THE SCOOP: Summer means ice cream, and...

THE SCOOP: Summer means ice cream, and in Orange County, decades of sprawl mean you don’t have to drive far to score a scoop of your favorite frozen treat. But it wasn’t always so. . . . Before 1868, when the county’s first ice-making machine arrived in Anaheim, those with a hankering for ice cream had to haul snow down from the mountains. During the 1920s, one ice cream chain’s stands resembled upside-down ice cream cones. . . . What’s next? The first franchised Ben & Jerry’s shop in Orange County “is just a matter of time,” say company officials, who manage the chain’s southwestern U.S. sales from Fullerton.

COMPETITION: The county’s few remaining independent ice cream companies “can’t fight it out with Haagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s, who have deep pockets,” says Gary Winkler, vice president of Santa Ana-based Brothers International Desserts. Winkler (license plate: ISCRM4U) manufactures upscale desserts, including Brothers’ Old Fashioned Mississippi Mud Pie, for hotels and restaurants, including Denny’s. “The big guys aren’t going to mess with a niche market like this,” Winkler says.

CYCLICAL: Proof that its ice cream time: The Ice Creamery, a Fullerton-based ice cream manufacturer, rings up more than 60% of its sales between June and September. When business heats up, Ice Creamery owner Shaun Becsi has the option of popping into the deep freeze, where the mercury drops to minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s a good business, Becsi says, because “ice cream is a fun product.”

BOTTOM LINE: If Dave Sarin has his way, Santa Ana-based Mel-O-Dee Ice Cream would keep on truckin’ frozen delights to neighborhoods throughout Orange County. But Newport Beach and Seal Beach currently are off-limits to his fleet because city officials maintain that the streets are too busy to accommodate truck vendors. Anaheim remains fair game because an appellate court recently struck down an anti-vending ordinance as unconstitutional. “Ordinances and bans are a hindrance to this business,” Sarin acknowledges.