Soft Serve Sprinkles Extreme

As a seller of hard ice cream, soft serve yogurt or soft-serve ice cream you might be wondering what inexpensive thing you can do to make your cones look more artistic or festive. One of the simplest techniques for perking up a plain ice cream cone of any kind is to simply roll it in sprinkles. You may have seen this done with hard ice...

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Theme Your Flavors to Local Attractions

If you want to draw attention to your ice cream shop and drive local business to it then you might want to consider creating flavors that are themed to local attractions in your area. For instance, in the photo below you can see a scoop of ice cream topping the chocolate known as Rosarium. This pink ice cream is made out of edible rose petals....

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Instead of a Root Beer Float Serve a Lime Spider!

Most traditional ice cream parlors and even ice cream trucks still serve “floats.” This is a carbonated drink poured over ice cream and sometimes topped with whipped cream and a cherry. It is served with a straw and a long spoon in a soda glass. The most common floats that are served are root beer floats and coke floats but they are also made with...

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Using Brand Familiarity to Your Advantage

When you first conceptualize what your ice cream parlor might look like in your business plan it might be an idea to consider whether or not you want to incorporate an element of familiarity from a very well-known brand. If you do this it can build trust between you and your customer because they already know that you are using products that are tried and...

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The Humble Bench in Front of Your Shop

If there is one way to seem very friendly to your local community it is to have a pretty bench placed just outside your shop. This one in front of the Wedding Cakes Shoppe in Toronto (which also sells coffee and ice cream) is a perfect example of how a bench can used to invite passerbys to come in, buy a cupcake, coffee or ice...

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A Risky Ice Cream Name – Controversy or Smart Marketing?

Many ice cream shops name their flavors after a theme, a person, or some type of topic people can relate to.  During the presidential election in 2008, some ice cream businesses named new flavors after the candidates.  This became controversial, especially if it seemed a shop was favoring one candidate over the other. By now I’m sure many of you have heard of Ben and...

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Ditching Corporate America- A Story of Reinventing the Ice Cream Truck

With the uncertainty of the economy and struggles of job security, some people are doing what they can to maintain their careers. Here’s an inspiring story of 2 women who said good-bye to their careers to start their vision of a unique ice cream truck business. Natasha Case and Freya Estreller started their business, Coolhaus, selling gourmet ice cream sandwiches from a postal truck turned...

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Optimizing Your Ice Cream Shop’s Visibility and Street Traffic

If you have a little gourmet ice cream or frozen yogurt shop it is of utmost importance to make sure that you are going to be highly visible to people passing by. Why? Ice cream and frozen yogurt tend to be an impulse buy for many people. The point is that the treat itself can sell itself as most people love frozen treats without much...

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How To Make Your Ice Cream Or Frozen Yogurt Shop Recession Proof

The good news about the current recession is that it is making people more appreciative of the smaller things in life —  like the pleasure of going out and simply enjoying an ice cream cone with the one you love. The days of ordering $280 Surf and Turf platters along with giant designer martinis have been put on temporary hold. This is bad news for...

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Expand your Ice Cream Parlor Business with an Ice Cream Truck

The most successful ice cream trucks are not the ones that just sell prepackaged novelties, they are the ones that sell “real” ice cream, you know the soft serve or hard ice cream that everyone knows and loves. People want their ice cream with hot fudge and sprinkles and mini M&Ms, and this is exactly the kind of business that ice cream parlors specialize in....

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