VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The Something in the Water festival is a way to connect with our community and get our community involved. But one community member found a very unique way to benefit from this festival.
"This is our opening of the business," Rae Toller told us. Her dad, Matt Toller, owns Chill Shave Ice.
"We have a building right here on 21st Street," Matt said. "It's right at the main entrance coming into town, so it gets great access to everyone coming in. It's one of the first things they see in the area," he said.
"So we have been working on the building to get it converted to be a space where we can do the shave ice inside the building. But in the meantime, we have this trailer here that we bought and we're looking to take it mobile until the inside of the building is open," Matt told us.
"I think our goal is to be open by the summer. This is like a trial run," Rae said.
"We've just always wanted like to do like a shaved ice business, like, as a family," said her sister, Piper.
"We've got five kids - our four daughters and son and wife, and I and the kids have loved doing lemonade stands and selling cookies growing up," said Matt. "And so we were talking about just what this area might need that's beachy and fun and we thought: We love Hawaiian-style shave ice."
"We could just like have it be all cute and fancy," Piper said.
"This is blue raspberry," Rae said, holding up a bottle of bright blue liquid. "Snow cones are a little bit more coarser, I guess, and shave ice is more fine," she described.
"We've been setting up since like 10. We just got it running like 30 minutes ago or something," said Rae.
"We wanted to do it on Something in the Water because we knew people would be walking by and stuff," Piper told us.
"There's a lot of cars driving by, added Rae.
"We have a lot of flavors. The only ones that we have out right now are these ones," Rae said, pointing to a dozen or so bottles on the shelves behind her.
"We have some really weird ones like dill pickle and jalapeno," she said.
"It's very savory," Matt said while sampling one of the stranger ones.
"But then we also have regular ones like blue raspberry and strawberry, " said Rae. "I think it'll be a really fun, like, summer job to do."
It's really fun - especially to do it as a family," she said. "This is a really good business, and I think that it will be really, really yummy."
Family launches shaved ice business during festival to take advantage of crowds
They'll soon have a physical location, but right now, the Toller family is selling shaved ice out of a trailer.