Meet Chilly Bone’s: Shaved Ice, Skeletons and a Family Business Built Together
Behind Chilly Bone’s Shaved Ice & More is the Lingle family, a love of Halloween, a menu full of personality and an idea that began with Adam Lingle wanting to create something his children could one day call their own.
By Sara Turney
Chilly Bone’s Famous Skeleton
If the giant skeleton gets your attention first, that is probably exactly how the Lingle family would want it.
Chilly Bone’s Shaved Ice & More has personality before you ever reach the service window. There is the Halloween inspired name, the bright shaved ice, flavors called Unicorn and Mermaid, and, yes, a very large skeleton.
The name came from Adam Lingle.
The skeleton came from his son, Caden.
“Dad, we should put a big skeleton on the roof!” Adam remembers him saying.
It was a perfectly reasonable suggestion for a business called Chilly Bone’s.
Caden’s imagination made its way onto the menu as well, helping inspire the Unicorn and Mermaid flavors. The rest of the offerings have grown to include frozen lemonade, jumbo pretzels, all beef hot dogs served Dirty Dog style and, when cooler weather arrives, hot chocolate made from Adam’s great grandmother’s recipe.
It is fun and a little quirky, which suits the family behind it.
There is also a much deeper reason Chilly Bone’s exists.
Building something of their own
The idea began with a conversation between Adam and Caden.
Adam had asked his oldest son what he wanted to do when he grew up. Caden, who is autistic, gave his father an answer that stayed with him.
“I don’t know if someone would want me to work for them.”
Adam started thinking about what he could build for his son's future.
“If the world wasn’t guaranteed to give my son an opportunity, I would create one for him,” Adam says. “I wanted to build something where he could learn, grow, interact with people, gain confidence, and one day have a business he could proudly call his own.”
The family spent months considering different business ideas.
Eventually, Adam found inspiration in something they had already been doing together for years.
He was looking through old photographs of his children and noticed how many good memories involved going out for shaved ice.
“Photos of memories I had with my kids growing up,” Adam says, “and some of the best moments were us getting a shaved ice together.”
That was it.
The Lingles would open a shaved ice business.
From there, it started becoming unmistakably theirs.
Their love of Halloween inspired Chilly Bone’s. Caden wanted the skeleton. His imagination helped shape flavors. Family recipes found their way onto the menu.
What started as an idea about the future became something the family could build together in the present.
What to order at Chilly Bone’s
Rainbow Snowcone
Now for the question that matters when you are standing at the window with a menu in front of you.
What should you get?
If Adam is choosing, he recommends the Rainbow, made with Blue Hawaiian, banana and red raspberry.
Customers have their own favorite. Adam says Tiger’s Blood is the bestseller.
Then there are Unicorn and Mermaid, the flavors inspired by Caden, which might be all the convincing younger customers need.
Shaved ice is the heart of Chilly Bone’s, but it is not the entire menu.
There is frozen lemonade, jumbo pretzels and all beef hot dogs. Adam describes their Dirty Dog style hot dogs as another item worth trying.
When fall and winter arrive, the family brings out something with a history much older than Chilly Bone’s itself: hot chocolate made from Adam’s great grandmother’s recipe.
That makes the menu feel a little like the business itself. Some of it comes from childhood memories. Some comes from Caden’s imagination. Some has been passed down through generations.
All of it belongs to this particular family.
Behind the purple window
There is a detail inside the Chilly Bone’s trailer that says almost as much about the business as the skeleton on top of it.
Behind the purple window, Adam keeps two photographs.
One is of his wife, Shelby, and their children.
The other is of Adam with his brother, JJ.
JJ was there during the early days, showing up weekend after weekend and working without pay to help his brother build the dream he had for his sons.
Shelby has been just as important.
Adam credits his wife with keeping him motivated, and he says his two sons “love this business more than anything.”
Ask Adam what he is proudest of, though, and the answer comes back to Caden.
“Watching my oldest son grow with the business.”
That was the hope from the beginning.
Chilly Bone’s was meant to create a place where Caden could learn, interact with people, gain confidence and be part of something that belonged to his family.
Now Adam gets to watch that happen.
The long term dream is for his children to have something they can continue enjoying together as they get older.
For the Lingles, that makes growth about more than selling another cup of shaved ice.
Finding a community on the road
Running a mobile food business means the scenery is always changing.
One weekend might bring a festival crowd. Another might mean setting up at a business or community event. Customers have to know where to find you, which is why Chilly Bone’s shares its weekly schedule through social media.
Adam says one of the challenges is helping people understand that food trucks are businesses, not hobbies.
“Sometimes people forget food trucks are actually businesses and not just some hobby,” he says.
An invitation to set up somewhere does not automatically bring customers. Hosts have to let people know a truck is coming, and operators have to continually promote where they will be next.
Festivals bring a different kind of day.
Adam loves the rush of looking out and seeing 30 to 50 people waiting in line while everyone inside works to keep things moving.
For a business built around something as cheerful as shaved ice, there is plenty of serious work happening behind the window.
There is also a community there.
When Adam talks about what he enjoys most about running Chilly Bone’s, he mentions the friendships he has made with other food truck owners.
“I don’t think Chilly Bone’s would be where it is today without them,” he says.
It is one of the things customers do not always get to see at festivals. The trucks may each have their own menus, brands and lines of customers, but the people operating them spend a lot of time working alongside one another.
For Adam, those friendships have become an important part of the journey.
A business that feels like the family behind it
Chilly Bone’s is continuing to grow. Adam says new merchandise is coming, and the family plans to keep doing what has brought them this far: showing up, serving people and putting good energy into the business.
There is plenty to discover when you find them.
You can order the Rainbow Adam recommends or see why customers keep choosing Tiger’s Blood. You can try one of Caden’s flavors. You can grab a Dirty Dog or come back when the weather turns cold for a cup of his great grandmother’s hot chocolate.
You will probably notice the skeleton.
What you might not notice are the photographs behind the purple window.
That is the beauty of getting to know a small business beyond its menu.
Chilly Bone’s is colorful, playful and built to make people smile. It is also deeply personal.
There is a little family history in the hot chocolate. There are childhood memories behind the shaved ice. There is Caden’s imagination in the flavors and on the roof. There are Shelby and JJ in the story of how the business keeps going.
And there is a father who once asked his son a question about the future and decided that, whatever that future brought, they could start building something together now.
That something became Chilly Bone’s.