Ice Cream Man Scoops in Riches

Selling ice cream along the Jersey Shore has given Tony Visalli a double dip of the good life. In the summer he lives in a glass-wrapped, pastel pink bay-front house in North Wildwood.

In the winter, he and his family take up residence in a villa on St. John in the Virgin Islands. His daughters attend school in both places.

What's not to like about a seasonal business that generates more than a million dollars in annual sales and is growing at a rate of 5 percent a year?

As an ice cream distributor, Visalli supplies hundreds of beach vendors, ice cream parlors, restaurants and mom and pop deli owners between Cape May and Long Beach Island with frozen products made elsewhere.

His dream is to corner the market on the "next home-run flavor." Until then, he's content to sell bulk ice cream, frozen yogurt, water ice, soft ice cream mix and cases of treats generally sold on the beach, such as fudgesicles, ice cream sandwiches, twin pops and cones. He also distributes soft pretzels for Pennsauken-based J&J Snack Foods.

June is intense because all of his customers are opening for the season at the same time.

"I was going to be a doctor," recalled the president of Island Ice Cream Co.

"But other than healthy babies being born, that's a sad business. Ice cream is a comforting, recession-proof good time. Even the calories don't seem to matter as much as they did a few years ago," said the youthful-looking 47-year-old, who works out regularly to counter his daily ice cream fix.

Leo Yeager, owner of four sweet shops called Boardwalk Peanuts on Atlantic City's boardwalk, has been a satisfied customer of Island Ice Cream for seven years.

"It's a very competitive business, but Tony offers good service, fair pricing and fresh product," said Yeager. "He knows what sells and what doesn't, so he helps me with merchandising, too."

After 30 years in the business, Visalli is happy with his coastal niche that doesn't tie him down to labor-intensive, year-round contract sales to supermarkets and convenience stores.

As he should be, said Jim Conway, vice president of Mister Softee, a competing company that has tried, but failed, for years to penetrate the ice cream market at the Shore.

"Vending licenses are extremely hard to come by. If we could get some, it would be fabulous," he said. "But well-connected local people get them, or they go to veterans and the handicapped."

Headquartered in Runnemede, Mister Softee operates the largest franchise of soft ice cream trucks in the United States. Its 600 trucks are just about everywhere in the Mid-Atlantic states except the Jersey Shore.

The Visalli family has had Wildwood sand between their toes for more than 50 years. Tony Visalli became a year-round resident in his 20s. Today, the South Philadelphia native and his wife, Debbie, who operates a successful Mexican restaurant in Wildwood Crest called Bandanas, are watching the value of their businesses and their real estate soar.

The once shabby resort has been targeted as the last affordable beach town in New Jersey.

"I wouldn't call us pioneers because my family's been down here forever. But I did give relocation some thought a few years ago when I decided to move out of North Wildwood and expand."

Instead, he turned a one-story, dilapidated warehouse on Park Boulevard in Wildwood into a $600,000 state-of-the art refrigerated facility. Half of the cost was covered with a five-year, low-interest loan from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

"People are in sticker shock in other communities when they see what their money will buy. Here the beaches are beautiful and the city's reputation is improving, after years of being viewed as a nasty place. So what if you don' t have a Stone Harbor or Avalon address?"

Wildwood Mayor Duane Sloan said Island Ice Cream is no fluke in its willingness to invest in his city, the poorest of three tiny municipalities on the island. Collectively, the island's population swells from about 15,000 in the winter to about 200,000 in the summer.

"Three years ago we canceled planning board meetings because there was no agenda. Now, we're meeting twice a month until 11:30 at night, plus an occasional special meeting, to handle the development that's in the pipeline," said Sloan, a CPA by trade and, at 36, the city's youngest mayor.

"Wildwood had such a bad rep in the past, but it's finally coming around because other towns have priced themselves out of the market for middle-class families."

That plus optimism generated by the $68 million Convention Center that opened this season on the boardwalk are ramping up interest.

"We don't want to be another Ocean City or Cape May," Sloan said. "We want to be ourselves and we don't want to be boring."

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Author: 6 ABC-AP