A Westport institution loved by a generation of kids and kids at heart is on the market.

Mark Pietryzk has put his Lickety Splits Ice Cream up for sale, asking $475,000 for the 719 State Road business he has run or helped run for much of his life.

“I’ve been doing it a long time,” he said Wednesday. “It’s time to find someone else.”

The ice cream shop, the forerunner of which was formerly owned by his father Walt, is a popular stop in north Westport. Pietryzk has been there for a long time — he started helping out as a child of 11 or 12 when it was still called Walt’s Soft Serve, and took the business over from his father in 1991. That’s when he changed the name and expanded.

But even before that, it was a busy place. The site on which it now sits was a gas station more than 100 years ago, and his late father, who had land on Briggs Road, sold fruit and produce out of the location in the 1960s before selling soft serve in the early 1970s.

Pietryzk said he got a lot of enjoyment out of the business over the years, from planning and prep work to seeing regular customers to the expansions he oversaw during his tenure. But as he ages, he said, it’s been hard to find reliable help, and running the business is difficult for him on his own. Previously open seven days a week, it’s now open five.

Pietryzk said he tried to sell the business two years ago and nearly completed the deal, but bank issues with the prospective buyer cancelled it. He hopes to be able to sell the business entirely, or just the property. But if he can’t find a buyer by the warm months, he’ll open again in 2025.

“We’ll see,” he said.

The property is being marketed by Coldwell Banker.