This new trailer serves ice cream every day, and you'll be seeing its tricycles soon
Cruising down Bridgeport you might catch a glimpse of a tiny, mint-green trailer with a big sign on top that says, “Bliss.”
Get a little closer and you’ll smell something distinctive — freshly-made waffle cones.
The little, green trailer is the mobile outpost of the area’s newest ice cream company, Bliss Small Batch Creamery.
Bliss got its start last year selling ice cream on UberEats as co-owners, sisters Theresa Fouquette and Stacie Leaf, worked on building their brick-and-mortar location in University Place (it is set to open later this summer). The ice cream company makes its ice cream at a commercial kitchen in Fircrest.
With the warmer weather, locals will be seeing a lot more of that scoop trailer. It now will serve every day from 5-9 p.m. in University Place (with expanded hours some days, check Facebook for schedule).
The scoop trailer in University Place also is operating right where the Bliss ice cream cafe will open, hopefully by August.
The trailer serves scoops in cups or cones, plus pints. Scoops are $3 for kid size, $5 for a single or $7 for a double, with a $1 upgrade for a waffle cone. Pints are $10.
The menu includes at least eight flavors a day (of more than two dozen rotating flavors) with one or two of those being dairy-free, vegan choices. For vegan ice cream, the sisters use a coconut base. For their regular ice cream, they use a cream base from the Snoqualmie Ice Cream Co. (with about 19-percent butterfat, which makes for a very creamy ice cream).
The company’s co-owners thought the ice cream trailer could be a bridge until they open their UP location.
“It was an ugly two-tone coral-pink trailer, a working coffee trailer in Portland. We fell in love with it, despite how ugly it was, and saw its potential,” explained Fouquette.
They stripped it down, painted it mint green and white and popped the big Bliss sign on top.
Their latest project is adding ice cream tricycles to the business.
Schedules vary, so check out the Facebook page, but expect to see tricycles outfitted with portable cooling units serving at waterfront parks as well as local farmers markets and other events.
The Bliss tricycles sell the company’s packaged ice cream novelties, including mint- or espresso-chip ice cream bars and ice cream sandwiches with lemon-ginger poppy-seed, cherry amaretto and salty caramel mocha.
The path to owning an ice cream company grew from their love of their first high school jobs at a Baskin-Robbins.
“Nobody ever left unhappy. It was a great job,” said Fouquette. Both pursued careers outside the food industry — Fouquette worked for a family business and Leaf at a jewelry store — but they both talked about opening their own scoop shop someday.
That idea morphed into a business where they would sell the ice cream but make it, too. That has taken a great deal of investigation of ingredients.
The sisters wanted to make ice cream with no artificial flavors or colorings, and they’ve held true to that mission. They use turmeric to color their lemon-ginger poppy-seed ice cream. The distinctive green in their mint-chip is a combination of turmeric and spirulina. The cookies in their version of cookies-and-cream are sourced to be organic and free of artificial flavors and colors. It’s also colored bright blue from spirulina.
The sisters are working on debuting new flavors. One is a blueberry pie with swirls of blueberries and bits of pie crust. They also debuted a vegan sour cherry-amaretto last week.
My picks? Fudgy brownie, a rich, luscious chocolate embedded with chewy brownie pieces. Or, get the salty caramel with a perfect seesaw of sweet and salty.
Bliss Small Batch Creamery
Find it: 3556 Market Place W., University Place
Info:facebook.com/blisstacoma or icecreambliss.com
Phone: 253-327-1922
This story was originally published June 19, 2018 at 12:00 PM with the headline "This new trailer serves ice cream every day, and you'll be seeing its tricycles soon."