The legendary food truck scene in Los Angeles is growing: “LA, get ready, this is really happening here,” wrote entertainment work of art Cher on her Instagram page: “It all started five years ago, and now it’s finally here: I’m releasing my own gelato.” So ice cream. Cher has met Giapo in New Zealand, an ice cream parlor famous for crazy creations such as “portable ice cream”, in which customers are given waffles with ice cream and a crumble-fruit-chocolate combo to lick off. Now they have a pink and orange truck with “Cherlato”.
“Normal ice cream is boring” is Giapo’s motto and there could be no better description of the life and career of Cher, who in her 77 years on this planet has been pretty much everything but never normal or boring. She worked with Giapo founders Gianpaolo and Annarosa Grazioli to create flavors with all ingredients locally sourced in the LA area and made into ice cream in a gluten-free factory. “These are the boldest creations LA has ever seen,” Cherlato wrote on Instagram. As a mouthwash nice to see: a fluffy ice cream cloud on a cone and a giant scoop with fruit and chocolate sprinkles.
Only the German barbers’ guild has more puns up its sleeve than the food trucks in LA
Three comments on this business idea. First, don’t make the mistake of thinking of LA food trucks as a small business. People make pilgrimages to the most well-known, such as Leo’s Taco Truck, Dulan’s Soul Food Kitchen or Kogi BBQwhich is said to have annual sales of more than one million dollars.
Second, only the German barbers’ guild (“Scheiteligkeit”, “Vier Haareszeiten”) and the Californian marijuana industry (“James Bong”, “Yes, we Cannabis”) have more puns up their sleeves than the food trucks in LA. That doesn’t seem to bother Cher’s fans, who are already coming up with new ideas; a few of the suggestions based on Cher song titles: “I got Ube, babe”, “If I could turn back Lime”, “Miss Sorbet of 1952”.
Third, Cher isn’t the first celebrity to team up with a company. Celebrities are increasingly turning away from being purely advertising characters. Instead, there are symbioses in which the celebrities contribute creatively: the alcohol-soaked cream spray Whip shots by rapper Cardi B, for example, the fitness drink Prime by Youtube star Logan Paul, the subway-Sandwich creations by Steph Curry and Rafael Nadal, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s Cheat Day French Toast at the LA restaurant brick – and of course all the celebrity liquor brands, of which there are now so many that you ask: is there another celebrity who doesn’t release tequila/gin/whiskey?
A few people have already spotted the Cherlato truck on Sunset Boulevard, but nothing is known about specific ice cream flavors. “More soon,” Cher writes on her Instagram account. Three things are known about her: never normal, never boring – she recently wrote about her age: “Can someone please tell me when I should feel old? I keep hearing these numbers, but I don’t get it. I suffer from dyslexia, so the numbers are difficult for me.” And third, that shows the excitement surrounding this ice cream, which no one knows exactly what it will be: a genius in the art of marketing. So then: Scoop, scoop – it’s in her kiss.