Today we’d like to introduce you to Suzanna McLeod.
Hi Suzanna, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, you could tell our readers some of your backstory.
I had worked my way up over decades in management, finally achieving the position I felt measured my career as successful. Suddenly, I realized I had worked hard to get there and wasn’t enjoying the little moments. I wanted to scale down my working hours and achieve more work-life balance. My two daughters were in high school and college and living with me. So, I changed jobs, attended a new church, started kayaking with my girls, and joined social groups. I looked longingly at this ice cream store in Mount Dora, where the community seemed to gather with smiles. I had also bought this vintage camper ceramic light I had seen in one of the eclectic stores out there. I was searching for something but couldn’t seem to find it. Then, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My priorities became clear. Everything took a back seat to overcome cancer, and I set out with determination. By the summer of 2023, I had recovered from my lumpectomy and radiation and was back to searching again, but with more urgency. I didn’t want my life story to be about a long office job career and cancer. While I knew overcoming cancer was a fantastic feat in life, along with so many others, I also knew there was more to my story. I wasn’t an artist or an expert in anything specific, but I had always loved working with people and affecting their lives in even the smallest of positive ways.
Then, one day, I decided and told my girls: I will start a food truck. They said, “Sure, Mom,” with a pacifying smile. But then I surprised them and everyone else I had thrown the idea out to. The following week, I applied for my LLC, created an image collage, and started working on a menu – all to the theme of Gypsy Dreams. I had just perfected what I thought was a tasty first food item when a friend sent me a picture of a vintage camper with a surfboard, thinking I might want to buy it for my food truck. And then it turned out the camper had already come with a food truck business – serving rolled ice cream and called Nomads. The first menu item matched the words of one of my tattoos: Wanderlust. I knew this was divine intervention and my destiny! I set out to get a loan and buy the camper and business. I signed the paperwork a year after my cancer diagnosis and one week before my birthday. I had found my something. And I have loved and relished every minute of it since.
It wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
In one sense, yes, it was a smooth road. Once I saw the picture, all the doors seemed to open for me, and I was led right to the doorstep of the dream I didn’t fully comprehend I had been having until it was happening. That’s not to say there weren’t challenges! I traded my Mini Cooper for a truck and had to learn how to back it up to the camper, hitch it to the truck, and haul it across the coast at 60 miles an hour to a venue. My daughters and I had to load and unload a two-hundred-pound generator from the camper at each event. Then, on top of learning how to make and roll the ice cream, one freezer plate on our machine broke, and we could only produce half the amount of ice cream in a five-minute period. Since then, we purchased a new machine, reformatted the menu, and came up with our ice cream items that turned out to be pretty delicious!
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Simply put, we make people smile. I say this not because we are these amazing people who can do what no other people can. People are making people smile all the time every day. But we are doing it now, and we are doing it with ice cream in just the cutest vintage camper ever. The camper draws people, and they leave loving the service and, even better, the ice cream. It tastes good! And we talk while folks watch us make the ice cream on the freezer plates in front of them. They ask: How does it work? Is it hard to do? How cold does it get? Do your arms hurt? Do you like what you do? Yes, yes, we do. Because we aren’t just making ice cream, we are creating an experience.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
We love working the space coast! We are ready to expand to Orange County and more.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: Nomads_icecream
- Facebook: Nomads: Rolled Ice Cream
