Reply to: Selling ice cream

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Cash businesses are a top opportunity for a scam though. My charming ex-brother in law runs a string of mobile discos - he once bragged to me about how any gig for which he gets paid cash gets marked as "cancelled" in his diary and never happened - only those for which he is paid by cheque are declared. Farming used to be famous for it, too.

[Bagpuss]

I know someone who bought one of these
http://bicycleandukulele.files.wordp...6/img_1128.jpg

and makes a fortune selling Ice Creams up and down Blackpool prom during the 'summer'

[Peoplesoft bloke]

<snip>....So let’s try an optimistic calculation, at say 2 ice-creams / minute at £2.50 per ‘99’, over 16 hours. <snip>?

16 hours? Are we even getting that much daylight at this time of year?

Even 8 hours would be pushing it a bit for people's leisure time.

Edit : I hate that - beaten to it again.

[tim123]

I splashed out and bought a ‘99’ from an ice-cream van yesterday – a ‘double’ costing £3.50 and was wondering how much profit these vans could potentially make a day.

The queue at the van was steady and I guess it was serving around 1 or 2 ice-creams a minute. So let’s try an optimistic calculation, at say 2 ice-creams / minute at £2.50 per ‘99’, over 16 hours. I imagine the cost of the ‘99’ ingredients are f-all (a big tub of ice-cream powder mixed with water, and chilled?), but let’s say the vendor is also being ripped off and it’s 50p per ‘99’. So £4 profit per minute, £240 per hour and £3800 a (good) day. Clearly there are a lot of other costs, including paying the local Mafiosi to defend your patch, quiet times, water, parking tickets, etc, so what’s a more realistic estimate of how much an ice cream man could coin out of greedy people with more money than sense per day?

You aren't going to be selling 2 per minute for 16 hours. For a lot of the day you are going to be driving around, looking for customers ,selling one or two per hour

tim

[TriggerHippy]

I was just thinking ...

Women are like ice cream.

The tastier they are, the more likely they are to give you a terrible headache.

[BoredBloke]

I broke into an ice cream van last night.

I got away with hundreds and thousands.

So it was you - there was only 99 left by the time I got there. I thought it was going to be Fab but some screwball beat me to it. I thought that I could go out and buy myself a feast but it wasn't worth it so I split

IGMC

[TriggerHippy]

I got just one cornetto for me.

What's Clint Eastwood's favourite ice cream?

Magnum.

[TimberWolf]

I broke into an ice cream van last night.

I got away with hundreds and thousands.

I got just one cornetto for me.

[TriggerHippy]

I broke into an ice cream van last night.

I got away with hundreds and thousands.

[Grinder]

Our local one here plays "yankee doodle dandy"; might not go down too well in the arab countries.

[ace00]

And the latest from CNN 'an Iraqi spokesperson has refused to confirm or deny a Fatwah was issued regarding a 'Mr Whippy' of Terhan. The ice cream vendor was found in his mobile Mosque this morning surrounded by hundreds and thousands, sprinkles. Police say he topped himself'

I think you should sell it on the internet like its 1999

[Payload Bollington]

I recently got ripped off buying an ice cream off some Indian dude in Gibraltar. It was called a raspberry mivvi - I paid the guy 3 pounds for it and when I got out the shop I saw on the wrapper that it said not to be sold individually. I unwrapped it and immediately saw that this ice had been defrosted and refrozen many times over. Not wanting to get botulism and feeling understandably more than a little pissed I returned and splatted the now half melted ice all over the guy's shop counter. Lucky I didn't choose to cram it in his frikkin face.

[EternalOptimist]

An IceCream van which gives the impression of being a Mobile Mosque - my goodness - the Ice-Creams will fly out- as they say in the trade.

And the latest from CNN 'an Iraqi spokesperson has refused to confirm or deny a Fatwah was issued regarding a 'Mr Whippy' of Terhan. The ice cream vendor was found in his mobile Mosque this morning surrounded by hundreds and thousands, sprinkles. Police say he topped himself'

[AlfredJPruffock]

Start the ice cream van biz over here; I've only seen 1. 25 degrees even in the winter; its 40 now. You may have to 'arabise' the usual crappy tune otherwise you may just confuse the locals. Hmmm, that might not work either as you may be mistaken for a mobile mosque with a whirly onion dome. And you could use camel milk to reel the punters in.
Anyhow, there's the idea, someone else sort out the detail.

An IceCream van which gives the impression of being a Mobile Mosque - my goodness - the Ice-Creams will fly out- as they say in the trade.

[BoredBloke]

It was on the radio this morning that the industry is in decline with only 5000 vans left, there having been 20000 10 years ago.

If its that good a business, you would expect it to be booming!

The chief reason given was competition with supermarket ice cream prices.

I didn't say it's a good business - what I said was that it can give big profits and it is easy to abuse the system as it's cash only. The trick is to get the good places to sell from - summer fairs etc where you park up and sell till the stock runs out. All that driving around hits the bottom line Obviously winter months tend to be a bit thin!