You've thought about it. What if you could combine an ice cream truck and a pontoon boat? The result might look something like Jim Napolitano's "Crazy Cajun," a faux steamship that sells ice cream and hot dogs on the Chain O' Lakes in Illinois.
He's run the floating restaurant for the past three years -- and don't scoff. Another small operation that started on a boat, delivering fresh juices for boaters off the coast of Nantucket, grew into Tom First and Tom Scott's Nantucket Nectars. Just a little over a decade later, their beverage company was sold to Cadbury-Schweppes PLC for an estimated $100 million. Nantucket Nectars is currently owned by the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group.
Napolitano's vision feels kind of tame in comparison to this description
of the Floating Snack Bar & C-Store on Lake Havasu in Arizona. Any
place that will sell you Philly cheese steaks beneath fake palm trees
and naked mannequins probably deserves a category all its own.
Even if the Crazy Cajun is more family friendly, it's certainly not as trendy as the Floating Snack Bar
in a park in Frankfurt, Germany. Here the Star Wars-esque, gun-metal
grey snack bar is designed to float in case of flash
floods.
Coastal
Living has put together a list of the top 10 floating restaurants -- a category that would seem to have a high barrier to entry.
But doesn't someone feel inspired to open a restaurant on the Missouri River? Could we at least get a snack bar along Brush Creek?
[Image via Flickr: miamism]
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