Cuneo’s ice cream firm owner overwhelmed by support from Sheffield people in fight to stay outside Endcliffe Park

Andrew Cuneo and his wife Inglana Saqlad of Cuneo’s, which is based in Walkley, faced opposition from Sheffield City Council’s parks and countryside department when they applied to renew their static street trading licence for Rustlings Road, next to the park.

The parks department argued that the Endcliffe Park charity, of which the council is sole trustee, would lose £15,000 in income because of Cuneo’s competition to the ice cream van that has a licence to sell inside the park and the park cafe.

Sheffield City Council’s planning committee rejected the objection on Tuesday (January 10). Committee chair Coun David Barker said: “We’ve received a lot of representations in favour of him and his reputation for being reliable, providing a good service to the people of Sheffield, has stood him in good stead.”

Neale Gibson, who represented Cuneo’s, held up a copy of The Star with an ‘ice cream war’ front page and said there were lots of pro-Cuneo’s comments on the online story, as well as on Facebook.

Mr Cuneo, whose family of Italian heritage have been making ice cream in Sheffield since 1864, said: “I can’t believe how much public backing we’ve received. I didn’t think we were that popular.”

‘We don’t rip off’

He added: “We’ve built a rapport with customers, as you’d expect. We don’t rip off customers, don’t overcharge and we give them a quality ice cream.

“Repeat customers have been coming to us for years and years and years. Other companies and the parks department see the queues and think they’re going to get more money out of them.”

He claimed that rivals bid “ridiculous amounts” to get the pitch inside the park that Cuneo’s lost last year after 10 years. They no longer operate at Weston Park but can be found at six sites across Sheffield, including in the city centre and outside Rivelin Valley Park.

Mr Cuneo said: “My daughter Sarah, who works on Rustlings Road, is there every day. She has a lot of contact with local residents, not just those who come in a bus or car.

“She is there, she speaks to the locals, sells them ice cream.

“We’re part of the community – there’s a lot of elderly people there whose wives or husbands have passed away. They take the dog for a walk and come and have a natter to my daughter. She’s like a social worker, to be honest.

‘Part of the community’

“You become part of the community – the parks department don’t understand that, don’t care.

“I appreciate they’ve got a budget, we all have. Times are hard for everybody, everybody’s backs are against the wall. That doesn’t excuse their behaviour, to my way of thinking.”

He said when they were still inside the park, Cuneo’s invested a lot of money to ensure their six vans were more than compliant with the Euro 6 CO2 emissions limit. “We’ve got the biggest, newest fleet of vans in Sheffield,” he said.

Mr Cuneo said the family passion for ice cream, which they make fresh every day, had been passed down the generations and Sarah will take over when he retires.

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