Know about soup/ice cream/donuts? Worked there?

September 11, 2009 8:12 AM

Know about soup/ice cream/donuts shop? Worked there?

I am intrigued by soupbox.com, since this previous ask.me.
I'm thinking of duplicating the idea, possibly with all year round hot cinnamon donuts. Got any advice?

posted by bystander to work & money (5 comments total)

I worked at a high-end ice cream store that is bustling year-round due to coffee/espresso drinks and simply having very high-quality ice cream. I live in Boston, where the winters get cold, and while business does decrease in winter, it's not by as much as you'd think.

Probably the #1 thing you'd have to figure out w.r.t. ice cream is whether you'd be serving your own house-brand ice cream or retailing someone else's product. If you're making your own, you need to factor in the space to make huge quantities of ice cream when choosing a location.
posted by oinopaponton at 8:25 AM on September 11

How much ice cream is huge quantities? I have been looking at commercial machines that do 28 liers (about 7 gallons) per hour, which seems huge.
posted by bystander at 8:32 AM on September 11

It depends how much ice cream you want to serve and how big your serving sizes are. We went though several (4-5) 10-gallon tubs a day, more when it was really hot out.
posted by oinopaponton at 8:47 AM on September 11

Another thing with ice cream is if your focus is going to be ice cream it is expected that you have a lot of flavors. Perhaps not 3 or 4 dozen but still quite a few and that takes space. The two local Cincinnati artisan ice cream places, Aglamesis Bros. and Graeters sell cakes, confections, have holiday flavors, do mail order for the Cincinnati diaspora (and Oprah followers) and sell items in local grocery stores.
posted by mmascolino at 9:21 AM on September 11

I worked at a Rita's, but left in November. I do remember there were many discussions about what to do for the upcoming winter season and the best idea anyone had was to just have flavors that were more seasonal (hot chocolate, peppermint, pumpkin pie, apples, etc).

(At the time, most of these would have been 'illegal flavors' since we were big on experimenting whatever we could put through the ice machine, sometimes with hilarious results!)

Last I remember, they ended up closing in mid-January or something because they were doing less than $100 worth of sales a day. Then again, Rita's has a pretty limited product range, especially when it starts getting chilly.
posted by sperose at 10:12 AM on September 11