Guillermo Dresses as Mister Softee and Gives the Brooklyn Crowd Salsa

Guillermo Rodriguez arrived at Jimmy Kimmel Live!’s Brooklyn show with an ice-cream cone for a head and two more cones in his hands. The surprise for the audience was something else entirely: everyone got a tub of Guillermo’s Salsa.

The October 1 appearance took place on the fourth night of the show’s visit to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Guillermo dressed as Mister Softee, turning a familiar ice-cream mascot into a very Guillermo entrance before the late-night monologue continued.

It was also a timely excuse to put his own food business in front of a room full of people. The salsa brand has announced a wider grocery rollout after reporting more than a million tubs sold since its January launch.

The cone head does most of the work

The costume has a bright blue jacket, a red bow tie and a huge swirl of soft-serve ice cream above Guillermo’s face. He carries a cone in each hand, while his own face remains visible beneath the oversized headpiece.

This is Mister Softee, not a new Guillermo character. The ice-cream company dates to 1956, when brothers William and James Conway founded it in Philadelphia. Its trucks and cone-headed mascot are part of a business still run by the Conway family.

That makes the costume especially fitting for a show taking its usual Hollywood routine to Brooklyn. Instead of appearing in an ordinary suit, Guillermo brings an ice-cream-truck character onto a theater stage. The look is immediately recognizable even before the salsa becomes part of the entrance.

The two hand-held cones also make the switch funnier. He looks ready to deliver dessert, but the audience’s gift belongs with chips. Guillermo does not have to abandon the costume to introduce the product bearing his real name.

The salsa is a real business, not just a prop

Guillermo’s Salsa launched in January 2026. He co-founded the brand with Chris Kirby, the founder of Ithaca Hummus. The product comes in Mild, Medium and Hot, with orange tubs and a drawing of Guillermo’s face on each label.

The labels make the three heat levels easy to tell apart: green for Mild, yellow for Medium and red for Hot. The packaging also says to keep the salsa refrigerated. It is not a shelf-stable jar you leave in a kitchen cupboard.

Guillermo told PEOPLE that Hot is his own favorite. His pitch for people who have not tried the salsa is just as straightforward:

“When you try it, you’re going to be like, ‘Oh my God, this salsa is real good.’”

— Guillermo Rodriguez, speaking to PEOPLE.

That is a different sort of job from his nightly comedy appearances. Fans recognize his face from Kimmel, but a tub of salsa still has to give shoppers a reason to come back after the first purchase.

What the wider launch means

The company says it has sold more than one million tubs since January. That is the brand’s reported sales figure, not an independently verified count.

Its October 1 announcement lays out additional grocery distribution, including Kroger and H-E-B. Local selection and the timing of new stock can vary, so the announcement does not mean every branch already has all three varieties.

For viewers in the theater, there was no store search involved. The giveaway put a tub in the hands of each audience member during the same appearance that brought Guillermo onstage in the cone costume.

Why Guillermo needs so little introduction

Guillermo began as a parking-lot security guard before becoming one of Jimmy Kimmel Live!’s most familiar faces. His work now includes celebrity interviews, red-carpet appearances and trips beyond the show’s regular studio.

He is also competing on Dancing with the Stars this season. The Brooklyn visit gives fans another side of his busy television schedule: one night he is learning a ballroom routine, and another he is wearing a giant ice-cream swirl on the Brooklyn stage.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. Eastern on ABC in the United States, with episodes on Hulu. The Brooklyn costume entrance belongs to the October 1 show.