On a hot and windy afternoon, there’s a line outside of Kris and Kate’s. People stand in front of the pink and white ice-cream-cone-shaped building, ordering cones and sundaes and the occasional hot dog.

Inside, Erica Garrison and Hannah Brewer are working at a frantic pace to keep up with the demand at the window and the line of drive-through orders.

“We always pick up right around this time,” Ms. Garrison says.

They go back and forth from the window to the ice cream machine to the drive-through to the shake maker. Their workspace is small, but they move as if performing a well-executed dance routine. Working side by side and back to back, they side-step each other as they fill orders.

With just two workers, the space seems small. Later in the evening, “it gets kind of hectic,” Ms. Brewer says, when there are four employees working the dinner rush,

“When there’s four in here, yeah, it’s congested, but we’ve got a system,” says Ms. Garrison, who’s been working at the stand since her mother bought it when she was 9.

It’s a system that keeps things running smoothly when there are groups of hot and hungry people out front and cars lined 10 deep in the drive-through. Communication is key, so they know who’s taken which order and who’s working to make that sundae or slushie or ice cream twister.

As the afternoon rush slows down, the girls are able to take a breath. They start refilling machines and bringing out gallons of milk from the back freezer. They clean up a little bit. A third employee comes in, making the small space grow smaller, and the girls prepare themselves for the next rush.

Lifestyles reporter Lacey Storer can be reached

at lstorer@npgco.com