Jan 15, 2006
Handling Ice Cream Shop Traffic Fluctuations
By Jason Lexell

Ice cream shops are busiest during the afternoon rush and later in the evenings. How can a successful ice cream shop franchise manage these traffic patterns to their advantage?

There is always work to be done, however many people who run an ice cream shop franchise search for ways to keep the business steady through the morning hours to maximize profits leverage their location.

Getting the most out of morning traffic

We asked Paul, our resident ice cream franchise veteran, how he handled the morning slump. Here's what he had to say...

"If we weren't waiting on customers we'd spend time working on ice cream cakes or creating hour daily ice cream specialties. We made our ice cream in-house, so this kept us busy in the earlier hours. This would help us stay busy, but we eventually decided we wanted to find a way to profit during the early hours.

To get more customers in the door during the earlier hours of the day we did start selling doughnuts and coffee. This worked very well for us to help keep business constant. This was something the franchise we were a part of allowed us to do. Not all allow for this.

Independent ice cream shops have lots of flexibility and frequently will embrace a coffee side business to steady the business during early hours."

Thanks Paul!

Morning business boosters...

To help keep sales up during the day, try any of the following items. You'll notice many successful ice cream shops have two sides to their business. Here are a few of the most common ideas.

1. selling coffee and donuts.
2. selling ice cream cakes and specialties.
3. offer smoothies and other breakfast related treats
4. sell breakfast sandwiches and bagels

The activities above can help you to steady your business through the early day slump.

Can you handle it?

Some ice cream businesses ignore the morning business entirely. Sometimes this is because the afternoon and evening business is so robust, they don't need it. Other times they ignore the morning business because they are too busy making fresh ice cream to have extra time to do anything else.

There's no right or wrong way to handle this time, but having the options can help your bottom line.