For three generations, the DeConna family has been dishing up happiness — and business is booming.
“We sell ice cream to make people happy. That’s our goal,” said Nick DeConna, president of DeConna Ice Cream located in Orange Lake. “I feel like we’re serving up great memories, celebrating the special moments in life.”
DeConna Ice Cream sits on a hill along County Road 318 in Orange Lake in northern Marion County, one mile west of U.S. 441 and one mile east of Interstate 75. It’s a nondescript edifice surrounded by, well, nothing.
It is the headquarters of DeConna Ice Cream, which sells ice cream of all kinds and flavors – from ice cream sandwiches to ice cream parlor tubs – across the Southeast and up the Eastern Seaboard. While it reaches 21 states, Florida and Georgia are its biggest markets.
And it all started with an ice cream pushcart in Pittsburgh, of all places.
Don DeConna, a Pearl Harbor veteran and World War II hero, returned to his native Pittsburgh after the war. Like many young men in the Steel City, he went to work in the steel mills. However, he operated an ice cream pushcart on the side during the summers.
He liked the ice cream business and decided he could sell ice cream year-round in Miami. So, in 1947, he moved to Miami and started vending ice cream with a Cushman-powered cart. Then he added a truck, then more trucks, and that eventually led him into distribution, wholesaling and manufacturing.
“My grandfather was an innovator,” grandson Nick said proudly.
By 1963, DeConna Ice Cream had outgrown its Miami facility and Don “Big Daddy” DeConna decided to move his operations to Gainesville, because of its location midway between Miami and Atlanta. In 1987, that facility had become too small, so Don bought the 33-acre Orange Lake property and built a 20,000-square-foot freezer/warehouse/company headquarters on the hilltop.
The company no longer makes its own ice cream, opting instead to contract that out to plants in Nebraska and Virginia, where DeConna ice cream is made to the family’s strict specifications.
Vince DeConna, 69, the second generation to lead the company, bought the company from his father, Don, in 1995. Vince brought innovation and growth to DeConna Ice Cream, expanding its presence and its market.
Today, in addition to ice cream trucks and convenience stores, DeConna is found in schools, hospitals, grocery stores, restaurants and “scoop shops.”
Vince and Nick, who joined his father at the company in 2014 after a career in advertising, said the company has seen steady and significant growth since the 1995 sale from Don to Vince. How much?
“Oh yeah, we’ve grown big time,” said Vince, who has turned over running the company to Nick. “We’ve grown six or seven times since then.”
Added Nick: “I think if my grandfather was still around, he would be very proud of what we’re doing.”
In addition to the Orange Lake facility, DeConna also has distribution plants in Tampa and Palm Bay.
Nick said he is always looking for innovative ways to make DeConna products better tasting and better selling. And Vince is quick to point out that all ice creams are not created equal – “real” ice cream, he notes, must have 10 percent butter fat.
While the top-selling flavor is butter pecan, with cookies and cream No. 2, Nick said the family and their employees are always looking for new flavors and new “novelties” (hand-held ice cream treats). Since the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, DeConna has been working proactively to reduce the amount of food dye and corn syrup in their products. School products in particular are being produced with no high fructose corn syrup or artificial coloring.
And for the DeConnas, making changes to their business or their products is no big deal.
“We can do what we want,” Nick said, with Vince, nodding in agreement. “Because we are family-owned and operated, we maybe don’t have the obstacles to change that bigger companies do.
“Plus, I think customers value being able to contact the owner of the company.”
For both Vince and Nick, the family ties are strong, in part, because of the family business.
“I kind of grew up in the business,” Vince said. “And my dad, me and Nick all started out vending.” Vending remains a cornerstone of the family businesses.
For an idea of how much ice cream DeConna markets, Vince said the company sells 2 million boxes of novelties alone each year. With 24 novelties per box, that’s 48 million ice cream bars, ice cream cups and such a year. And that’s not counting what goes to scoop shops and grocery stores.
The DeConnas said they are working to take their school line national and expand their line of novelties as well. “We’re always looking at how we can do what we’re doing better,” Nick said.
One of the DeConna facility’s most fascinating aspects is its massive freezer, which is set at minus-15 degrees. It is cold and big, capable of holding 1,000 pallets of ice cream products. Employees who work in the massive freezer can only stay inside so long before ice crystals start forming on their eyelids. They have to use pencils to write with because the temperature freezes the ink in pens.
Today DeConna Ice Cream has about 80 employees and 50 vehicles serving some 3,500 customers. Office Manager Carla Mullins has witnessed the evolution and growth of the company during her 36 years there.
“We are a true work family,” she said. “I raised my kids here.”
She described founder Don as “a true leader,” while Vince brought technological advances that Nick has continued in order to streamline the operation. Among the most recent technological advances is the installation of a new solar field behind the company plant. Its 1,600 panels are a hedge against power outages and a way for the company to curb power costs.
But for all the work, Mullins said working for the ice cream company is ‘fun.’
“It’s a job and it comes with its stress,” she said. “But it’s fun. I wouldn’t want to work anyplace else.”
So it seems. You see smiles on DeConna employees’ faces as you walk around the ice cream plant. It’s part of the DeConna culture, Nick says. After all, they sell ice cream.
“If you’re not having fun selling ice cream,” he said,” you’re doing something wrong.”
