Winterizing Your Frozen Dessert Shop

Just as you might winterize your home to prepare for the colder months, it’s also important to winterize your frozen dessert business. As most frozen dessert businesses see a drop off in sales when the weather cools, it’s not uncommon for these shops to close from late fall to early spring. Closing for the winter might make sense if you’d like to take a break to recharge and your business during the warm months affords you the luxury of doing so.

If you do decide to stay open, here are some steps you can take to boost your winter sales and reduce winter expenses.

Plan Winter Promotions

Draw customers to your shop with winter decorations, promotions, and events. Showing your shop’s seasonal spirit with decorations, winter cups and spoons, and music will attract passersby.

It’s a good time to offer takeout and delivery promotions to encourage people to enjoy your treats at home. The holidays are also a popular time for gift card sales and catering.

Frozen Solutions can provide custom cups, to-go containers, and spoons to support your winter promotions. Contact us for a free quote.

Get Involved with Your Community

While things may be slow at your frozen dessert shop, the winter is a busy time for community events. Consider donating to school fundraisers, having a booth at a community event, organizing a toy/clothing drive, and partnering with other small businesses to host winter events like a scavenger hunt or even a winter festival. Getting involved generates goodwill and increases your exposure to a larger group of people, for example, Kona Ice’s Cans For Kona program is a canned food drive that also helps schools raise money.


Offer Seasonal Flavors

Customers look forward to the return of seasonal flavors like Gingerbread, Hot Cocoa, and Candy Cane. The return or introduction of seasonal flavors is a newsworthy event, so be sure to play it up with signs, emails, social media posts, and more. Salt & Straw is a master of seasonal ice cream flavors. Limited edition seasonal flavors are released every month, inspired by a theme. Past themes include The Scoops & Skulls Series, the Harvest Festival, and Thanksgiving.

Offer Seasonal Products

Change your menu to reflect the season. On cold days, customers often seek hot beverages, pretzels, cookies, baked goods, crepes, donuts, and waffles. When Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt franchisees expressed concern about the seasonality of sales, Orange Leaf created another brand, Humble Donut Co., as a potential co-brand for Orange Leaf locations. In Germany, YOMARO Frozen Yogurt offers milchreis, German rice pudding, during the colder months.

You can offer many hot items without having an on-site kitchen—partner with other local businesses like bakeries or even home-based businesses to broaden your menu.

Ice cream cakes and novelties are also popular items to bring to events, even during the winter. Be sure to offer seasonal decorations to boost the appeal of these items.

Reduce Inventory

With reduced demand, it makes sense to reduce how much ice cream (or other frozen dessert) that you produce. Keep the most popular flavors on hand but cut back on the less popular flavors.

Reduce Hours of Operation and Staffing

One easy way to reduce costs is to cut back on your hours of operation. Pick your busiest days of the week and close for the slow days. Also, consider closing earlier and opening later. With fewer hours, you can also reduce your staff and/or their hours.