How Sunny Ice Cream Truck brought sunshine (and a viral soft serve) to Toronto

Some businesses start with a market study. Others start with a name that already feels right. For Giannis Gkiokas, owner of Sunny Ice Cream Truck in North York, it was the second kind. The idea sat with him for years before he finally turned it into a truck, a menu and one very shareable soft serve flavour that people now line up for across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

The short version: Sunny Ice Cream Truck is a North York based mobile business serving events across the Greater Toronto Area. Owner Giannis Gkiokas built a following with a signature Dubai chocolate soft serve, strong customer reviews and a website he manages himself, and he relies on Moneris for dependable event payments, even in locations with no signal.

An idea years in the making

Giannis had wanted to run an ice cream truck for a long time before he actually launched Sunny. The appeal was simple: everybody loves ice cream, and kids especially light up around it. He wanted to build something that made people smile, but he also wanted it to look and feel different from every other truck on the road.

Even the name has a story behind it. "My wife's name means sun in Albanian," Giannis says. "Nobody here in Toronto had that name, so that's why I used Sunny. It's the sunshine, and it brings sunshine."

The menu that built a following

Sunny Ice Cream Truck serves the classics that people expect from an ice cream truck: vanilla, chocolate and twist soft serve. But the item that put the business on the map is its Dubai chocolate soft serve, a spin on the viral Dubai chocolate bar trend that has become the truck's bestseller. Giannis built the menu around a trusted supplier he has worked with for years, and when a first-time customer shows up not sure what to order, the Dubai chocolate flavour is what the team recommends. The strategy has worked. Search for the best ice cream truck in Toronto and Sunny tends to show up near the top, something Giannis credits to genuine customer reviews and a website and SEO setup he built himself. "If someone comes for the first time and wants to try something from us, we recommend the Dubai chocolate soft serve," he says. "For sure, they're going to be amazed."

What it actually takes to run a truck

Behind the bright colours and the soft serve swirls is a business that depends on a lot of moving parts working at once. "The biggest challenge is to maintain everything working properly, the truck, the ice cream machine, the generator, everything," Giannis says. "And to keep the quality of the ingredients." Sunny caters school events, festivals, weddings, birthdays and corporate functions, and the calendar fills up fast once summer hits. A single day can mean a corporate event downtown for hundreds of guests followed by a birthday party that same afternoon.

The part of the job that never gets old

Ask Giannis what he enjoys most and the answer comes quickly. "You enjoy serving the children and the people," he says. "When you give them the ice cream and see the smile on their face, it makes them happy." He talks about a recent school event where a group of kindergartners started screaming with excitement the moment they spotted Sunny pulling up, and how he handed out free ice cream just to see their reaction. For a lot of adult customers, a cone from Sunny brings back childhood memories of chasing down the ice cream truck on their own street. That mix of nostalgia and pure kid joy is what keeps him going through the long summer days.

His advice for anyone thinking about starting a business

Giannis is direct about what it takes to get a food truck idea off the ground. "If you have an idea, go on. Don't stay back," he says. "Take the chance, because you never know what will come. Be positive, keep smiling and have an idea that people will like."

Why Sunny runs on Moneris

When it came time to choose a payment partner, Giannis compared several providers, including a few American companies that promised the best price over the phone but weren't upfront about what was actually included. What stood out about Moneris was the direct opposite: a team that was straightforward with him from the start.

He points to the support he received while setting up his account, including help from a Moneris representative named Kelly, who walked him through his first login issues personally. "Every time I call her, she answers the phone," he says. "She helped me right away, and I'm grateful and thankful that I chose Moneris." For a mobile business like his, practical features matter too. Sunny uses Moneris to send deposit requests to clients ahead of events, and the system keeps working even when the truck is parked somewhere with no signal, a must for a business that spends its summer at parks, driveways and festival grounds across the GTA rather than behind a fixed counter.

"Moneris for me means it makes your things easier," Giannis says, which for a one-truck-operation juggling machines, ingredients and a packed summer calendar, counts for a lot.

The takeaway for other mobile and seasonal businesses

Sunny Ice Cream Truck's growth came from a clear idea, a distinctive product and a willingness to build the parts of the business, like the website and the SEO, that most owners outsource. For merchants running mobile or seasonal operations, the lesson is worth borrowing: find the one thing that makes your business memorable, then make sure the tools behind the scenes, from booking to payments, are just as dependable as the product out front.

Ready to bring some sunshine to your next event? Book Sunny Ice Cream Truck for your birthday party, school event, wedding or corporate gathering, and try the viral Dubai chocolate soft serve everyone in the GTA is talking about. Reserve your date before the summer calendar fills up.