As summer concludes and the cool breeze of autumn greets us, ice cream and dessert shops know it’s time to prepare for the off-season. To maintain consistent profitability, it’s important to keep up with what customers want, and make it prominent on your menus. Fortunately, Otter has the scoop on what today’s eaters crave in their desserts – and what they’re ready to pay for. With this countdown of 2023’s highest-profit items for ice cream & dessert shops, your business can stay fruitful all year long!
Remember: profitability isn’t just about how many items you can sell. Successful owners – especially in the ice cream & dessert business – know that a balance must be struck between cost and revenue. The American ice cream industry may be worth a cool $128 billion by 2028, but competition and margins are fierce. To keep your business healthy, be sure that some – or all – of these sweets have a home on your menu.
High-Profit Dessert Item #6: Vegan Ice Cream
Over the past decade or so, veganism has become a major cultural force in the North American food industry. Now, even something that was once an icon of dairy – the humble ice cream cone – is rapidly turning plant-based. New developments in flavor and texture engineering allow vegan manufacturers to create delicious ice cream… minus the cream! These innovations have helped many ice cream parlors cater to customers with dietary restrictions, expanding their audiences – and sales.
It’s not just shop owners that like vegan ice cream, either. Eaters have indulged in this trend to the tune of $437 million, with the non-dairy dessert industry growing each year. Vegan ice cream has some additional advantages over the usual kind, too. Without dairy-based ingredients, these desserts have a far longer shelf life than traditional ice cream, reducing owners’ resupply costs. Creating vegan ice cream also allows owners to bypass dairy fees entirely, strengthening profit margins on production. Vegan or not, this ice cream is excellent for revenue!
High-Profit Dessert Item #5: Real Fruit Ice Cream
Wait – didn’t we just discuss plant-based desserts? Don’t be mistaken: real fruit ice cream certainly contains fresh fruit, but it’s more than just a play for health. In fact, it’s one of the most popular ice cream trends of the 2020s! Real fruit ice cream is made by whipping the usual ingredients with lush produce and air in a specialized machine. This process makes the dessert ultra-soft, extremely cool, and delightfully refreshing, suitable for all customers’ palates. In fact, real fruit ice cream is so popular that it’s been promoted in national news publications.
The genius of real fruit ice cream is in its customization potential. As a mixed dessert, you’re never limited to a single set of ingredients when making it, reducing your fixed costs. Savvy owners rotate their menus often to accommodate seasonal fruits, which can be done easily with a menu management solution. This lets you build unique product lines and gain competitive advantages, strengthening your brand in the local ice cream market. Through the price of a single machine, your business can make customers melt for real fruit ice cream!
High-Profit Dessert Item #4: Alcohol-Infused Ice Cream
For those who wish “rum raisin” was slightly more literal, alcohol-based ice cream has steadily gained popularity during this decade. The trend started atop the Empire State Building, where tourists could order boozy variations of their favorite flavors. Now, alcoholic ice cream is available in “barlors” nationwide, and expected to be worth $1.6 billion within 10 years. The actual alcohol content in these desserts varies, but one thing’s for sure: customers enjoy eating their favorite spirits as much as they do drinking them!
Alcohol-infused ice cream is fantastic for profit: customers know high-quality liquor has an associated cost, and they’ll happily pay it. The formulation of most alcoholic ice creams are also designed to get you the most out of a single bottle. By using high-quality spirits from local bars or distilleries, you can open a strong revenue channel and strengthen community bonds. Flavors similar to limoncello, tequila, and chardonnay are likely already on your menu, so why not punch them up? It’s well worth popping a cork over.
High-Profit Dessert Item #3: Co-Branded Desserts
If one major trend defined desserts in 2023, it was definitely co-branding. Maybe you saw a carton of Dr. Bombay’s – endorsed by Snoop Dogg – in your supermarket’s freezer section. Perhaps, after seeing the movie, you grabbed a scoop of Barbie-themed ice cream before you went back for Oppenheimer. You might have even come across one of those creepy Grimace Shake videos that took over TikTok this summer. No matter what crossed over with desserts this year, it’s clear: customers have a sweet tooth for their favorite brands.
Co-branding is hardly a new innovation in the world of food, but it’s now a major force in dessert marketing. Dessert shops that partner with established brands gain strong appeal to a variety of target audiences. This makes it easier to promote certain items, and gives customers more incentive to purchase them. Even if your business can’t book Barbie or Snoop Dogg, it certainly can reach out to local brands for support. Cross-promoting with community influencers gives your shop a critical edge – and makes every dessert you sell even sweeter.
High-Profit Dessert Item #2: Croissants
They’re light, fluffy, and arguably the king of pastries in the modern era. Croissants aren’t just a cute baked good anymore – they’re a multibillion-dollar business, with sales growing exponentially every quarter. New croissant variations seem to pop up every day: filled with baked apples, shaped into a cube, and much more. These different forms of croissants are extremely successful on patisserie menus globally, and help dessert shop owners generate consistent profit.
The secret to the success of croissants isn’t exactly a well-guarded one. As a rather simple form of pastry, croissants can be reworked endlessly without losing their iconic flavor and texture. They’re also extremely cost-effective, with their primary ingredients – eggs, flour, butter, and water – being kitchen staples. It’s easy to work croissants around other ingredients you’re interested in, and doing so increases your recipes’ appeal to customers. Croissants are a great cost-cutting measure for the mindful baker, and one that eaters can’t get enough of.
High-Profit Dessert Item #1: Luxury Ice Cream
Americans have been eating ice cream for a few centuries now, and after a while it starts to get tedious. The low-price end of the dessert industry is sagging, and customers are now willing to pay more for better sweets. Cheap, poor-quality ice cream isn’t popular with health-conscious demographics like Millennials and Gen Z, but fresher, gourmet desserts definitely are. Luxury ice cream has become dominant in the global dessert marketplace, making it critical for sweet shops to pursue.
Today’s top ice cream parlors brand themselves as “gelaterias”, and serve artisanal items like affogato and sorbet. These desserts are perceived as more nutritious than traditional ice cream, and are on-track to earn $9 billion by 2027. Dessert shop owners are now in a rare, fortunate position: your customers want to pay more! Don’t leave them unsatisfied. Even if you’re not able to craft fresh gelato every day, countless suppliers across the nation are. Form powerful connections with them to get luxury ice cream on your menus, and reap the benefits of doing so!
Put the flavor of profit on your dessert menu!
As a dessert shop maestro, you know margins can be tough, and every bit of revenue helps. By adding some of the items shown above to your menu, you’ll gain a variety of sustainable ways to keep sales strong. The trendiness of each item will also give your shop a boost in popularity (and ideally some love on social media), increasing revenue even more! With a timely selection of dishes and the right way of managing orders, earning profit from desserts can be easy. And what’s sweeter than that…?
