It's just cones and cups at this back-country store, but that's enough
By Edward Hoogterp
Grand Rapids Press Michigan Correspondent
'The Ice Cream Cone Capitol of the World.'
SYLVESTER-John King knew when he bought the only business at this Mecosta County crossroads that success would require a good bit of fortune and a lot of 105-hour weeks.
But the former supermarket manager had no idea he'd someday be calling his party store the "Ice Cream Cone Capital of the World."
On any warm weekend, customers seem to materialize by the hundreds from the forest around King's Trading Post, standing in line for cones and turning the parking lot into a sort of impromptu ice cream social.
"Everybody just seems to come here," said Sharron Fountain, of Blanchard in Isabella County. "You don't have to tell anyone about it. They just know."
In 1995, King dipped 13,000 gallons of Hudsonville Ice Cream. That comes to about 1,000 gallons for every living thing in Sylvester, which is on a county road between Remus and Lakeview - in other words, in the middle of nowhere.
King bought the Trading Post in 1990, after leaving his job at a supermarket in Stanton. Back then it was a typical small-town convenience store, only smaller and more remote than most.
"We're seven miles from anything," King said. ". . .A lot of people thought we'd go right under when we bought it."
He and his wife, Gayla, planned to expand it into a supermarket. But his bank took a look at the empty forest and farmland all around and politely suggested there wouldn't be enough customers.
"We had some big ambitions early, but we couldn't get the financing. . .They won't even touch it," King said.
Even so, the store has been getting bigger almost from the moment King bought it.
With the help of growers he knew, he turned the place into a center for bedding plants, hanging flower baskets, shrubs, fresh fruit and produce. The produce shed is now considerably larger than the original store.
He also sells firewood and such local crafts as wooden lawn ornaments. And, of course, ice cream.
"You can't believe the stuff I sell here," King marveled. "I almost believe I could sell anything from this place. . .I sell three times as many hanging baskets as I ever sold out of the supermarket in 25 years. It just blows my mind."
On the evening before Labor Day, much of Michigan - and even a bit of the outside world - seemed to be coming together in King's parking lot.
Fay Tice of Brighton sat near the peaches in the produce shed, savoring a cone of sweet orange something.
Julie Waddell, a Grand Rapids native who's now a Washington, D.C. lawyer, shared a cup with her 22-month-old daughter Emily, recently adopted from a Chinese orphanage.
"You get north of anywhere, and it's like, 'Let's go eat ice cream,'" said Maureen Cummings of Saline, who stopped with her husband, Doug, and children Alex and Linda after visiting relatives in mid-Michigan.
Warren resident Mike Ressler, a student at Kendall College in Grand Rapids, wandered the lot, getting his licks on a monstrous double serving of orange sherbet and orange-pineapple ice cream.
William and Dorothy Crofton of Saginaw watched granddaughter Courtney, 2, challenge a cup of ice cream in the family's van.
"We just stumbled on it by chance," said William Crofton, who has a retirement home at nearby Canadian Lakes resort. "It was country and friendly and they had huge ice cream cones."
Except for the ice cream freezer, the inside of King's Trading Post is much like any rural party store: beer and wine, soda, chips, milk, crackers, movie rentals, a small rack of groceries, a few orange and camouflage hunter's hats.
John and Gayla King, both in their early 50s, live in an apartment at the back. Son Randy, 31, joined the business this year after more than a decade as produce meneger for a supermarket in Ferrysburg.
John King says the business is successful because he gives good service, good value, and very large servings of ice cream.
But he's as baffled as anyone about how the Trading Post turned into such a hot spot for cool treats.
"It's become a happening, a thing to do," he shrugs, "A lot of these people gotta drive past 15 ice cream joints to get here."
There's nothing fancy about this operation: no whipped cream, no maraschino cherries, no hot fudge.
Here, it's cones and cups served as fast as two men can dip and in whatever 16 flavors happen to be in the freezer. When they empty one 3-gallon tub, John runs to the produce shed for another.
The best-selling flavor is the very adult butter pecan, followed closely by moose tracks, strawberry cheesecake and Mackinac Island fudge.
Little kids tend to prefer pink bubble gum or multi-color Superman.
"I have grown-ups who buy Superman, too," King says. "Nasty looking stuff. But you never know what somebody wants."
From the September 8, 1996, edition of The Grand Rapids Press
