a multi-billion dollar industry. There are probably a variety of reasons for their popularity such as offering unique cuisine that might not be available nearby and the lower startup costs than brick-and-motor restaurants.
And they are very popular at county fairs. And the Lyon County Fair is no different.
So all that was on my mind when I decided to head over to the Lyon County fairgrounds Thursday afternoon to check out the food trucks and trailers. My original game plan was to interview multiple food vendors. However, after walking past every food truck and trailer parked along the main walkway, I stopped at the one parked at the very end -- the Lingen Dairy Farm Fresh Softserve trailer.
The trailer is operated by Josh and Sarah Lingen. I met Josh in January of 2020 for a story I was working on for one of the Independent's agriculture sections.
The Lingen dairy farm was being profiled because of its robotic milking machines. At the time, it was a big decision for Josh and his parents to invest in this equipment.
During the interview, Josh mentioned that the robots allowed him to teamed up with Land O'Lakes to produce ice cream.
"We run around in the summer time and do ice cream. We run a couple trailers," Josh was quoted of saying in the 2020 article.
He said the trailers allowed Lingen to serve the ice cream at weddings, county fairs, city festivals and other events.
“Initially, I bought an old machine and my dad said ‘what are doing buying that?’ And I just started off having this machine and we had people stopping for ice cream. Then I bought a little more efficient portable one a year later. Then people wanted to start renting it. It just snowballed,” he said.
Snowballed it did. Through the years I noticed the Lingen trailers at festivals and county fairs with long lines of people in front of them.
On Thursday, I met Sarah for the first time. She was working inside the trailer and I was able to talk with her for a few minutes to get an update on how the Lingen ice cream business was doing since Josh bought that "old machine" apparently 10 years ago.
“So my husband always asks me. He’s like, 'so what? What are your goals for the year?' And I said, 'Well, I would just like to maintain.' I have yet to have a year that we’ve maintained. We’ve grown. We’ve grown every year," Sarah told me.
Because my memory was kind of foggy on my 2020 article, I asked Sarah to remind how it all began.
“My husband was on the dairy farm working with his parents for their dairy farm and so he has just a love for people and a love for robotics. So he kind of got the robots in place and his goal was to rent out an ice cream machine just for like $100 spending cash, so he could take his wife at the time out for dinner, you know, in the month," Sarah explained. "And then from there, it has exponentially grown. So that that’s how it kind of just got started. He just wanted a little bit of extra spending money, and then he just loved people and just kind of discovered how well it was working."
Sarah said people were interested in renting out the one unit that he had at the time, but soon discovered one wasn't enough.
"He was trying to sell ice cream at just our local Balaton Fun Fest, and then it was it was really popular. So from there, then he kind of was like, I need a bigger machine, and I need more machines, and the rest is history," she said. "We actually have 11 trucks and trailers. And 46 machines that we rent out now, and a food truck. And we’re actually the subcontractors for Midwest Dairy, and we actually bring all of the malt wagons to all of the dairy association fairs, so that they can run their bulk stands."
What I also didn't realize is that shortly after I interviewed Josh, they introduced catering food to the operation because of the COVID epidemic.
"We lost all of our events for the summer, and so then we were trying to figure out how we could get back out in the community," Sarah said. "We started at our local town, Balaton. We did burgers and cheese curds and milkshakes. Just to try to get people out. Everybody was so tired of being cooped up back then that everybody came out, and so it was just a huge success and we’ve just tried different things."
Burgers turned into more elaborate food items when a request was made for catering a wedding. And then another wedding request followed. And then it was a graduation.
"It just kind of kept growing," she said. "So we actually do fresh on-site grilling for the wedding. So we have a big Holstein grill that we utilize. I had a wedding back in April. It was fantastic. We did ribeye steaks and green beans. We did like a lemon green bean that I had done for them, and mashed potatoes. And it was a huge hit, and everybody loved it, and we’ve gotten so many like rave reviews since I’ve done that. So just kind of depends on what people want."
I asked Sarah if she had background in food preparation?
"No, I’m a nurse. I’m a nurse by trade. I did my food safety course, and it’s been a trial by error. Baptism by fire is how I learned the best," she said. "I cook a lot. I try a lot of different recipes in my kitchen. So there was one wedding last summer that I had to have a vegetarian option. And so I made, was it called? It was a cranberry stuffed squash type of thing that I’d made. And the group that they were eating with, they were like, 'oh, I wish I would have had that instead of the meal.' So it turned out really good. It’s been fun. It’s been a fun challenge to learn new things."
As Sarah spoke, I was trying to understand all the different aspects of their operation. A lot what they do with the ice cream is working with the Midwest Dairy Association. On its website, it states a mission of providing consumers "an excellent dairy experience."
Midwest Dairy Association is funded by farmers across a 10-state region, including Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma.
The Lingens are also partners with Pioneer Seed to provide catering for different events.
"We have partnered with them for three years now," Sarah said. "They’ve been wonderful to work with, and we do a lot of advertising for them. We have them on our on our cups and our shirts. We collaborate a lot of your work, you know."
Sarah admits the food truck business is pretty saturated, but she said they do things a little different to keep busy.
"We don’t have like a food truck route that we per se drive and do all the time. We wait for you to want us to come to you. So if if businesses want to do like an employee appreciation or a picnic or you know, and will guarantee us. I would say we’re more of a catering truck than we would be per se a food truck,” she said.
While they do keep busy, today's inflation has affected their bottom line.
"The cost, the inflation that we have endured for the last two years has been really tough. We tried to kind of match the inflation with what we have to pay, but then we noticed that customers are a little bit more standoffish when prices jump up a little bit," she said. "Josh and I closed our margins a little bit more. So then the families have more of a chance. We want people to come to our trailer and be able to get a $5 shake. So, do we get ahead as quickly as we want to get ahead? No. But we really strive to be fair, to provide a really good quality product to our customers, and honestly, we just want the relationships. We love when people come up and say, you know, the malts at the fair have been a tradition for us for the last you know 10 years. We just love having you guys here.”
I also asked Sarah what's the secret in providing delicious ice cream.
"I would say honestly, we are very particular in keeping our machines clean and sanitized. And making sure that our product doesn’t stay in there for more than the recommended amount of time," she said. "It’s a real dairy product, you know. There’s a lot of places that will use that shelf-stable cream that can last for like a month and a half, and there’s a lot of additives and stuff in that. We don’t use that. We use the real real product, and there’s like 10 ingredients in our in our ice cream."
What impressed me most about Sarah as she spoke to me was her enthusiasm. I could tell she enjoys working in the ice cream trailer. No doubt operating a small business can be stressful. But I could tell in her voice that it can also be rewarding -- and not just in dollars and cents.