Episode 12: Eric Murphy (Founder, Scream Trucks) – The Best of New Jersey Podcast

Amanda Morrison
Welcome to the Best of New Jersey Podcast presented by Sojo Spa Club, New Jersey’s wellness getaway. The Best of New Jersey Podcast celebrates New Jersey’s most influential figures and the communities that shaped them. Big names, real talk, real Jersey. I’m your host, Amanda Morrison from Don’t Sit Home.

Amanda Morrison
I would like to welcome to the Best of New Jersey Podcast, Eric Murphy, the CEO and founder of Scream Truck. Welcome to the podcast.

Eric Murphy
Thanks for having me.

Amanda Morrison
So Scream Truck, tell me a little bit about that and we’ll go into details about, you know, all of the, your menu or everything. I mean, I’ve been going through your social media and reading some articles about it and I really love the concept.

Eric Murphy
Thank you. Yeah, it’s exciting. We started in 2020 right before COVID started. I started the company, so actually launched it in January of twenty-twenty and had our first truck out on the road in 20 in September of 20 20. so we’re an on-demand experiential ice cream truck. It’s basically your modern neighborhood ice cream truck so all the nostalgic kind of ice cream trucks that you’ve known from the past this is kind of completely different from that. It’s text based so we text you anytime we’re coming to your neighborhood and you can reply why which means yes which is you getting a stop at your house during our route in your neighborhood. So people just sign up on Screamtruck.com with their name, address, phone number, and we visit you maybe once every ten days or so, and then obviously we do private events as well. But the big concept of Scream Truck is really the business model, which is the texting to basically get reservations for a stop at your house.

Amanda Morrison
OK, so when people hear about businesses launching in twenty-twenty and obviously something that’s mobile that can go to your house, you think of its pandemic-fueled.

Eric Murphy
Yeah.

Amanda Morrison
So obviously, if you started in January, it didn’t you know, that’s not the case. So what made you, what made you come up with this concept?

Eric Murphy
It was pretty simple. I’ve always been a really big fan of ice cream. I love ice cream. So throughout my career, I was always like, I want to do something with ice cream. So I had an experiential marketing agency in the city for 15 years that I sold to Condé Nast back in 2017. I stayed there for a few years. And when I was sort of done with that stint, I was like, All right, I’m going to do something. I got to figure something out with ice cream.

Eric Murphy
And we have an ice cream truck in our neighborhood that’s just really gross. It’s dirty. The guy that runs it’s a weird guy. He’s scooping water ice off a bucket or from a bucket on the floor of the truck. It was just a bad experience. And I thought, wow, why has nobody ever done a cooler and more modern neighborhood ice cream truck? That was really the impetus of the idea. I had that idea like at the end of two thousand nineteen and at the beginning of 20 20, I started working on a truck and the software and just kind of coming up with the whole concept and the brand. And it was COVID obviously starting in March that year. So when we started in September. It was crazy because people were desperate to see anybody or have any kind of happiness or any sort of experience in their life. So we started in Westfield, New Jersey, and our first 6 months, it was like deep COVID where everybody was home. So it was a really fun time and it really helped get the business off the ground.

Amanda Morrison
So when you talk about the software to describe the truck, what’s making your truck different than the gross ice cream truck that you used to see drive around?

Eric Murphy
So number one, we have a really big commitment to like cleanliness and allergy awareness. And that’s a huge thing with moms right now is just a lot of kids have allergies and a lot of kids can’t experience an ice cream truck because they’re afraid they’re going to get, you know. anaphylactic shock. So we are very clean on the truck. We also have 2 big 4K LED screens on the outside of the truck that that either have our social feed on them or for events. We do like a special message to the guest of honor. We customize our menu for every event that we do. So we would make a special Sundae just for you named after you. We have an audio system on the truck, like a real audio system that plays pop music, like really good curated music. The experience of Scream Truck is just a modern feel versus just an old school nostalgic kind of thing that most ice cream trucks lean into. Everyone thinks about nostalgia with an ice cream truck, so they usually make them a little bit more old school and a little more just nostalgic. And we went for the opposite of that. The trucks are super modern looking, super clean, and just have a really good experience when you’re standing in front of it.

Amanda Morrison
So it’s easy to have the idea, I want to have an ice cream truck. I think I have seen even Rupert Grint from Harry Potter, he weirdly owns an ice cream truck himself too. But what about the menu? I mean, it’s easy to say, I want to be a chef, but if you can’t cook anything, so how did you… 1, what is making your menu different than like the older ice cream truck ?And 2, who helped you create the menu?

Eric Murphy
Yeah. So I create all the menu. I create all the items on the menu. I built the menu based on just my years of loving ice cream and all the things that I’ve loved in the past. Most soft serve trucks, which is what we are, are basically doing maybe a few ingredients, maybe a few drizzles or sauces or something, but it’s a pretty limited menu. We have a very wide selection of products. and also they’re all premium brands. So we’re using Ghirardelli chocolates and caramel sauces and sea salt caramel. We have a company in Brooklyn called The Konery that we do all of their hand rolled waffle cones that are all different flavors. We have all the name brand Oreos and Kit Kats and Snickers and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and we just make a lot of really cool stuff. um and we do a lot of seasonal stuff a lot a lot of limited edition stuff so it’s it’s really like a it’s a constant rotation of new and different things we just launched our Halloween um products yesterday we have a partnership with Baked my Melissa for our Halloween Sundae and then we have another pumpkin pie shake that we do every year that’s super popular.

Eric Murphy
We do a really awesome hot chocolate menu in the wintertime since we do operate year-round. So it’s just the variety of what we offer. It’s not just the same thing. Every time you get the truck, there’s always something different.

Amanda Morrison
So when you say Baked by Melissa, actually, I live in Hoboken. I know that she does too. But do you rotate partnerships with different businesses too? So even talking about chocolate, do you try to work with major, bigger brands? Or do you do where, like for the, let’s say a specific, like Westfield. Do you try to look for like local businesses that you could partner where the trucks are?

Eric Murphy
We do local mostly. So Levain Cookies, we just did a partnership with them last year. They’re in the city. Huge cookie brand.

Amanda Morrison
Love them.

Eric Murphy
Levain it’s been it’s like yeah it’s it’s like one of my favorites um that was a really cool one to be able to do um we did one with live breads which is a really awesome bakery in Millburn new jersey for a long time they did our our chocolate chip cookies and brownies for our chocolate chip and cookie sundae that we do we’ve done mini cheesecake with a local baker out in Westfield we are actually working with another local baker in west orange called, I forgot the name of, she’s gonna kill me, Salted. And they’re doing our new chocolate chip cookies and brownies for our chocolate chip cookie and brownie sundae. So we try and do local partnerships and anything that’s also something that people might know nationally as well. Like Baked by Melissa obviously is a national brand based here, so it’s kind of local, but there’s a lot of, and as we expand across the country, we’ll wanna do more that are bigger brands and more known across the whole country as well.

Amanda Morrison
Do you have a favorite partnership specials so far?

Eric Murphy
I mean, the Lavain cookie was the best. It was very simple. It was just their cookie with our soft serve and a cup. I mean, it was not fancy, but their cookies with ice cream are just and their cookies on their own are amazing. So with our soft serve, it was just awesome.

Amanda Morrison
What’s your favorite thing on the menu that’s there all the time?

Eric Murphy
It’s actually called the Cool Chick and it’s soft serve vanilla with Chico Stick. Do you know Chico Stick? Very few people know this, but it’s a candy from like the 19 fifties. It’s almost like the inside of a Butterfinger, but it’s got like a coconutty flavor to it as well.

Amanda Morrison
I have had that. I was like, wait, I was like, that does sound familiar.

Eric Murphy
But it’s really good. So we crush the Chico Stick. We do sea salt, caramel, whipped cream and like chocolate sprinkles on top. It’s so good.

Amanda Morrison
What was your ice cream order growing up?

Eric Murphy
That’s a really good question. I’m not a big toppings person, so I mostly just ate either a flavor of ice cream or we used to go to a place called Tasty Freeze when I was a kid. It was a soft serve place in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We would walk there in the summertime and just get a vanilla cone or a chocolate cone, nothing fancy. And then as I got older, I got more into different types of ice cream and flavors of ice cream, but like never really I don’t really put a ton of toppings or I don’t like ice cream that has a ton of stuff in it. I kind of like the ice cream itself. So I usually go for, you know, something that’s just either straight ice cream or like currently my favorite is Haagen Dazs chocolate chocolate chip. I like love that ice cream. It’s like a dark chocolate with dark chocolate chips in it. It’s really good.

Amanda Morrison
I mean, anything chocolate is good with me.

Eric Murphy
Yeah, it’s good. I eat it all the time. People ask me like, oh, you must eat so much ice cream. I’m not eating our ice cream because I’m not like at our trucks all the time. But like at home, I eat ice cream like daily. I love it.

Amanda Morrison
But you said you launched in Westfield. Why Westfield?

Eric Murphy
So just in terms of towns in New Jersey, I think Westfield is one of the best places for families. There’s just a lot of, when you go to Westfield, it’s almost like you’re not seeing something real. Like people are out riding their bikes and playing in the yard and raking leaves. Like it just feels like that, like all American place where people are enjoying their life and there’s families and people are just out and there’s a great downtown in Westfield. I just i just love that town. So, and I also have a friend that lives there, that’s a, that’s a mom that knows all the other moms and that’s kind of our audience. So she was willing to like, help me get the word out on on social and in the mom groups and all that stuff on on social media. So it was just really the fact that Westfield felt like a really good place for an ice cream truck, just because of the family vibe there.

Amanda Morrison
One of my first jobs out of college actually was in Westfield. so I can agree. Because I used to work in Manhattan and then when I came back to New Jersey, I still wanted that downtown feel, going from walking everywhere in New York and then coming back to the suburbs. I wanted to have a combination of the both.

Eric Murphy
There’s not a lot of. I mean in New Jersey there’s a lot of towns that havesort of downtown areas but they’re not that great and they’re not. I mean it’s like maybe a street and then that’s it. Like Westfield has a whole downtown and like lots of great restaurants and shops and just like there’s so much going on there.

Amanda Morrison
What are some of your favorite places in Westfield?

Eric Murphy
This is not actually in Westfield, it’s in Garwood, but it’s kind of on the border: Black Sheep, which is a restaurant there. That’s incredible. I’ve been there probably 20 times.

Amanda Morrison
I’ll have to add it to my list.

Eric Murphy
It’s really good. Black Sheep. They also own Public House in Westfield, same company. I think it’s the same chef, but Black Sheep. It’s hard to get into, but it’s on top of my list for New Jersey restaurants. And then there used to be a Mexican place in downtown Westfield that was so good. I can’t even remember the name of it, but it’s not there anymore. But there are a lot of really interesting places. There’s actually a Mexican Indian restaurant where you get tacos and burritos, but it’s Indian food and Indian inspired. It sounds strange, but it’s really good.

Amanda Morrison
I feel like so many of the fusion places now are so surprising. There’s always something that doesn’t work, but I do think that sounds like it would be great. So when, so, you launched in January of twenty, twenty and in Westfield, obviously you have faith. You wouldn’t have done it if you didn’t think it would be successful. But one was that moment when you’re like, OK, this is working. We want to move, we want to, you know, have another truck. We want to go to another town.

Eric Murphy
It was quick. I mean we had a lot of people sign up in the first, even just month or 2. So we had… right now we have one hundred and thirty thousand households signed up for Scream Truck, for our alerts in Westfield. 42 percent of the town of Westfield, 42 percent of homes are signed up for Scream Truck. So it just took off really fast and I would say within the within the first 2 to 3 months I was like, wow, this could be way bigger than I thought it was going to be. Not that I didn’t think it would be successful, but I just didn’t expect it to go as fast as it did. COVID did help that for sure, I think. If we would have launched any other time, it wouldn’t have been as fast. I still think it would be successful, but I think- because COVID, just everybody was home and everybody was excited to see the truck and all of that- that definitely gave us a boost. I want to say it was a time where we just needed something normal.

Amanda Morrison
Yeah, yeah. And to come to you was great.

Eric Murphy
Well, remember the drive-by birthdays, where you would like get in your car and like wave at the birthday person and like toss a gift out the window. Like we would do those too, like we would go to people’s houses and just be part of, like a parade like that, and then they would like, we would stop on the corner and we would serve everybody, you know, with masks on and even in the winter. I remember in January of 21 we were doing events out in the snow. We would be at someone’s house, it’s snowing and people were just having the time of their lives. That actually gave us the ability to sort of train people that ice cream isn’t just for summer, that you can eat it year round, you can enjoy it year round, and people for some reason associate an ice cream truck with 2 things: summertime and kids. We actually gear our menu more towards adults because we know we’re going to get the kids. So a lot of our menu- um i would say probably 50 percent of everything we do- is more adult friendly than it is kid friendly. Just because you know there’s there’s plenty on the truck for kids to love and they just normally like gummy bears and M&Ms, like they’re not complicated. But we wanted to make sure that adults felt like it was for them as well. And it was just during that COVID time where a lot of adults became very excited about an ice cream truck and, like I said, that did really give us a boost.

Amanda Morrison
You’re saying that you’re conscious about allergies and everything for kids, and obviously that’s a big deal. But what about: Do you have dairy-free options? Do you have things that are? I mean, is there something for everyone there?

Eric Murphy
Yep, so each truck has 2 different prep stations. One of them is nut free. So when you order online, you can tell us if you have an allergy or not for that item. If there’s an item that we’re preparing that has an allergy associated with it, our team is obviously trained to change their gloves, wash their hands, prepare that on the non-nut side. And then we have non-dairy ice cream, which is a scooped ice cream from a place in Boston called FoMu, which is an awesome vegan ice cream company. And then we do an all-natural fruit bar as well. So really there’s something for everyone. Our ice cream is kosher, it doesn’t have gluten, it doesn’t have soy, doesn’t have egg. So the ice cream itself is actually very allergy friendly as well. So a lot of people, will you know, for their kids who have severe allergies, they can at least get like a cup of ice cream and know that they’re like a hundred percent safe.

Amanda Morrison
We hope you’re enjoying this episode of the Best of New Jersey Podcast. The conversation continues in just a moment, but first we would like to thank our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Sojo Spa Club, New Jersey’s go-to wellness getaway, Just minutes from the city. Sojo is the perfect place to unplug, recharge and actually treat yourself. From heated pools and rooftop views of the New York City skyline to saunas from around the world and seriously indulgent spa treatments. it’s a full-day escape that feels like a vacation without the travel. Whether you’re going solo, planning a girls’ day or surprising someone with a gift, Sojo Spa Club is wellness done right, all without leaving New Jersey.

Amanda Morrison
Other than being surprised of how quickly you’re succeeding, what do you think has been one of your biggest surprises, whether it’s one of the biggest challenges or one of your biggest successes so far?

Eric Murphy
Biggest challenge was just understanding the concept of running a fleet of trucks. It seems like it would be easy, like, oh, we just have a fleet of trucks, we’ll change the oil once a month, whatever, but like, there’s just always something going on with them, not necessarily the trucks themselves all the time, but also the equipment on the trucks. The ice cream machine is not meant to be on a truck, so it’s, it’s temperamental, it’s getting sloshed around, it’s like vibrating constantly because it’s on the road. So just the repairs and maintenance and keeping up with that was definitely a big eye opener, because it’s just a lot of work. On the positive side, we actually went and we were starting to think about raising money to grow faster. A friend of my, our president, Jason Black, who’s our co-founder as well. He had a friend that worked with Ron Baron, who’s a big investor. He has a fifty billion dollar fund, I think, or maybe more at this point in the city. His friend worked for him for many years and he’s like: hey, why don’t you come in and talk to Ron? He can give you some pointers on like what to put in your pitch deck and like how you should pitch it, whatever. So we were like great. So you know, did a whole presentation and before we went in, the guy’s like: listen, he’s not going to invest, just so you know, but he’s interested in like meeting with you. So we presented it and like halfway through the meeting, he was like I’m in, And we were like what?! And so he was our first investor. Like a major um, you know, billionaire fund guy from new, from new york city, is like investing in a small, you know, at the time we had maybe 3 trucks, um, and he was. he really helped us kick off the um, the sort of fundraising side of the business, to grow faster, and that was a. it was a shock, a good shock, but it was a shock.

Amanda Morrison
I was stalking your social media and I saw that Elvis Duran is one of your investors too.

Eric Murphy
Yes!

Amanda Morrison
For the Z100, I know a few of them, Skeery and Sam.

Eric Murphy
Oh, nice.

Amanda Morrison
It’s a great group of people. How did that come about?

Eric Murphy
My background is: I started in radio when I was 16 years old. I was in high school and I was a radio DJ in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I spent ten years in radio and then I moved and then I moved to the record side of the business. So I was at RCA Records. I started in Detroit and was there for about a year and then was transferred to the city, to New York City, for like a national director position of marketing. So during that time I would obviously deal with all the radio stations and we would bring artists around. And so I just got to know Elvis over the years and he’s become a great friend. I’ve known him for at this point, like 25, 30 years I think it is-And he was always like: I want to invest in something you’re doing. I love what you’re doing, and my experiential agency worked with iHeartRadio a lot. So we had a lot of stuff going on with them, even after I left the record and music industry. So we were always around that group of people and he just always was like: I’m such a fan of what you do and what you’ve built, and I’d love to find a way to do something together. And just over the years I never really had an opportunity that I thought would be fitting. And then, when Scream Truck started, when we started raising money, I went to him and just said: if you’re still interested in doing something like, here’s an opportunity. If you’re, you know if you, if you want to do it. And he was like, yes, I’m like, tell me where and when I’ll be there to sign the papers. So he became an investor probably 3 years ago and he’s actually our largest investor at this point. So he’s been an awesome partner.

Eric Murphy
He not only is a great human being, but He is just so willing to do anything to help the business grow. And you know, being on his show and talking about Screamtruck and talking about our franchising and everything that we’re doing has just been a huge. We just actually launched in Miami recently. 3 weeks ago launched a truck in Miami and he’s on in Miami as well. So he came down. I was on the show with him there. He came out and we had listeners come out and try Scream Truck for the first time. And you know he’s meeting every single person, talking to every single person. just super nice and cordial to everybody. So he’s been a real pleasure to work with and just, you know, always is always coming up with ideas and relationships that he can bring to the table to help us grow. So it’s awesome.

Amanda Morrison
OK? so we talk about Miami and you talk about having a fleet of ice cream trucks, and no one ever thinks about having a fleet in one state, let alone multiple cities. So how many trucks do you have in New Jersey and what areas do you cover?

Eric Murphy
So we have 15 trucks in New Jersey. Most all of northern New Jersey we cover, except for a few towns that won’t allow us to operate there, which is kind of crazy. Clifton, New Jersey, if you’re listening. Sign the petition. We’ve actually had a couple towns in New Jersey change their ordinance so that we could operate in that town. Basking Ridge was one of them, where I live. I actually started… So back up one second. You asked why I started in Westfield. I started in Westfield because I couldn’t start in my own town, which was Basking Ridge, because they wouldn’t allow the truck. There was an ordinance about it has to be prepackaged, like you can’t dispense anything on a truck and like give it out to somebody. It has to be prepackaged. So we got that ordinance changed. West Orange was the same thing. They also wouldn’t allow us. We got that ordinance changed. Clifton’s really the only larger town which is huge. It’s like ninety thousand residents, like we’re not, we cannot operate there. It’s. I don’t even understand why, they don’t even have that specific ordinance there. They’re just super against food trucks and don’t want them in the town. It’s weird.

Amanda Morrison
I was going to say so even like the old school, ice cream trucks can’t even operate there.

Eric Murphy
Actually because they’re prepackaged, maybe.

Amanda Morrison
Well, I mean we’re having like an ice cream cone, like I was saying I was like so so many children are getting robbed of their childhood memories by not getting an ice cream cone.

Eric Murphy
I mean it doesn’t make any sense, especially because we have history in all these other towns. It’s not like we’re brand new, starting in Clifford and trying to operate. They’re like they could see that we’re, you know, we’re operating in a bunch of different places and are a legitimate business, and we’re conscious of like safety and health and cleanliness and all that stuff. But they just they won’t do it. So anyway, so we operate in most towns in northern New Jersey. We just started a truck in Monmouth County, New Jersey, this year, and then we launched our first out of state franchise in Las Vegas earlier this year. They have 2 trucks there. It’s exploding there. It’s going to be. I think it could be bigger there than it is here, for a couple reasons. Number one: the density there of people is so high, like every house is like 2 feet from the next house. Even if you’re in a neighborhood with million dollar homes, they’re all super close together. So for our reserved routes, the more houses we have closer together, the more stops we can do within an hour. So that obviously helps build revenue. So they’re going to do extremely well. They already have ten thousand households signed up for their alerts and they just ordered 2 more trucks. So they’re going to have another 2 trucks delivered early next year.

Eric Murphy
And then, like I said, we launched one truck in Miami. That’s an owned and operated truck. We did that because Elvis is in that market and could help us build that brand in Miami. And then we’re going to franchise that as well. And then we are franchising our New Jersey trucks now. So we want to concentrate on growing our franchise system and having our attention there versus the day-to-day operations of the trucks in New Jersey. So we’re giving people the opportunity to franchise trucks that already have an existing customer base, business revenue. So you’re starting. you know 80 percent of the way there.

Amanda Morrison
Okay, Do you see yourself expanding into different cities?

Eric Murphy
In New Jersey?

Amanda Morrison
Anywhere.

Eric Murphy
Oh yeah, no, absolutely. We want to have you know, in the next 5 years, a minimum of five hundred trucks across the country. There’s a whole other layer of Scream Truck that that is sort of being built on top of the regular business, which is a brand partnership business. My belief- and this is my experiential marketing background and sort of being in that industry for a long time and in the marketing and advertising industry, my belief is that AI and digital and all of the things that are happening right now are going to decimate the like advertising business, because everything, no one’s going to believe anything. Digital advertising is so oversaturated right now. Everything that you go online, there’s 15 ads popping up on your screen. 50 to 60 percent of digital ads are never even seen, and brands are paying for really just what they call impressions, which are: somebody might have seen the ad or maybe like scrolled past it. The The thing that we’re doing is bringing the human relationship back to a brand partnership. So imagine our truck is at your house for 2 to 3 minutes at a time when we come to your house on our routes or we’re at a private event that you’re doingDuring our peak season. even just in New Jersey we’re servicing about forty thousand customers a month. So I’ll give you the example of pretzelized. They’re like a, it’s a, it’s like a pretzelized cracker. They’re blowing up right now. It’s like a snack cracker that just came out a few years ago. We did a partnership with them this year. They wrapped a, completely fully wrapped one of our trucks and we co branded all the other 15 trucks. We did sampling off the trucks at everyone’s house. We basically brought that brand to every single house that we service and introduced them to pretzelize. We had a pretzelized sundae that we created with their limited edition star shaped pretzel crackers. We served that on the truck for a month. They got to use their truck for pop ups at retail and things that they wanted to do. So we’re giving people the ability to basically get in front of our customers in a one on one personal way, in person, not digital, not interruptive like interruptive. Is that a word? interrupting? Well, not interrupting, but just the Brands are just really underinvested right now in that human connection because everything has gone digital and I think it’s going to swing back the other way really far, and everyone’s going to want that human connection and especially a brand. So if we can deliver that at scale with five hundred a thousand trucks and we’re and we’re serving millions of people, that’s a huge value to any brand. And it’s going to be… it’s not advertising. This is really if they can bring something to the experience and do something for the customer. That’s the, that’s the partnership. It’s not like hey, we’re just going to plaster ads on our truck. It’s really about creating something special that we can do for the customer that we already have and it’s already looking forward to us being at their house that day.

Amanda Morrison
Do you see yourself just expanding the trucks and working with franchising? or do you see yourself expanding even on the idea of just not just it being an ice cream truck, but going beyond ice cream?

Eric Murphy
Meaning like other food or?

Amanda Morrison
Yeah other food?

Eric Murphy
So we tried a pizza truck. We piloted a pizza truck earlier this year. It did actually pretty well, but the logistics of it were really difficult. And the partnership that we had to make our crust because we wanted it to be a super premium, really great because we’re in New Jersey, obviously. It just didn’t work out. It was actually just they weren’t able to accommodate sort of the schedule that we needed them to deliver these kind of par-baked crusts, so it just became too hard to manage. And we and we caught it. We learned pretty quickly that we need to stay focused on ice cream, at least for now, because it was, it was kind of a distraction. We wanted to try another concept to see like: hey, let’s see if this could work as well, but we just we need to develop this concept more on a larger scale before we do anything like that. I think the bigger opportunity for us is other food trucks, using our software, to be able to do the same thing that we do, which is number one: reserved routes where people can request a truck within, like a window of time, uh, for on a day and whatever day. And then number 2: all of our events are booked online without having to like go back and forth with somebody on a phone call or text like how much, how many people do you have here’s how much it’s going to cost. Can you, can you make it cost this much like all the back and forth? you just go on our site, pick your day and time and put your address in and like, we’re there at your house for 30 minutes, an hour, 2 hours, whatever you book. So no going back and forth. It’s a super easy booking process and from my experience with food trucks, it’s a lot of work to manage the back and forth and the booking of events. So if people can actually book your food truck online very easily without having to like go through a whole sort of bidding process and all of that, I think that’s probably the bigger opportunity for us. I know people can text it and have it scheduled to come to their house or private events.

Amanda Morrison
But do you ever park the food truck somewhere where it’s stationary? My dad’s the parks and rec director of Morris Township and at his pools they have a schedule of different food trucks or ice cream trucks when they either stop by or they’re there. Is there a way that some people want to be at a pool day or at a park?

Eric Murphy
Totally, we do pools, parks, community events, charity events. We do a big event at Barnabas Hospital, St Barnabas- or now it’s called Cooperman Barnabas- where we bring all of our trucks and serve all the doctors, nurses, admin, everyone in the building, basically for an entire day. So we serve probably three thousand people. at that hospital in Livingston, we do we don’t do a lot of like the bigger like food truck type festivals. We found that those don’t really work just because there’s so many other options there. You’re getting diluted by, you know, 50 other food trucks. So we try and go to community events first and foremost, lots of like Charter Day and things that are happening in downtown communities in New Jersey will be there for the whole day. We just did Broadway in the Park in Maplewood, New Jersey, which was we had 2 trucks there. It was awesome. They had Broadway performances for the whole day on Labor Day. So we try and find the unique and community style events to prioritize first and then we can do pools and parks and stuff like that. There are a lot of regulations around that as far as our ability to actually go there and sell something. So most towns actually don’t allow you to do that unless you have a specific license to do that. Our license is more for our business model, the delivery model that we have. We need a peddler’s license, which is a completely different license to be able to just pull up somewhere and serve out of our truck.

Eric Murphy
It’s one thing that’s really difficult in New Jersey is the licensing part of this it’s the only state in the country you have to get a different license for every single town you operate in so we have a hundred and fifty licenses that we manage annually just in New Jersey.

Amanda Morrison
Do you have an employee just doing that?

Eric Murphy
Not just doing that, but we do have Jason again. Our co-founder, President Jason, handles all of it. And I’m so happy because it’s just it’s so not only do you have to get the permit, but a lot of the towns also require an annual inspection as well. So we’re getting inspected by 50 different towns and having to renew one hundred and fifty permits on a yearly basis. It’s torture.

Amanda Morrison
That does not sound easy.

Eric Murphy
It’s not good. It’s not good. Like in Vegas, they just get one, like get a Nevada state license for a food truck and that’s it. In Miami, one state license, that’s all we need. We can operate anywhere. New Jersey is the only place that does this. And I don’t know if it’s just their ability to collect some more revenue and get more money from businesses, but it’s crazy.

Amanda Morrison
So I know that you didn’t originally grow up in New Jersey, but when did you move to New Jersey, why, and what made you stay?

Eric Murphy
So I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then we moved about a week after I was born to Denver, Colorado. And then through my childhood, we lived in multiple places. I’ve actually lived in 17 different cities in my life. um mostly west coast as a kid and then i got into radio and radio is is basically a business where you’re moving around a lot trying to move up in market size so i was did that for ten years: I lived in south Florida I lived in Allentown, PA, Cleveland, Portland, Oregon and Eugene, Oregon and then when i moved to the record side of the business i went to Detroit. I was there for a year. And what brought me to New York was the was RCA Records. I got a promotion and moved to New York in like 19 96. Yeah. 96. And since I’ve been here, I’ve lived in the city in Brooklyn and New Jersey. I’ve lived all over the place, but I’ve lived in New Jersey and Basking Ridge for the last… I built a house there, and the reason I’m staying in New Jersey is because I have a Jersey girl as a wife that loves New Jersey, so I kind of got stuck here. I know she hates when I say that. I have actually grown to love New Jersey over time. I didn’t like it at all for a long time just because the West Coast is just so different from here, and I love the desert. So I miss the desert. I miss the dry, hot heat, like the… hot heat? Hot air, and just love the sort of like Southwest. So I miss that, but I’ve grown to love it here. New York City is just like, you know, there’s nothing like it. And the fact that we can live so close and be there all the time is great. I don’t miss driving into the city every day. I drove into the city every day for 25 years and. Once COVID hit and everything stopped and I started Scream Truck in New Jersey, now when I drive into the city, I’m like, how in the world did I do this every single day? Like literally 3 hours a day in the car, hour and a half there, hour and a half back. And that’s on a good day. Sometimes more, you know, 2 hours one way. The fact that I did that for that long is crazy.

Amanda Morrison
You weren’t a train guy?

Eric Murphy
I didn’t like being dependent on the schedule of the train because it would just stress me out all day thinking like, oh, I have to get the. I thought I’m going to get that train. I’m not going to get home till that. I would be so stressed out about what train I was going to get. I just like to have the freedom of knowing I could come and go when I wanted to. So I tried the bus. I tried the train. I tried a bunch of different stuff, but I just ended up driving all the time.

Amanda Morrison
Where in New Jersey is your wife from?

Eric Murphy
She is from, well, she was born in Lakewood and spent some of her child there and then Belmar and then a lot of her sort of older teen years in Red Bank. So she went to Red Bank Catholic and grew up mostly in that Jersey Shore area.

Amanda Morrison
I was going to say, so since you grew up down the shore, do you go there often or?

Eric Murphy
We kind of do. She would love a beach house. I don’t have the money for a beach house right now, so we’re not getting a beach house anytime soon. But we have friends that have houses there, and we do go fairly regularly during the summer. My daughter’s best friend and her family are close in Basking Ridge, and they have a house in Avalon, so we go down there. And then a couple other friends have houses that we go to. So she would probably like to go more than we do. But we’re very busy with so many other things that we have a hard time going anywhere right now. So it’s we have to kind of pick and choose our our time.

Amanda Morrison
OK, so, you know, we’ve talked about some of your collaborations and stuff, too. But do you have a favorite new product on the truck?

Eric Murphy
Favorite new product on the truck? Well, we are… so we’ve we’ve come up with a couple of different really cool concepts recently. One of them is called Squares. Squares are basically soft serve ice cream, but we blast freeze them in a in a square mold to about 40 below. which basically captures sort of that state of soft serve, which is like the perfect amount of air and fat and liquid and stabilizers and everything in that exact moment. And then we’re able to sort of take that now and use it in other things other than just like a cone or a sundae. We can make sodas with it. We do our dirty, screamy sodas, which is basically a dirty soda. But instead of having like a creamer in it, we put our real ice cream squares in it. So it’s like a float. We also do something called a shaker, which is where we use our liquid ice cream. We pour liquid ice cream into a cup, put about 8 of these squares in it and shake it up like a cocktail. And it ends up being this like really amazing creamy drink. That’s been the most popular thing recently that we’ve launched on our on our squares truck. And then the other thing that we’re doing is we’re actually doing. Basically molded soft serve ice cream. So for Halloween, this is going to be our first. This is the first debut I’m talking about this. We’re doing a limited edition like skull in a in a waffle bowl. So it’s literally like a skull head made out of soft serve ice cream. So we blast freeze that the same way we put it in the mold and then we basically take it out and put it into ice. this cup, but we’re doing it with Oreo crumble and some Halloween like gummies. And then there’s like Oreos and marshmallow bits on the inside of the skull. So I just like getting creative and doing fun things like that. We always think, you know, the customer is always looking for something more and different, especially in the world that we live in. It’s a social media world. So people are always looking for like something new. What’s next? Like, what’s cool? Where can I go stand in line for an hour for something like that’s just the world we live in. So I love coming up with just cool stuff like that.

Amanda Morrison
Okay, very cool. Well, thank you so much for being here.

Eric Murphy
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Amanda Morrison
How can people find, I mean, how can people learn more about Screamtruck, follow you? I mean, this is your chance to plug anything you want.

Eric Murphy
Yeah, so go to screamtruck.com. You can sign up for our reserved routes. Basically, you just go on and sign your name, phone number, address, and you’ll be signed up to receive our alerts when we’re coming to your neighborhood. At Screamtruck on Instagram. That’s really our primary source of social. We are on TikTok as well, but Instagram is kind of where we do most of our posts. And then if you’re interested in franchising, Screamtruck.com as well. Just click on the link “franchising” and it will give you all the details and allow you to upload a form to show your interest in a franchise.

Amanda Morrison
Thank you for listening. Make sure you check us out wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts and follow us at Don’t Sit Home and the Best of NJ podcast on social media.