Tour of Work

I am working at Hawaiian Island Sno Balls in Duck, NC. It is a quiet little town that is designed for lots of foot traffic. The speed limit is only 25 mph, and they are really good about a bunch of crosswalks, pedestrian signs, and really wide sidewalks to share the road with. There are a bunch of little plazas and boardwalks with tons of gift shops and restaurants.

To the east is the Atlantic Ocean, and less than a mile to the west is the sound, a body of brackish water, which means it is half salt-water, half fresh-water. There are lots of places to rent bikes, kayaks, windsails, or just sit and enjoy the sunset.

When you walk in the front door you're greeted with tons of bright colors! There's one of my bosses, Linda - posing with her can of soup. I caught her while she was making lunch one day.

To the right is the area where you order, and the ice cream cases. We have 24 flavors of "hard" ice cream that we scoop, plus a soft serve machine with vanilla, chocolate, and swirl. We make all kinds of floats, malts, sundaes, shakes, etc. with the ice cream if you are interested in more than just a scoop!

What we're really famous for, though, are sno-balls. This is a coarsely shaved ice served in a cup, with flavored syrups added. There are literally hundreds of flavors and special recipes my other boss, Jeffrey, makes by hand. People also get funky with the toppings on these too, we have a sno-ball cream, chocolate, and marshmallow.

Here's a better view behind the counter and of the sno-ball ice shaver.

The industrial fridge, which I'm always insanely jealous of. I wish I had one of these at home! It has so much room, and is so open and easy to see inside for easy organization.

We also do all kinds of specialty coffees, espressos, lattes, etc. This was the part of the job I was most anxious about when I first started 4 summers ago. But now it's like 2nd nature to me and I love whipping up drinks. I also find that people ordering specialty drinks tend to tip better than those just ordering a scoop of ice cream! Cha-ching!

This is Linda's home made fudge section of the store. Every Sunday is her day "off," but it's anything but. She spends the whole day making new batches of fudge for the store. Everything from plain chocolate and vanilla, to crazy renditions of a Snicker's bar.

Above the fudge is a container of salt water taffy that I steal pieces out of all the time. I love our taffy, it's so soft, unlike the rock hard pieces I remember when I was little. And on the right are little bags of crack chocolate covered espresso beans. I steal some of those too.

And there you have it! That's where I'm working, saving up the moolah, and hopefully working off some excess pounds! We have free access to anything we want, but thankfully I'm not much of a sweets eater, so I generally abstain.