ORLANDO, Fla. – The call came out from ice cream shops across Central Florida Tuesday.
“Come get a pint, 50% off. Come get a quart, 50% off. Come get a 3-gallon tub, 50% off!” said Scott Seidl, owner of Kelly’s Homemade Ice Cream in a video on Facebook. “And remember, stay safe out there.”
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Kelly’s wasn’t the only one offering one-day sales to try to clear the freezers ahead of Hurricane Milton. Sampaguita, Greenery Creamery, Charlie’s Bakery and Creamery and many others advertised sales, with plans to be closed the next day.
News 6 sent a photographer to Kelly’s Audubon Park location Tuesday night and found a long line outside the popular scoop shop, almost wrapping around the building. Most of the shop’s windows were covered with plywood.
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Diamond and Jay said they’ve been coming to Kelly’s for years, so getting a scoop on sale was a no-brainer.
“We come every week. It’s our tradition to come on Sundays,” Diamond said, holding a waffle cone.
“I mean, you might as well, right? The rest of it will go bad anyways,” Jay said in between sips of his milkshake.
Manager Peter Lyles Rivera said the company wanted to move as much ice cream as it could at their scoop shops across the area. Hundreds of people came through the shop Thursday.
“We’ve seen a lot of pints, a lot of quarts, a lot of families coming in,” Lyles Rivera said. “It’s just been a wild day, really.”
Lyles Rivera said the store had a lot of ice cream in its freezers, and a power outage would result in thousands of dollars in losses.
Diamond and Jay got there before the line started to grow, but they said they would have waited in the longer line.
“It’s worth it,” Diamond said.
But they didn’t buy extra, they said.
“I don’t want to gain 15 pounds during the hurricane,” Diamond laughed.
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