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| [Flavor central: The Ice Cream Corral on Sabbattus Street in
Lewiston can whip up 248 different flavors of ice cream.] "You've got to do things that you love. I love ice cream." Mark Hechter, the Ice Cream Corral Lewiston Peanut butter pumpkin. Chocolate eggnog. Watermelon. The neatly lettered soft-serve flavors plaster the outside of the tiny pink shed, stretching nearly from ceiling to floor, once and again. There are 248 of them in every crazy combination Mark Hechter and his customers could think of. Cherry caramel. Kiwi colada. Black walnut. "You've got to do things that you love," Hechter said, getting ready for another day as chief-scoop. "I love ice cream." Dozens of squirt bottles filled with sweet-tasting liquid flavor sit on racks and shelves inside the Ice Cream Corral. Hechter's "special machine," the key to his success, takes up most of the space. It hums loudly and gives off heat. There are tiny bins of toppings with peanuts, crushed cookies, candy eyeballs. Every kid's cone gets a pair of eyeballs. A mission statement and vision statement hang on one wall. Hechter and fiancée Sharon Durzynski crafted them two years ago after a lukewarm start to the business in May 1997. The vision's to be the best ice cream stand in the state. One of the mission's goals is variety. The couple opened the shop with just three soft serve flavors: vanilla, chocolate and twist. The second year, they bumped it up to 24. Last year, they got to 164. "Whatever we did, we couldn't hit the 200 mark," Hechter said. Once they did reach it this summer, they just kept on going. Now, he said, "we're at where we want to be." He's a little guarded when asked just how he does it. He said he's crafted a few different responses. For the younger customers, there's a story about Santa's elves. "Two weeks after Christmas, Santa lays them off, and they're just bummin' around all summer. I clip them a few buck, and they change the flavors for me," Hechter tells them. He usually tells adults it's the work of his "special machine". He said he doesn't normally disclose the details but would say he uses chocolate or vanilla soft serve with at least 10 percent butterfat as a base. From there, it's just magic." For the proprietors, there's been lots of sampling on the way to reaching 248 flavors. "In the summertime I put on 10 to 15 pounds and try desperately to lose it in the wintertime," he said. "I've been on a diet since we opened," Durzynski added. The only flavor he won't go near is coconut. It's a weakness of hers. He gets most of the flavor ideas from national ice cream publications and from mixing. The only taste that's eluded him is rum raisin. "I had a lead on it once a few years ago," he said. But it was the one that got away. The favorite flavors of the moment are cappuccino, cheesecake and anything with raspberry, he said. Then there are the custom orders. "I had a lady that asked if we could do a raspberry-line," Hechter said. "It doesn't sound good to me. She just enjoyed the heck out of it." "What's really enjoyable to me is when I hand and ice cream cone to a kid and the kid's eyes get this big around," he said, using his hands to illustrate. "That's when it's fun." The list outside the Sabattus Street shop, with dozens and dozens of flavors, has been known to cause frustration among customers. Angel's food cake. Chocolate espresso roast. Grape. Rum cake. Who can chose? "You can tell it was simpler when it was just vanilla, chocolate and strawberry," he said. It's not usually a tough call for him. "I'm kind of a traditionalist. I like the vanilla/chocolate twist." [A little dab will do ya': Mark Hechter tells customers that little elves are responsible for all the flavors, but the secret is really dozens of bottles of flavoring.] |
