It sounds like a Mister Softee truck and – from a distance – it may even look like a Mister Softee truck, but painted on the side of this ice cream truck, in looping green letters, is King’s Dream Original Soya Kreme.

Courtney Jennings, 29, came up with the idea to take the cream out of soft serve during a visit to a Rastafarian priest in Florida five years ago. The priest showed him his fruit-juice business and something clicked: “I knew I loved selling ice cream, It was just a matter of putting my twist on it.”

Since then Mr. Jennings has spent the past three years slowly expanding a route around Brooklyn, starting with Fort Greene, at events such as yesterday’s West Indian Day Parade, and he plans to expand shortly into Bedford Stuyvesant.

The new neighborhood will be familiar turf: he started pumping ice cream there at 10 when he joined his father, a Jamaican immigrant, on his truck’s route.

During his childhood Mr. Jennings ate “more ice cream than you would believe” sampling and perfecting his scooping and blending techniques.

That changed at age 19, when Mr. Jennings adopted the practice of Boboshanti, one of three Rastafarian orders, and no longer allowed himself chocolate ice cream cones.

In addition to paying particular attention to consuming natural food and avoiding animal products, Boboshantis observe the Jewish Sabbath, believe in reincarnation, apply special rules of separation between men and women, and are sometimes called Bobo Dreads for the men’s practice of covering their dreadlocks in tightly wrapped turbans. According to his uncle and the truck’s driver, Priest Stewart, “We live the laws of Moses and follow the principles of Christ.”

Part of a family of entrepreneurs, Mr. Jennings said he is not only producing soy soft serve for his own principals, but also because of its business potential

“I could have been hustling ice cream just like everyone else, but there are a lot of people who can’t and don’t eat dairy ice cream,” Mr. Jennings said. “It may not do as well as Mister Softee or Koolman, but we have our own niche.”

During the first half of yesterday’s West Indian Day Parade, business was slow. But those who did stop by could not have been more enthusiastic.

Hannah Lael, 34, who was at the parade to represent the Virgin Islands, tried her first cone. “You can’t tell the difference,” said Ms. Lael, who is lactose intolerant. “It’s absolutely delicious, fabulous, better than Mister Softee.”