Snowie

The first Snowie stand was a portable wooden shack at 4500 South and Redwood Road, and Carl Rupp built it in 1978 expecting to sell shaved ice for about 100 days of summer. Thirty-six years later, the Deseret News found him still at it. The company is run from Salt Lake City, and it sells ice shavers and stands to people who want a shaved ice business of their own.

Rupp grew up in Taylorsville, the fourth of nine children. In 1977, living in St. Louis, he saw long lines for New Orleans style shaved ice and was hooked after one taste. When he came home he ordered a shaver from the New Orleans company that made them and opened the stand he called the Sno Shack.

Then he started building his own. Rupp designed commercial shavers and a home model called the Little Snowie, and he told The Salt Lake Tribune in 2019 that he had spent about 30 years trying to make shavers, roughly 15 of them tinkering on his final model. He put the cost at nearly $1 million in materials and patents.

The site announces that the Cube Pro is back in stock and in high demand. You pour in ice and step on a pedal, and the company rates it at 10 to 12 cups a minute, or 3 to 4 seconds per 8-ounce cup. One reviewer on Snowie's site reported making snowballs with it, which is as close as a Salt Lake July gets to a powder day. For block ice there is the Block Pro, with a cheese grater style blade that has three rotatable lives.

His brother Gordon is co-owner, and the company sells its equipment directly, with no middlemen. Snowie is not a franchise. Owners pay no franchise fees or royalties and get no protected territory, which the company pitches as freedom and which also means nobody is promised the corner to themselves.

In 2014 the Deseret News counted Snowie products in all 50 states and 40 countries, with startup costs running from $3,000 to $75,000. Snowie still operates stands of its own at stadiums and pools. A business planned for 100 days of summer is closing in on 50 years of them.