Teenage Ice Cream Seller Scales Boat Route to $25,000
Brian Troupe, a 16-year-old from Maryland, broke $25,000 in gross sales during the 2026 season with Troupe's Treats, selling ice cream to boaters. He started at 15 in July 2025 at the end of a pier on the Bohemia River, made $0, then bought a $700 jon boat plus about $120 of equipment and closed that first summer near $6,000.
The route from $2 store-brand bars to $3 Magnum and Klondike products, a larger freezer and a Sea-Doo Switch covering four locations followed a direction rather than a reaction. Troupe already names where it ends: roller coaster engineering, reached through a trade high school, the IAAPA expo network and no college, with the business handed to another teenager later.
Source: Entrepreneur · October 1, 2026