How To Maximize Soft Serve and Hand Dipped Products

Well glad you asked. Otherwise, this blog would be completely pointless. Before understanding how to maximize both versions of this delicious treat, you must first understand the most appealing and marketable factors of both products.

Soft Serve

• Appeal to All Ages: Soft serve is often popular among families with children and younger customers.
• Versatility: It can be used to create a wide range of treats, such as cones, cups, sundaes, and milkshakes.
• Lower Cost: Typically, soft serve ice cream costs you less giving you a higher margin
• Faster Service: Soft serve can be served quickly, making it ideal for high-volume locations. More customers = more profits
• Marries well with other products: Soft serve combines well with Italian Ice (gelati) as they are similar temperatures. Soft serve also melds great with candies (blizzards) since you don’t need much mixing to incorporate candies throughout.
• Warmer temp: Because soft serve is served warmer than hand dipped (18 degrees vs 8 degrees) it’s an instantly consumed, more flavorful product. This gives it a nice buzz and appeal.

Hand-Dipped

• Premium Appeal: Hand-dipped ice cream is often perceived as a higher-quality product, appealing to customers looking for a more indulgent treat.
• Variety of Flavors: Hand-dipped ice cream allows for a greater variety of flavors and textures compared to soft serve. More flavors, more variety, more options, more buzz.
• Customization: Customers can request specific scoop sizes and mix-ins, offering a personalized experience. They can also get a mixture of multiple flavors creating Instagram-friendly combos
• Nostalgic Charm: Hand-dipped ice cream can evoke feelings of nostalgia, which can be a selling point for some customers.
• Visual appeal: Hand-dipped comes in a variety of flavors and colors. This tantalizes the eyes and you know what people buy with? No not Apple Pay….their eyes!!

Now there are many, many more appealing factors to both these products. However, I know your attention span is waning. How do you maximize these products in ONE shop?

First, you need to understand who you are and try to lean in a certain direction. Rarely do I see customers selling 50% soft serve and 50% hand-dipped. Usually, it’s 60/40 at best. Who are you?

If you are a walk-in store featuring very visual dipping cabinets and you are making your own homemade ice cream – well it doesn’t take an ice cream expert…Ahem…to know where your sales will tip. You will sell more hand-dipped. And you should. You create flavors. You create your brand.

You want customers to frequent those creations. But you still need soft serve. Just don’t expect Uncle Vanilla or Aunt Chocolate or even Little Twisty to carry your soft-serve sales. You need to create recipe-driven items that feature soft serve. For example:

• Candy blend-ins – have 4-6 recipe-driven blend-ins. Vanilla soft serve with PB sauce and PB cups. Vanilla soft serve with cheesecake bites and strawberry topping. Chocolate soft serve with brownie bites and marshmallow sauce. Items like this will help move soft serve outside the traditional cones
• Milkshakes – purists believe that a true milkshake is made with hand-dipped. Well, try selling 50 shakes every day with hand dipped and see how pure you want to be. Additionally, using soft serve for your shakes (vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, etc.) helps cut down on costs, speed up production, and make a fantastically thick, premium shake. And remember, 14% hand-dipped mixed cut with a lot of milk comes out roughly the same butterfat as 10% soft serve mix cut with a little milk.
• Novelties – Ice cream sandwiches. Chipwiches. Parfaits to go. Ice cream cakes. Ice cream pies. Using soft serve to create this novelty profit center can be HUGE for your business. Novelties and take-home products may give your customers a big bottom, but it will also give you a big bottom line.

What about walk-up window shops? These tend to lean more towards soft serve as the hand-dipped loses that visual appeal. Soft serve is the traditional cornerstone in those shops. But you want hand-dipped to help right?

• The menu becomes important - Without people coming in and SEEING flavors, we have to SHOW them flavors. Visual menu boards featuring colors and flavor options are a necessity if you want to move the hand-dipped needle.
• Specialty Sundaes – Having 6 or so specialty sundaes featuring some unique flavors of hand-dipped is always helpful. Rather than have to make a Peanut Butter Blast sundae with vanilla soft serve, PB sauce, and PB cups – why not use your PB hand-dipped that already has those ingredients in it! But remember, your creations should have color. Green. Blue. Pink. (Those aren’t sundae suggestions, I just wanted to make sure you knew what colors were).
• Flights – Have you ever met a person who is just so indecisive about ordering you almost hate to go out to eat with them? They act like they are solving world hunger every time they have to pick their dessert. They always have to order last and act surprised when its their turn as if the choice of what to order was never going to fall to them. Well, flights were made for them. They get 4 options and hopefully some inner peace.

Finding a harmonious relationship between soft serve and hand dipped in your operation begins with understanding your operation and the benefits of the products. Then matching the two to create a menu that fits best both in efficiency and concept. Rest assured, there is potential in both products no matter what type of shop you may have. No matter where your business sits, there is always more profit to be had.

As always our team at Sentry is here to help if you need us!