The ice-cream industry is one of the most prosperous in the world having a growth of more than 3 %, especially in Asian countries. In countries with an older ice-cream tradition, there has been a few years of stagnation in sales. The secret to increase sales is segmenting the product and creating ice creams for narrower audiences. For example:
- Consumers concerned about diet, yet still want to indulge in the pleasure of ice cream are good customers of low fat or sugar free ice creams.
- Lactose avoidant consumers will be happy to buy lactose free ice creams in your store.
- Customers who look for a sensory experience beyond the already well-known flavours will be the best audience for those confectionery masters who throw out new challenging collections every year with combinations of flavours that are not usual in the sugary world of ice creams: salty, smoked and spicy flavors are already on the market.
What’s coming up:
- Ice creams with healthy supplements like calcium or vitamins.
- Homemade ice lollies.
- Toppings à la carte.
Top quality homemade style ice creams are more nourishing as they are a source of proteins and calcium and have less calories than most pastries. In Northern European countries and United States, ice cream is consumed all year round as casual food, while in other countries like Spain it’s associated with Summer and is eaten only occasionally as an indulgance (at least it’s a nourishing indulgance!).
What is the favorite receptacle for ice cream?
It’s a matter of preference whether you eat an ice cream in a cup with a teaspoon, in a cookie cone or if you take it home in a summerbox. We have no statistics on this matter, perhaps the ice cream stores could help us commenting here what their best-seller business is.
Summerbox – Can be propitiated that your ice cream is shared among a group of people thanks to the Summerbox of different sizes.
We can see that cups are the preferred format for those who want control of the amount of calories that they are eating.
A cookie cone increases the number of calories but, when it’s a good quality cookie, the crunchy texture of the wafer combined with the creamy texture of the ice cream make it into one of our favorite options. An ice lolly is a much used format by commercial brands, and it is not associated with artisan ice creams, but soon we will also see them in ice cream stores, since they have an added ingredient that other formats don’t have: a chocolate covering!
As the strong point of homemade style ice-creams is the range of flavours and good quality ingredients, we highly recommend personalising your cups, paper cones and napkins, so that the brand is directly related to top quality.
Cups – The best that can happen is that the streets are filled with people consuming ice cream and it is known that they come from your ice cream shop.
An incoming a trend from Thailand gives one more dimension to the way we enjoy eating ice creams: aesthetics. Until now, we have given priority to flavours and not much to presentation, but a Thai ice-cream parlor sells ice creams in the shape of coloured roses. As well as being tasty, they’re quite beautiful creations.
