No restaurant has infinite amounts of room in the kitchen. This means you have to be strategic about what pieces of equipment you bring in. Equipment with only one purpose, such as a slushy machine, can seem like a waste of space in this limited environment, so many restaurant professionals don’t invest in them. Serving specialties like frozen drinks can benefit your business in numerous ways, though. Therefore, a slushy machine is something you should consider. Keep reading to learn five cold reasons why your restaurant needs a slushy machine.
Expand Your Menu Through Slushy Machine
It takes lots of time and effort to build a menu that your staff can perfect and your customers will love. Changing that menu can require even more time and effort, so most businesses avoid making changes. But if you want to bring new customers in and help your loyal customers find new favorites, you sometimes have to make changes. An easy way to make changes without completely redoing your menu is to add new drinks.
You may think that adding new drinks to your menu can still be complicated. After all, you have to hunt down fresh recipes and all the ingredients they call for. But adding drinks can be easy with a slushy machine. You can serve frozen versions of the drinks already on your menu, whether sodas or cocktails. Alternatively, you can create a new line of frozen drinks with just syrup and ice. Slushie syrup is easy to find in the store if you want to expand your menu without too much hassle. But you can also make your own if you want more control over the flavors and ingredients. Either way, you’ll expand your menu and please your loyal customers while drawing in new people.
Make More Money
Even if your business is doing well financially, it never hurts to make more money. And if you’re struggling financially, more money is exactly what you need. Adding slushies and other frozen drinks to your menu can cost money upfront when you buy the equipment and supplies. But it can help you make that much-needed money back.
Everyone orders drinks when they eat at a restaurant. And while it’s typical to charge a few dollars for prepackaged drinks like soda and beer, you can charge more for drinks you make yourself. Frozen drinks can fetch an even higher price. If you create your own syrups and offer specialty or seasonal drinks, you’ll be able to rake in those higher prices relatively quickly, making more money for your restaurant.
Make Things Easier for Your Staff
Easily expanding your menu and making more money sounds great, but you’re probably concerned about the extra time and effort it will take your staff to make special drinks. If your business is short on staff or your kitchen space limits the number of staff members you can have, you may feel like you can’t possibly add more equipment and hire more people to manage that equipment.
Luckily, slushy machines are easy to manage. You can add the syrup and ice during a slower part of the day and allow the machine to keep it mixed and cold for hours on end. Then, all the servers have to do is fill a glass with the sweet frozen slush and take it to the table. No extra work is necessary. Bigger machines even allow you to have several flavors on tap at once, so you can offer various flavors at one time with no extra effort or time from your staff. High-quality slush machines will even have indicator lights that will alert your staff if the mix gets too low. As a result, they won’t even have to spend time checking it.
Bring In More Business
As we mentioned when we went over expanding your menu, new and novelty menu items can bring new customers into your business who may never have visited before. While you may already have lots of loyal customers who enjoy your restaurant, you’ll reach a wider audience by bringing new people to your business.
While other menu additions or changes can still draw people in, slushies are popular with all ages and give you many options. You can sell traditional slushies to children who want a sweet treat, frozen coffees to students, and icy alcoholic drinks to adults. Frozen coffees and icy alcoholic drinks are popular regardless of seasonal changes, so you’ll be bringing in more people year-around by adding a slushie machine. From there, some new people may become returning customers because they enjoy your drinks.
Get a Great Return on Investment
You may like all these benefits but still worry that a slushy machine is too big of an investment for your restaurant right now. Luckily, slushy machines have a great return on investment (ROI). As we mentioned above, you can charge more for frozen drinks, especially if you mix different syrups to make unique flavors, and that means higher profit margins. It may take a little while to expand your menu and to bring in new business with your machine. However, it shouldn’t take too long to have people flooding your restaurant with requests for different frozen beverages. Once you get people hooked on your slushies, you’ll be making plenty of money and have a great return on your investment. Newer slushie machines are also easy to maintain, so maintenance costs won’t suck up that ROI either.
Your restaurant needs a slushy machine because slushies will allow you to expand your menu, make more money, and bring in more business. The machines are also easy to use and provide a great ROI. If you’ve decided that you want to bring all these benefits to your business, then invest in a commercial Slurpee machine now. DSL is proud to offer high-quality machines in various sizes so that you can get a slushy machine that will fit in your commercial kitchen regardless of how much room it has. If you’re not sure what slushy machine you need or are interested in any of our other commercial kitchen equipment, we’ll be happy to talk to you and help.
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