Without doubt the biggest seller in the summer is ice cream.
Certainly when I ran Orton Mere we went through the stuff quick enough.
Ice cream generally is looked upon as something just for the summer. But is it?
In my experience the answer is no it’s not just for summer.
I rapidly learnt several things.
If you have too much choice your sales can go down!
Both children and adults like choice in the freezer, but not too much choice. They get to the stage where they can’t make up their mind and get nothing, children and pensioners are the worse for this.
If you don’t have what they want they will have what you’ve got.
This was noticeable and it was very rare if I did not have what they wanted that they went away with nothing.
Magnums.
I could have filled the freezer with twelve different varieties of Magnum and they would have been happy. They always sold first.
You don’t need heat to sell ice cream.
Now you might think this a strange one, but we proved time and time again the most important thing you needed to sell anything out of the freezer was sunshine. I have sold ice cream when there was snow on the ground and the sun was shining. I remember a couple with dogs sitting under the canopy one Sunday eating ice cream with the snow all around them and their dogs covered in the stuff. They had one each sat there and then came in for a second each.
The choice of little old ladies.
I lost count of the little old ladies who came in and the first thing thay asked was. “Do you have choc ices?” They were the thing they always wanted. One old lady once told me quite straight faced that having a choc ice took her back to when she was young on the back row of the pictures. She uttered the immortal words. “I remember it like yesterday, first the choc ice and then a good grope!” I was lost for words, which even I will admit is rare for me.
So there you have it it’s out in the open. Ice cream is not just for summer.