It appears that robbery is no long exclusive to the highway. Melissa Hayes and her family decided to go for a bike ride from their home in Arlington, Va., to the National Mall in Washington, DC, about 3 miles. Once there, they decided to stop and get some ice cream from one of the food trucks that were lined up. They spotted a truck near the end of the line that had a shorter line than the other trucks, and now she knows why. Hayes said she ordered 4 vanilla ice cream cones, at which time she asked how much it would be. The man in the truck turned around and began getting the cones together. As he began handing them to Hayes, she again asked for the price. Again, he ignored her. She handed him her credit card and he swiped it and handed it back to her. She assumed he was just busy, so they took their cones and left. It wasn’t until she got home and was checking her bank statement that she realized that she had been charged a whopping $22 per cone for the ice cream. Once her local TV station got wind of the story and began to check with other vendors on the National Mall, they discovered that the going rate for an ice cream cone is $7. Local food truck vendor Sam explained to the TV reporter that charging people $22 for an ice cream cone is bad for all vendors. “It’s like highway robbery,” he said. The D.C. Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection also weighed in on the matter. "That is an exorbitant fee, even in a high demand time,” said Tiffany Crowe, the department's director. She further emphasized that food truck vendors are required to clearly display their prices to avoid misleading customers. In a positive turn of events, after Hayes shared her story on social media, the owner of Toby's Homemade Ice Cream in Arlington sent her family vouchers for free ice cream.
