‘I’m Britain’s Best Ice Cream Man – I’ve been serving scoops since age of four’

EXCLUSIVE: Ian Smith has been serving up swirls of ice cream and scoops of the nostalgia to the nation for 50 years and he’s the very best at it. Let’s take a look at the story of Britain’s Best Ice Cream Man

The soundtrack of a British summer often combines paddling pool splashes, UB40 on full blast and the pattering of feet following the chime of an ice cream van.

And one bloke knows the latter all too well. Ian Smith,57, lives and breathes soft serves – he is Britain’s official Best Ice Cream Man after all.

The Leeds-native was essentially ‘born’ into the business of ice cream after his dad, also called Ian,76,started serving scoops from a van at the age of 14.

Ice cream aptly trickled down to Ian Jr. who dipped his sticky fingers into the business at the age of just four and, more recently, bagged Britain’s Best Ice Cream Mobiler at the Ice Cream Alliance National Ice Cream Awards before Mr.Whippy season kicked off this year.

As the summer nights draw in and operations start to slow down, we speak exclusively to Ian about his journey to become the most coveted ice cream man owning the largest fleet in Leeds and West Yorkshire, why he calls the career a “life sentence” and the challenges the industry faces today.

“I never wanted to do anything else,” Ian exclusively told Daily Star. “I’ve been born into it after my dad started in 1962, where he was a van boy at 14 for a company in Leeds.

“When he was 15 he actually blagged his way into getting an ice cream van without a driving license.

“He used to drive the van around instead of going to school. Obviously, people used to get away with things in those days, but you wouldn’t be able to do it now.

“So, dad sold ice cream all his life. He’s 76 now and still takes a van out a couple of days a week.

“He’s done it all his life and I’ve done it all of mine – ice cream is a life sentence.”

Ian’s dad forged a path that his son was eager to follow, discovering he was a self-described ‘ice-cream fanatic’ by the age of four when he started to help with cleaning the van. While his peers would be running down the street to get their 99′, Ian would be serving them alongside his dad.

Some might call it nepotism, but the gift of perfecting the soft serve was clearly inherited by Ian as he was trusted to get behind the counter from the age of just eight.

As soon as he was legally old enough to get behind the wheel, Ian took his driving test and eventually purchased a van so he could pave his own legacy.

And the ice-cream itch has continued to melt down the Smith family with daughters, Stephanie, 34 and Leanne, 32, working the vans and Ian’s wife Tracy helping with the business.

Now the owner of Mr Whippy Leeds, that includes four new Mercedes vans and three vintage trucks, Ian is a driving force in the industry, but it wouldn’t have happened without the guidance of his dad.

Recalling the foundations of his career, Ian said: “Dad used to have the Mister Softee franchising fleets when I was growing up. So we had probably a dozen ice cream vans.

“I’ve been in it all my life as I used to load the vans and clean from the age of about four or five years old. And I actually used to serve customers on my own from eight.

“Imagine leaving somebody at eight years old in an ice cream van! But that’s what used to happen on a regular basis, they just put me in a park and left me and said, ‘Right, we’ll see you in a few hours.’ And off they went.

“But that’s how it used to be in those days. And then when I got to 18 I passed my driving test and then I started out on my own.”

Ian might describe ice cream as a “life sentence”, but it’s one that he’s happy to serve – quite literally.

While continuing to grow the family ice-cream lineage and having spent the best part of 50 years providing chilly treats to the nation, Ian finally received the cherry on top of his career back in 2020.

He won the Mobiler Of The Year at the Ice Cream Alliance awards, the UK trade association for ice cream retailers and manufacturers, that helped him gain further recognition for his business.

And this year, he won the ‘championships’ as past winners of the accolade were invited back to go head to head – making Ian truly the best of the best when it comes to 99’s and chimes.

Ian shared: “I first won Mobiler Of the Year at the Ice Cream Alliance Awards in February 2020, but obviously then lockdown happened and that sort of spoiled the summer for me – the award still helped my business.

“We still won an extra few contracts and customers like to see that you’ve won something and they used to come and congratulate us in the parks and on the street.

“And then, this time around, the Ice Cream Alliance did a Champions Awards so existing winners could all compete against each other and the best ice cream man won that day – that was me for 2025.

Ian quipped: “We always knew I was the best ice cream man so, to us, it’s nothing any different there. But, in all seriousness, it’s really good to win the award.

“We always try to be the best.”

It’s not just the ice cream that Ian prides himself on, but also the vans themselves. He’s managed to bag new vans and kitted out the machines with battery packs to keep vehicle emissions low.

He’s by the belief if you want something done, then do it right – and it looks like that mantra has served him well.

Ian added: “All the vans are new, we’ve gone down the route of having the battery pack systems fitted on the machines so we can turn the engine off and lower vehicle emissions on two of the vans and we’ve won awards for the quality of the ice cream.

“We’re just doing everything the best we can.

“It’s nice to get some recognition for what we do because if you’re going to do something it’s worth doing right and that’s how we look at it, definitely.”

However, it’s not all hundreds and thousands for Ian. Since getting behind the wheel at 18, Ian has seen a significant change in the amount of customers in the streets.

While there’s a number of factors effecting the popularity of ice cream bought from a van, Ian believes that supermarkets flogging cheap freezer pack lollies has had the biggest impact over the years.

He also says that the community feel of knowing your ice cream man and the specific time he’d arrive has been eroded, with now on-demand services through Uber Eats filling that gap.

Despite concerns of the future of the industry, Ian holds his ice cream man crown high and his cone even higher, well, unless he’s serving to a child.

Ian explained: “When I started on the rounds in ’87, the streets were full of kids. There were hardly any cars in the streets and it was a good business.

“But, supermarkets have made a massive impact on the industry because you can buy ice cream and ice lollies cheap. We used to have something like 35 different ice lollies on the windows, now we have five – that’s the difference.

“Back in the past, people used to come out and get family packs of ice cream, take them in and put them in the freezer. The van freezers used to be empty on an evening.

“We used to sell everything out of the freezer, but obviously supermarkets have killed that. Everybody used to be at home, whereas now everybody goes out.

“Everything can be ordered from Uber Eats and all of these apps so now you can have everything on tap. Whereas back before these days, people used to wait for the ice cream man to come round – they knew exactly what time it was and everything.

“So, people would say, ‘You’re 10 minutes late’. That’s what we used to say to dad in the old days. ‘Where have you been?’ and he’d say ‘it’s been busy’.”

“Though people knew you were coming, they used to wait for you and they wouldn’t buy off anybody else.

“But, it’s not like that now.”