Wednesdays post is all about making the most of your end of season and off-seasons when running your ice cream parlor. Often people assume there's just nothing you can do to stop the bleeding that comes with the winter months; in reality, with some simple adjustments and a bit of creative thinking, you can make these fall & even winter months pretty successful as well.

So let's get started. So it's been a grind. If you've been open since February, March, April, or if you're down the shore, you've obviously opened near Memorial Day and getting to the end of the season. Question is, how do we make the most of that?

Coastline Ice Cream Parlors

If we've had a good year up to this point, we don't want to forget about these last couple of months or a couple of weeks. Depending on where you are. We will want to capitalize on this so we can take a good season to a great season. A couple of things we could do. So if you're down the shore, what happens is everybody kind of migrates back to their home after Labor Day and a lot of your customer base is gone.

But that doesn't mean there's still not still some weekends you can capitalize on. Hopefully if the weather holds out. So take advantage of those weekends. Have some specials, have some promotions, really blow out the product, maybe lower some prices, change some hours to take advantage of those last few weekends in September that you might be able to create some revenue with.

Inland Ice Cream Parlors

Offshore stores have much more opportunity as people are in the neighborhoods that the stores are in. First things first, you need to have fall specials.

In the fall, you'll see pumpkin products. You'll think spiced products lattes; things developed around coffee. As those temperatures cool, you need to take advantage of that. Whether it's ice cream, whether it's custard, whatever your product and your focal product capitalize on it with fall flavors.

Promoting Ice Cream & Custard

During Fall & Winter months, its been shown that ice cream and custard are generally the most popular frozen treats. As the flavors cool, water ice sales, ice products go down and the sales of some of those custards and ice creams go up.

Okay, so promote those items. Have events, have coloring parties, costume parties, fall parties, hay ride parties do different things that can draw customers to your store for things other than the product. Capitalize and leverage what's going on in your neighborhood and in the world. Back to school. Have back to school specials.

Community Outreach

All fall sports are starting. Get involved with these sports organizations in these programs to draw some revenue and create some marketing and advertising for your store. Get involved with the local PTAs. As parents go back to school and kids go back to school, a lot of these PTAs are hungry for content, hungry for information. Hungry to work with local businesses.

Adjusting Hours

Lastly, change your hours. It's been a grind all season. Sales are going to go down in the fall. Your hours should go down accordingly. All right, so look at your hours.Look at previous seasons to see when you draw and drew revenue and change your hours accordingly so you're not grinding for no reason.

So if you look at it, fall specials, promote the products you're going to sell on the shoulder months, which is custard and ice cream. Have some events. Leverage Back to school start a fall sports and change your hours accordingly and you could make the most of the end of your season help change a good season into a great year.