TC Shaved Ice owner Robert Hernandez calls out the window as a familiar customer pulls up to the drive-thru window of the red building at 812 S. McDonald St., McKinney.
Hernandez fires up the ice shaver and pours on the syrup, creating a coconut-and-vanilla-flavored shaved ice that he said this customer always orders.
Hernandez said he never had any plans to get into the shaved ice business—he originally worked as a mechanic and a salesman—but when his wife became pregnant with their son, the shaved ice business became a permanent fixture in his life.
“When my wife at the time was pregnant she craved shaved ice,” Hernandez said. “Long story short, I said, ‘Instead of buying it, why don’t I just give you the machine so you can make it, or I can make it and save all the money?’”
After Hernandez’s son, Taylor Carl, was born, his wife stopped craving shaved ice. She told him it must have been the baby, Hernandez said.
“So I said, ‘OK, well, we’ll name it TC,’” he said.
Robert Hernandez opened TC Shaved Ice 28 years ago.[/caption]TC Shaved Ice opened its first location in Garland 28 years ago. Other stores opened in Dallas, Richardson and Plano before the McKinney location was established four years ago.
Along with traditional shaved ice flavors, such as coconut, TC offers traditional Mexican treats, such as a housemade chamoy flavor—a mix of a mango-and-chamoy-flavored slushy called Mangonada and elote, a grilled Mexican street corn in a cup.
The cash-only establishment has become a go-to in its communities for shaved ice, and Hernandez said he has regulars at all of his locations.
The best part of doing business at all six of the TC Shaved Ice locations is meeting the diverse group of people who all enjoy his product, Hernandez said.
“You get all walks of life. You get people that are well-off, and you get people that have just enough money to buy one,” he said. “McKinney is a quiet little town, and I love it. I’ll be here for a while.”