Products to Sell - Flavors

Oftentimes, roadside stands sell ONLY shaved ice or snow cones. Let’s assume this is you. Your core product is ice but you must choose how many flavors to offer. Customers love to see a variety of different flavors, however many will tend to steer towards the obvious. Cherry, Blue Raspberry and Grape are often the most popular flavors sold. Choosing additional flavors (at first) will be a guess. Once you begin selling, you will soon notice trends with your customers and they will be your guide on which flavors to choose.

Toppings are a great way to make an additional 25-50 cents on a serving. Consider offering a variety of toppings to give your customers a customized taste of their own.

Some businesses add shaved ice or snow cones as a sideline item to their existing business. Shaved ice is very popular at ice cream parlors, smoothie bars, coffee shops, concession stands, and convenience stores.

Besides shaved ice or snow cones, there are a number of products you can sell at your business location. Try selling lemonade, soft drinks, milkshakes, pickles, ice cream, sundaes, banana splits, bagged potato chips or candy. Some businesses also offer hot items such as funnel cakes, sandwiches or pretzels.

What items you sell will depend primarily on your location, setup and size of your business. Remember, however, that the more items you sell, the more inventory and equipment you will need. The increase in items will require your employees to have more training. In our experience, we found the additional headaches do not always equal additional profits.

We tried keeping our menu simple by offering 45 shaved ice flavors and 4 hand-dipped ice cream flavors. We also offered a number of toppings, creamers, and mixers. By keeping our menu simple, customers could make their decision much easier and faster. In addition, our employees worked efficiently by keeping our business model simplified.