Would You Like Some Scrambled Eggs With Your Ice Cream?

Carlos Rocha has been in the food business for a long time -- since he was a teenager in fact -- and much of it was spent scooping ice cream. Now he's branching out with his Marblehead ice cream shop to serve up breakfast and lunch as well.

Rocha says there aren't too many breakfast spots, in particular, open early in the downtown.

Eggs, bagels, pancakes, waffles and even homemade sweetbread were available for early bird customers at Terry's Old Fashion Ice Cream as of last Friday, followed up with hot soups and sandwiches for the lunch crowd. The bagels are also homemade direct from East End Bagels in Ipswich.

The new menu is just the latest in a series of additions Rocha has made to the shop, including karaoke nights, Wi-Fi for customers, a Nintendo Wii system for kids and a senior citizen discount.

Rocha and his crew, which includes daughter Sandra, are still adjusting to the new location at 22A Atlantic Ave., and they admit visibility is an issue, especially before the warmer months and tourists arrive.

When Marblehead Patch stopped by earlier this week, Rocha was contemplating parking his SMART car outside with a sign attached. The idea seems to work for him back home in Peabody, where you can find Terry's ice cream truck parked right off Route 114 during the winter months.

Rocha says the truck is parked at his sister-in-law's house, clearly visible to traffic along the state highway route.

Terry's used to be located over on School Street, but Rocha had to close the doors in the summer of 2011 after an electrical fire left his business with extensive water and smoke damage.

. He planned then to add breakfast and lunch to the menu and received permission from the Board of Selectmen to do so, along with outdoor seating.

Breakfast now starts at 7 a.m.; lunch begins around noon. Rocha also does a fair amount of catering and says he'll be getting the truck ready to roll through the streets of Marblehead, Swampscott and Peabody again in a few weeks.

"Since I was eleven I've been doing the same thing I am today," Rocha, now 56, said.

He's lived in Peabody since emigrating to America from the Azores with his family when he was 13. By the time he was 16, Rocha had dropped out of high school and had a job delivering bread for a local company.

"Back then, you didn't really need an education -- I had a job," Rocha said. And that didn't stop him from eventually owning his own business.

In 1979, when he was 23, Rocha started in the ice cream business down at the Salem Willows, where he worked for more than 20 years until buying his own shop in Marblehead.

He said a friend informed him the ice cream shop on School Street was for sale and he decided to scoop it up. Terry's opened in 2004.

And if you're curious where the name came from -- it's obviously not Rocha's although he's often called "Terry" by unsuspecting customers -- well, it's an old-fashioned sort of name, Rocha explains, smiling. "Terry is my wife's name."