05/07/2026
❇️ Local Business Spotlight: America250-Enduring Success: Palagis Ice Cream
(Editor’s note: This is the seventh installment in a weekly series featuring Rhode Island’s oldest companies as the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The other stories from this series can be found here.)
PAWTUCKET – Though Alejandro “Alex” Arteaga has helmed Palagis Ice Cream for nearly 30 years, he’s never quite thought of himself as a proprietor.
Instead, he sees himself more as a protector of the business, which celebrates its 130th anniversary this year.
“I never really felt like the owner,” Arteaga said. “I felt like this was my new job, to keep this thing going.”
Arteaga has now led the company for nearly 30 years, having stepped into the role in 1988, when third-generation owner Donald Palagi retired. By then, Arteaga had worked for Palagis as an ice cream truck driver for the past decade.
Palagis Ice Cream was founded in 1896 by 21-year-old Pietro “Peter” Palagi, who immigrated to the U.S. from Italy that same year. Over the next 102 years, the company cycled through three generations of Palagi family ownership.
Though Arteaga isn’t directly related to the Palagi family, he says he feels deep ties to the business’ history. For one, like Palagis’ founder, Arteaga also immigrated to the U.S. at a young age, moving from Columbia to Cumberland in 1976. He was introduced to the company by his brother, who first got a job there and eventually married into the Palagi family.
Over the course of almost 40 years with the company, Arteaga has witnessed and led the business through numerous shifts. But while Palagis has adapted with the times, its core appeal hasn’t changed, Arteaga says.
“To put everyone in a good mood, all I have to do is mention the words, ‘ice cream,’” Arteaga said. “People’s reactions have stayed the same for probably 100 years-plus.”
That age-old magnetism was put to the test during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because the ice cream trucks serve customers outdoors, Palagis was among the first businesses that could operate nearly as usual during the earlier days of lockdown and social distancing.
Arteaga wasn’t sure what to expect when the company’s ice cream trucks first resumed their rounds.
But “when we finally got out … every street we went on, business was buzzing,” he recalled. Customers flocked to the trucks, which serve Hood and Gifford’s ice cream, as well as house-made frozen lemonade in a variety of flavors.
During the pandemic, Palagis also added an online request form to request the ice cream trucks at events, updating a service that previously required a phone call. That change also led to a bump in business, Arteaga said, with people booking the trucks for occasions such as parties, school functions, corporate events and fundraisers.
Road routes, meanwhile, continue to see plenty of interest: The business’ 21 ice cream trucks, licensed to operate in about 30 communities in Rhode Island and 10 in southeastern Massachusetts, serve around 5,000 customers per day.
Since 2020, Palagis has also operated retail sales out of the company headquarters at 55 Bacon St. in Pawtucket. The Palagi family purchased that property in July of 1966 — the same year and month that Arteaga was born. The coincidence is just one in a series of connections that he finds almost uncanny.
“It’s like everything was kind of lined up, and destiny led me here from the beginning,” Arteaga said. In 2025, Arteaga published a book, “Searching for Peter Palagi: America’s First Ice Cream Man and Father of the Ice Cream Truck,” detailing the business’ history and his own journey leading the business.
Now the company’s owner for nearly 30 years, Arteaga says he expects to retire from the business within the next three to five years. He hasn’t yet found a successor, but doesn’t take the task lightly.
“When you have kids, you can die in peace when you know your kids are going to be okay,” he said. “So my biggest goal is to find the right situation (for Palagis) to continue to survive, and to thrive.”
- By Jacquelyn Voghel, Providence Business News
