First signs of spring? Time to review ice cream!

With the first warm day this Spring arriving I have noticed an early increase in the sale of hand held ice creams. We benefit from these short spells of sunshine because we run our ice cream freezer every day of the year and change how we use it to make the most of each season.

I have a three deck cabinet that is from the start of Spring until October we use exclusively for impulse ice cream lines. We don’t try to stock too many products and focus on our best sellers. Adult lines like Magnum in the top tier and children’s products that include ice pops in the bottom tier.

Our best sellers mostly match the national picture with Magnum, Cornetto and Callipo among our best sellers. A key feature of that last couple of years has been a big demand from our customers for us to stock a ‘value range’ as well as the national brands. To meet this we brought in some Euroshopper products including their ‘Magnum look a like’ that sold very well. Last years experience showed me that we could significantly increase our sales volume by offering these value lines and improve our cash profit.

How I manage my Ice Cream category:

• Prepare the cabinet in February by defrosting and thoroughly cleaning the unit.
• Use our suppliers ‘early bird offers’ to restock our impulse range.
• Keep the range to no more than 15 lines to ensure a strong easy to manage display.
• Offer value line rather that price promotions on branded best sellers.
• Never sell out of our top sellers.
• Be aware of new lines that take off.
• Keep up to date with the 5/10 day weather forecast.
• Start to wind the stock down late August/early September as sales start to decline.
• Reduce the impulse range display to Magnum, Cornetto and Calipo to make room for our take home range when impulse sales decline.