Ice cream truck ‘corruption’ called out in Mississauga

A conflict over the process to allow ice cream trucks and bikes in Mississauga parks got a bit sticky this year.

The city has a lottery process to operate ice cream trucks and bikes in city parks each year from March to April.

But this year, the process wasn’t so sweet.

Antonio Gallo, owner of Gallo Ice Cream, came to the city’s general committee meeting today (June 5) to raise his concerns.

Gallo said he operates a bicycle ice cream service in Jack Darling Park and this year another company attempted to get the cycle rights for the park.

The vendor, who isn’t named, didn’t intend to operate an ice cream bike but wanted to knock out the competition for his ice cream truck in the park, Gallo claimed.

“He simply wanted to buy the license to stop the ice cream bike from competing with the ice cream truck,” Gallo said.

The truck vendor entered multiple applications under different corporation names but the same person was listed as the sole member of the board of directors on each corporation. Gallo believes he did this to increase his chance in the lottery process.

“Anyone with any level of judgment would say that’s cheating,” he added.

In addition to being unfair, it also robs the community of choice.

“It’s a service disruption to the members of the community because there are a lot of people in Ward 2 that do like to buy from the ice cream bicycle,” he said.

“And the license should be reserved for people who actually want to operate not as a tool of corruption by an ice cream truck to stop an ice cream bike from competing.”

The issue was resolved this year but Gallo hoped it wouldn’t happen again in the future.

City of Mississauga staff confirmed a vendor did, in fact, enter the lottery multiple times with different corporation names but they had resolved the issue.

The challenge going forward is it is difficult to know people’s intentions when they bid on a process through procurement, staff said. City staff are reviewing the process.

Gallo confirmed the company bikes would be bringing ice cream to Jack Darling Park this summer.

For more on the process, see the City of Mississauga website here.

Lead photo: Pixabay