PLAN No. 328. SELLING ICE CREAM, BANANAS, ETC., IN THE COUNTRY
A city man, who had formerly lived in the country realized how welcome would be the sight of a covered express wagon, containing a sign, “Ice Cream, Pop Corn and Bananas,” coming up the road toward a farm house on a long lonesome Sunday afternoon. Why, everybody would be customers, and that gave him an idea.
He owned just the kind of rig that would serve this purpose, and all he needed was a neatly printed canvas sign tacked on each side of the frame that supported the cover. A sign painter soon turned these out at a small cost, and he next visited the headquarters of a large dairy company noted for the excellence of its products. Here he made arrangements to be supplied with from ten to twenty gallons of their best ice cream, of different flavors, each Sunday, at wholesale rates.
A corn-popper, operated by a kerosene lamp that kept the pop-corn warm as well as fresh, was his next purchase, then a few bushels of popcorn, while a wholesale fruit house was glad to supply several hundred nice ripe bananas at the regular prices to dealers.
The next Sunday was a beautiful day—just warm enough to make one wish for ice cream—and he started out in his rig for a long drive into the country. His coming created a sensation and the further he drove the more he sold of his goods, until, just before sundown, the very last of the ice cream, popcorn and bananas were sold. That night after supper he figured up the results, and found his net profits amounted to just $18.75 for that one day’s work. But that was only the beginning of a profitable business.