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Soft Serve/Pizzeria

Soft serve ice cream seems like an easy add-on. Health Departments will love you, because soft-serve machines are a huge source of fines etc. They seem to be prone to promoting nasties growing in them, and the cleaning process is often done with less than ideal concentration.

Scoop ice cream, with various toppings, is less desireable due to space considerations, but it’s much better from the cleanliness standpoint. And, yes, it’s often more expensive.

Desserts can be huge, but soft-serve is more a PITA than easy bread. 😉
 
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Right now i am a delco location. I am doing well in pizza sales and just looking for an addition source of revenue during the summer months. I will have 2 walk up service windows and plan on keeping it pretty simple as far as toppings. Just wondering if anybody had any input as far as how customers are, what i should or shouldn’t do, or a tips.
 
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What? Seriously why even bother writing anything!!!
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Seriously, I bothered, and told you what I thought. Take it as you will. Why not sell donuts and breakfast too? Heh, you can add hotdogs & burgers… What about seafood…??

Maybe now you see my point, and perhaps not. Leave Ice Cream to the “Ice Cream shops.” If you’re that excited about it, open a Ice Cream shop.

Good Luck.
 
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We added an ice cream patio to our operation the 1st year we opened. We don’t do soft serve though…for many of the reasons mentioned in the thread already (dirty machines, etc.). Instead we serve a premium ice cream made by Katie’s Korner, a local franchise in the Youngstown area. We have 2 dipping cabinets and offer 20 flavors year round. So far, the ice cream portion has not taken off like we would have hoped for. I attribute it to a couple factors: we have some very strong ice cream competition around us, and we have not marketed it to our fullest potential (which we are starting to do now).
Ice cream has been 10% of our total sales this year and we haven’t even got into nice weather yet. The benefit to serving a scoop ice cream is that we can deliver it. It is not uncommon for 25% of our deliveries in a day have ice cream with them (pints, quarts, sundaes, milkshakes, banana splits). It has been tough managing the extra aspect of the business, but fun and rewarding learning a new business too!
 
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For the 10 years we operated our #2 location that had a lot of walk up business we sold single serving cups of Ben & Jerry’s and Ben & Jerry’s Ice cream bars.
  1. Popular
  2. Zero brain damage.
  3. Total control of costs as there is no portioning. (watch the employee consumption though)
  4. Zero prep or cleaning.
It does not have the margin that serving other items does… but considering there is no prep, no waste etc that was fine with me. We also baked off cookies and made trays of brownies with good success.
 
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bodegahwy:
For the 10 years we operated our #2 location that had a lot of walk up business we sold single serving cups of Ben & Jerry’s and Ben & Jerry’s Ice cream bars.
  1. Popular
  2. Zero brain damage.
  3. Total control of costs as there is no portioning. (watch the employee consumption though)
  4. Zero prep or cleaning.
It does not have the margin that serving other items does… but considering there is no prep, no waste etc that was fine with me. We also baked off cookies and made trays of brownies with good success.
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That’s awesome.
 
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You just need to watch the episode of Bob’s Burgers where he installs a soft serve machine to find out how things might go.
 
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mrschleg:
Is anyone doing this? Have you had success? Any info would help
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After 31 years of traditional ice cream, I put in 5 frozen yogurt machines this past August. Sales are bouncing around from 600 to 1000 a week. I expect with summer coming sales should go above 1k a week. Each machine is cleaned twice a week. To clean one machine it takes about 45 minutes.
 
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I guess I would say I like Steves way of B&J’s delivery qts. I think unless your pizza is so great and you do not have any ice cream shops on the block…i kind of agree it seems soft serve is gong to be a pain. Waste, lots of clean up and tear down labor. Soft serve melts so fast that delivery with hot pizza seems counter-productive. Now drivers with cold and hot bags. Seems to add up to many returned melted orders or asked for replacements due too melted itmes. Headaches and more headaches. Just my 2 cents. :roll:
 
I would never consider soft-serve for any delivery operation. Our quarts come out of the freezer below 0 degrees. We just put them in a paper bag with the napins, parm and pepper etc and deliver them. No need for a special cold bag when they start so cold.

The post I wrote above in this thread was about walk-up ice cream business where we sold single serve cups (comes with a little spoon under the cover) and bars. We never delivered those things but there were great at our slice location.
 
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At my 1st store we delivered soft serve with little or no problems…newer machines don’t require daily/deep cleaning…

The ice cream was delivered in a takeout bag via a small igloo cooler…great profit & a great bundler item…
 
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Dear Brad,
Code: 
pizza2007 wrote:Focus on what you're doing, and try to become the best at it.
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I suggest Currywurst or meatballs: http://www.inc.com/jon-burgstone/the-ep … -bros.html

Don’t you think your comment is “out of context?” Or do you just like manipulating the subject? Guys like you seem to be quick piling on a response that isn’t popular. “read between the lines”

My advice, in context, was to simply point out that adding to the menu is not necessarily a good move, IF you’re lacking in your main focus (ie, pizza is substandard or not considered better or best). I “assumed” the op was running a “pizza” restaurant, not an ice cream shop. I’ve already seen a subway selling ice cream, subs, pizza, etc… (with that direction, it won’t be long before they add burgers and fries). That subway is failing and flailing.

Ice cream might be a good move for the op, but not if they’re not excelling already. Some operators are too busy to consider ice cream…

I’ll try hard to conform to the recommended list in the future and not give my opinion or advice.
 
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My apologies.

I’m in your corner when it comes to the concept of focus with the reasoning provided in your last post. Although, I also find it interesting when places take it to the extreme and do only one food period. You’ve got to admit that a place which only sells cups of meatballs is a fascinating concept!?!
 
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pizza2007 - mrschleg asked a simple question. Is anyone doing softserve with any success. He was looking for someone w/ experience or insight on incorporating that into his shop. He wasnt looking for some self help BS advice. Save that crap for your kids.
 
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