Some “food trucks” are technically trailers.

Sugar Ghost, which debuted in the Broad Avenue Arts District last month, is both.

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This pastel-colored dispenser of bubble teas can theoretically mosey down the road on its own, though owner Mary Claire White says she’s never gotten the imported electric truck above 19 miles per hour. 

For that reason, this truck is typically transported on a trailer, but it also is one, in the movie-theater sense: A preview of coming attractions. 

The Sugar Ghost truck, nicknamed “Pearl,” is a precursor to a coming-soon Sugar Ghost shop, currently coming together two doors down, at 2615 Broad Ave., where a once dark and mysterious tattoo shop now has a bright, peachy-pink exterior, and where inside an ice cream parlor is busy being born, with a late summer due date.

“I had been saying for years that one of the things we needed on the street was some sort of ice cream/snow-cone-type place,” said White, whose primary business is Falling Into Place, a crafts/gift shop that sits between the open-for-business bubble tea truck and the still-gestating ice cream shop. 

Since White opened Falling Into Place in 2015, its next-door neighbor had been Ronin, a tattoo parlor. When a landlord told White earlier this year she’d be losing her neighbor, she called dibs on the space. 

“Theoretically, I could have just expanded (Falling Into Place) into there and had just jewelry here,” said White, sitting inside her gift shop. “We sell a lot of jewelry. But as soon as I said I wanted the space, my brain said ‘ice cream’ for sure.

“We need somewhere you can have a nice little pop-in, pop-out experience, whether it’s just families getting ice cream or college kids coming for bubble tea.”

What do you do when you decide to open an ice cream shop but have never worked in food before?

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You go to Scoop School.

Scoop School is, in its own words, “a unique frozen dessert education and training facility centrally located in St Louis.”

White went there in April for “an intensive ice cream-making course,” and has been experimenting in her home kitchen, accessing other training materials and information from the National Ice Cream Retailers Association.

A professional candlemaker for a decade before opening her own shop, White’s found that the skills required and satisfaction generated translates across the two crafts.

“Combining the flavors is so similar to candle making. It’s a huge creativity change. It’s tastes rather than smells, but it’s also the meditative measuring and pouring and mixing and waiting that is just so attractive to me,” said White. “Candle making has always been such a draw for me because of how much I love cooking.” 

White is hoping to open the Sugar Ghost store in late August or early September. Her plan is to have a rotation of eight flavors made in the shop, with two or three staples (chocolate, cookies and cream) and the rest changing week to week. Vegan options and flavors incorporating local food products are also in the plans. 

“We’ll also have soft serve, so we’ll have dipped cones. We’ll do shakes. We’ll do what we call a scream, which is basically a Blizzard,” said White. “And then the bubble tea, which is exactly what’s on the truck right now.” 

A Sugar Ghost truck hitting the street before the Sugar Ghost shop opened wasn’t the initial plan, but the byproduct of a two-month delay as White tried to assemble the right permits to move forward on the shop.

“I knew that I was probably going to need a food truck because whenever you have a business like that, you have people who will ask if you can cater their wedding or do an event. I knew that a food truck would probably be in my future, so while I had time to kill I decided to start looking to see what was out there,” said White.

“It was about trying to get income coming in before the shop is ready and getting a customer base started. It also gets the name out there.” 

Bubble tea will be a secondary item in the eventual shop, designed to expand on the ice-cream clientele. But with homemade ice cream on hold until the shop is ready to be outfitted with equipment, bubble tea is the truck’s focus and for now, the truck’s ice cream options are Blue Bell.

“My daughter and I get bubble tea two or three times a week and have since she was four or five,” said White. She’s 20 now.” 

The teas are divided into milk-based (traditional black, green matcha, red Thai, etc.) and fruit-based (peach, passion fruit, and so on). The “bubbles” can be added as toppings — boba (tapioca), lychee jelly (made from coconut) or popping pearls (fruit juice-based) — for an extra 50 cents. 

“The jellies are basically coconut meats that have been soaked in syrups. You can get whatever you like, but typically people like the boba in the milk teas and then the fruit tea, it can go any way.” 

Bubble tea first appeared in Taiwan in the 1980s.

“Children would get out of school and there would be tea stalls where they would get a milk tea beverage,” said White. “It would basically be milk, tea and sugar. The boba, the tapioca, was used in desserts. And some milk tea stall guy decided to throw some tapioca in the bottom of his milk teas, so the kids would like them more. And they did. They loved them, so it kind of became a fad that way.” 

Once the Sugar Ghost ice cream shop opens later this summer, the truck will go mobile, primarily for private catering, though White doesn’t rule out public settings such as festivals, farmers markets and special events.

Until then, the Sugar Ghost truck can be found parked next to Falling Into Place each weekend, selling bubble teas and ice-cream bars Fridays-Sundays from noon to 4 p.m.

For more info, see sugarghostmemphis.com or find them on Instagram.