How Did Selling Shaved Ice From a Truck Become a 2,000-Unit Franchise?

By Sean Goldsmith

Nearly 2,000 Kona Ice outlets are operating. The FDD still leaves one big financial question for buyers to investigate.

Kona Ice has turned a colourful shaved-ice truck into one of America's larger franchise systems. Its growth is difficult to ignore, although prospective owners still need to do some digging to understand what an individual franchise can earn.

Selling shaved ice from a truck does not immediately sound like the foundation for a franchise approaching 2,000 units.

Kona Ice has spent nearly two decades proving otherwise. Founded in 2007, the Kentucky-based company has built a mobile business around schools, sports grounds, festivals, fundraisers and community events rather than asking franchisees to fill an expensive restaurant every day.

According to its 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document, Kona Ice finished 2025 with 1,933 outlets, of which 1,929 were franchised. That puts a business built around flavoured ice and brightly coloured trucks at a scale many conventional restaurant franchises never reach.

The more interesting question for a prospective owner is how it got there.

The Truck Changes the Economics

Kona Ice franchisees operate primarily through the company's distinctive Kona Entertainment Vehicle rather than a conventional restaurant. That changes several of the costs that normally make food franchising expensive.

There is no dining room to build, no large restaurant lease and no permanent high-street location that needs enough customers walking through the door every day to cover the rent.

Instead, the truck goes where the customers are.

Schools, sporting events, festivals and community gatherings can put large groups of potential customers in one place. The franchisee's job is therefore partly about selling shaved ice and partly about building a calendar containing enough worthwhile events and recurring relationships to keep the vehicle productive.

That makes the business operationally different from a fixed-site dessert franchise. Territory management, local relationships and scheduling can matter as much as passing foot traffic.

Nearly 2,000 Units Is Hard to Ignore

Kona Ice's unit growth provides strong evidence that franchise buyers continue to find the model attractive.

The system increased from 1,670 outlets in 2023 to 1,820 in 2024 and 1,933 by the end of 2025. During 2025 alone, 140 franchised outlets opened while 27 ceased operations.

Those numbers do not tell us what an individual franchisee earns, but they do tell us that this is no longer an experimental mobile-food concept. Kona Ice has reproduced the model across a large number of territories and markets.

The royalty structure is also unusual. Instead of charging franchisees a percentage of gross sales, Kona Ice uses a flat annual royalty that increases over the initial ten-year franchise term. Under the 2026 disclosure, that is $3,000 annually during years one and two, $4,000 during years three through six and $5,000 during years seven through ten.

For a franchisee who builds a high-volume territory, that structure could become increasingly attractive because additional sales do not automatically send a larger percentage payment to the franchisor.

One Important Number Is Still Missing

There is, however, a significant limitation for anyone trying to evaluate the opportunity from the disclosure document alone.

Kona Ice does not provide a financial performance representation in Item 19 of its 2026 FDD.

That means prospective franchisees cannot turn to the document for franchisor-provided figures showing average or median sales, typical gross margins or franchisee profitability.

For a system approaching 2,000 outlets, that absence is particularly noticeable. A buyer considering an investment that can run from approximately $115,000 to $229,000 will reasonably want to understand what established operators are generating from their territories.

The answer has to come from proper franchisee validation.

Prospective owners should speak with existing Kona Ice franchisees about annual sales, event frequency, seasonality, vehicle utilisation, labour, product costs and how long it took to establish relationships with schools and local organisations. They should also understand the difference between an owner operating the truck personally and a larger operator employing staff to run several vehicles or pieces of equipment.

The size of the network makes those conversations easier. With such a large franchise base, prospective owners should have plenty of operators against whom they can test their assumptions.

This Is Really a Local Sales Business

The simplicity of shaved ice can obscure what franchisees are actually doing.

A truck sitting in storage earns nothing. A truck parked at a busy school event with hundreds of children standing nearby has a very different economic opportunity.

The strongest franchisees therefore need to become good local business developers. Relationships with schools, youth sports organisations, businesses, charities and event organisers can create repeat opportunities without relying entirely on customers discovering the brand themselves.

Kona Ice has also made community fundraising an important part of its identity. That gives franchisees another reason to approach schools and community organisations beyond simply asking for permission to sell to their audiences.

The product may be simple, but the territory still has to be worked.

The Scale Is Part of the Answer

The lack of an Item 19 disclosure means prospective owners have more homework to do, and Kona Ice's size should not be treated as a substitute for understanding the economics of an individual territory.

Its scale does deserve considerable credit, however.

Building a franchise to nearly 2,000 outlets requires more than having a colourful truck and an inexpensive product. The model has survived different economic conditions, expanded across the United States and continued adding franchised outlets after almost two decades in business.

The flat royalty structure also gives successful operators an interesting incentive. As territory sales increase, the franchisor does not automatically take the same percentage of every additional dollar generated.

Kona Ice has ultimately taken a business most people would associate with a summer afternoon and turned it into a repeatable franchise system with substantial national reach. Prospective franchisees still need to establish whether the economics work in their particular territory, but they have something many buyers of young franchise concepts do not: a large and established network of existing owners to question before making the investment.

Selling shaved ice from a truck may sound simple. Building almost 2,000 franchised outlets around it clearly wasn't.

What We Can Learn From This

Franchise buyers should never assume that a large unit count guarantees attractive returns, particularly when the franchisor does not provide an Item 19 financial performance representation. With Kona Ice, prospective owners should use the size of the network to their advantage by speaking with operators in comparable territories about sales, seasonality, event relationships and vehicle utilisation. The brand's continued unit growth and unusual flat royalty structure give buyers good reasons to investigate the opportunity further. After nearly two decades of expansion, Kona Ice has demonstrated that a very simple product can support a remarkably large franchise system when the operating model around it is built to travel.

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