Food trucks: Floats fashioned in Central Mass. by a former Chicago firefighter

This is the latest in a summer series on Central Mass. food trucks — with a look at the people at the wheel and the window.

Truck: Float

Owner: Julia Moriconi of Worcester

The tastiest float: Nothing cooler than the watermelon dragon fruit mocktail. Moriconi says it’s the most refreshing, hydrating and prettiest float on the menu. No other choice but to trust the chef.

The roots of Float: In bright orange and covered in a bubbly print, Julia Moriconi’s food truck started floating around only last year, when she added the staple of her menu, the floats — a scoop of ice cream that when dipped in often root beer or coffee it will then...float.

Her journey of getting where Moriconi is today wasn’t as straightforward as one may think.

She started out in the culinary field in the mid-2010s, when she attended the French Culinary Institute in New York City and the food science program at Pennsylvania State University. Her plan was to approach the food industry from an academic angle.

This came following more than two decades of working as a firefighter and paramedic in her home city of Chicago.

It’s through that culinary education that Moriconi learned how to make ice cream “cow to cone,” learning everything about the craft of making ice cream through deep knowledge about dairy.

That’s how she gets to make “really good ice cream.”

A memorable day for her, July 8, 2020, was when she made her first ice cream sale at Shrewsbury Farmers Market.

The last sale she made that day, when she scooped in 90 minutes the end of all of 100 pints of ice cream she had brought, made her recalibrate her focus.

“I thought to myself, ‘I need a bigger machine,’” said Moriconi. “I was able to bootstrap to get my first car to do home deliveries around the holidays, and then bootstrapped enough to get the first transport van and then a second one.

“I use the most expensive dairy in the market because it's very good. It's my own formulation and has a really good mouthfeel that carries many flavors.”

Her ice cream production comes solely out of a location in Worcester along Brussels Street that she says meets FDA specifications.

Meanwhile, the two vans that she bought to deliver and transport her ice cream and sorbet makers to festivals and food markets suddenly became a good option to serve as food trucks.

“I can work standing up in it. We can work in it and we don't have the sun beating down on us and the rain coming down on us,” said Moriconi. “We’re trying to just figure out what works.”

While Moriconi has eight core flavors for ice cream and three for sorbet, she not only adds flavors seasonally but can also mix and match for floats, mocktails and Italian sodas.

“I have a passion for things that are fresh,” said Moriconi, 56. “I pride myself on my flavor profiles.

“I wake up from a dream and I'm like, ‘Oh, blueberry mojito — let’s put chocolate in it!’”

Where the flavors float to: Moriconi attends most food truck festivals in the county but can also cater events either out of her food truck or in ice cream carts.