Ice Cream Sandwiches for Everyone!

Los Angeles-based Diddy Riese has been serving up ice cream sandwiches since 1983. New Yorkers turn to Milk & Cookies Bakery, among others. And there's Coolhaus, which started mobile and added bricks-and-mortar in L.A. (serving up "sammies" to customers since 2009) while expanding to Austin, Texas, and New York.

Rice Creams is a 6-year-old company that packages and distributes sandwiches with Rice Krispies treats and soft serve across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Drew Christoffel, president of the Clifton, N.J.-based company, calls Rice Creams "ever-expanding as we focus on providing our exclusive ice cream sandwich to ballparks, amusement parks, museums, waterside attractions, schools -- anywhere people congregate en masse."

Next year "is looking very strong for Rice Creams, and we're very excited about our prospects ... Once we get it into people's hands, they love it. We have a bright and delicious future ahead of us!" he says. "We plan on staying regional for the short term and continue to grow the company using larger venues as our catalyst."

Clearly Cream isn't the first establishment to see dollar signs in ice cream cookie sandwiches. It is possibly the first looking to franchise the concept.

"What we think differentiates Cream from anybody else is actually ... born out of our family's experience in purchasing or going out and taking the family" to various establishments, he says.

In Shamieh's words, the four principles are:

• We wanted to make a premium product, the best-quality product out there.
• We wanted it to be affordable to almost everybody. It is true we probably can charge more, but we didn't want to do that. We wanted families to be able to come and enjoy this treat and not to feel like they have to break their bank in in doing so.
• We wanted to treat everyone who came in through our doors with total courtesy and respect at all times.
• This was an ice cream shop. We wanted it to be fun.