Cold products and winter don’t go together. When it’s cold outside, people want to stay inside where it’s warm and eat hot food and drink hot drinks. When it’s hot outside, people want to cool off with cold food and drinks. So, what can you do with cold products like milkshakes in the winter? With the right marketing strategies, you can still sell cold products during the chillier seasons. Keep reading to learn three tips for selling milkshakes during winter.
Sell Seasonal Flavors
People love food, drinks, and treats inspired by holidays and seasons. Use that to your advantage and offer holiday and seasonal milkshake flavors. Remind patrons that these flavors are only available for a limited time, which will improve demand and increase your sales.
You can also offer a warm treat to enjoy with the seasonal milkshake. For example, a peppermint-flavored milkshake would pair well with a fresh-baked Christmas cookie. They’re both seasonal, but one is warm, which may help ease guests into enjoying the colder treat despite the weather outside. This also gives you more products to sell in addition to your milkshakes, which will help boost overall revenue.
Promote on Social Media
There isn’t a large shift in how much people use technology and social media from the summer to the winter. However, with less to do outside and freezing temperatures keeping people inside, there are reasons to suspect that people will use their phones more in the winter—that means more people on social media who can learn about your store.
Promote your seasonal flavors and other unique aspects of your business on social media throughout the winter. Create a way for people to interact with social media while in your store as well. You can create a custom photo filter for your store or build a photo wall for people to take selfies with their sweet treats and post. The only limit is your imagination.
Offer Discounts
Many businesses don’t think that discounts and sales go together, especially with how inflation is affecting the ice cream industry. Sometimes, we have to compromise with our patrons and meet them where they are. In the winter, that means acknowledging that they may not want to buy a cold treat like a milkshake without an extra incentive like a discount.
You don’t need to offer a drastic discount that could affect revenue. A 20 percent discount is typically large enough to entice people without costing your business too much money. If you don’t want to offer 20 percent off every milkshake, consider keeping special seasonal flavors at full price and offering a discount for year-round flavors like cookie dough.
Selling milkshakes during the winter is challenging, but using these three tips should help you keep your sales up. If you want to expand your business to offer milkshakes and need a commercial milkshake maker, DSL can help. We provide businesses with some of the best and longest-lasting equipment on the market and are happy to give your business the same.