Thursday, June 7, 2012

What are the Most Popular Ice Cream Flavors?

Mmmm, ice cream – everyone’s favorite frozen treat! If you are considering opening up an ice cream business, there are literally hundreds of flavors of ice cream that you can provide for your customers. Anything from the exotic (a scoop of seaweed ice cream, anyone?) to the classic vanilla can be served on a cone. Knowing which ice cream flavors are the most popular will help your ice cream business succeed.

Unless you plan to have a specialty ice cream shop that serves only the weird and wonderful, you will probably want to stay away from garlic, bacon, or sauerkraut flavored ice cream. (Yes, these flavors really do exist!) Most people want to go to their local ice cream shop to get their favorite flavors they remember from child hood.

The Top 10 Most Popular Ice Cream Flavors
  1. Vanilla – A recent poll found that this all-time classic ice cream flavor is still number one by 29%. Perhaps it is because of the simplicity of it or how good it tastes with toppings, but whatever the reason, vanilla is clearly the most popular ice cream flavor.
  2. Chocolate – No big surprise here. Chocolate ice cream is still the go-to choice of most ice cream business customers.
  3. Strawberry – Once the number 3 most popular ice cream flavor, strawberry ice cream now has to share that spot with butter pecan as both flavors are the most popular ice cream flavors of about 5% of customers.
  4. Butter Pecan – Who knew? Vanilla ice cream with a sweet and crunchy twist.
  5. Neapolitan – This is what you get when you mix our top 3 favorite flavors in to one. When you can’t decide between strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate this is the perfect choice.
  6. Chocolate Chip – This is a must have flavor for your ice cream business. You can’t go wrong with the classic flavor of vanilla combined with tasty chocolate chips.
  7. Chocolate Mint Chip – Add an extra layer of cool to an already frozen dessert with mint chips in either chocolate or vanilla ice cream.
  8. Cookie Dough – Everyone loves to eat the cookie dough before it gets baked and in this flavor of ice cream you not only get tasty vanilla but the added bonus of little balls of cookie dough.
  9. Coffee – The perfect pick-me-up on a hot summer day.
  10. Rocky Road – Chocolate ice cream, tiny marshmallows, and crunchy walnuts combine to make this ice cream the last on the top 10 most popular ice cream flavors.

There are many more flavors you could offer at your ice cream business and knowing which ones will actually sell is part of being a savvy business owner. Which flavors are most popular in your area is just one of the bits of research that should go into your business plan before you invest in your new venture. An ice cream business plan template will do the necessary research for you and give you the tools you need to help your ice cream business succeed.

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