Americans love to consume sweet, cold treats, and frozen treats are often ice cream, gelato, frozen yogurt, and similar goodies. A cold dessert may be most popular during the warm summer months, but year-round, Americans are trying out a frozen dessert or two. There is always the classic ice cream, both soft and hard serve varieties, which dates back to the early 1900s. Such ice cream can be eaten in custom cups or on waffle cones, but there are some other frozen treat varieties out there too, such as gelato. Gelato cups can be stocked in any ice cream parlor that sells this creamy, cold treat, and gelato cups re totally convenient for any customer. Ice cream cups and cones, gelato cups, plastic spoons, and more are some of the supplies that any responsible shop owner will have on hand. What are some of the trends for eating cold treats today, and the varieties of frozen desserts? Any shop owner should know what’s out there so they can stock up on gelato cups, spoons, straws, and more as needed.
Americans and Frozen Treats Today
Regular ice cream is arguably the most standard and popular among frozen treats in the United States, but others are making for good competition. Today, around 90% of all American households indulges in a sweet and frozen treat. What is more, the NPD Group has determined that in any given two-week span of time, 40% of Americans, many tens of millions of people, will have ice cream or a similar treat. The average American, meanwhile, will eat about 28.5 servings of ice cream per year, and June has proven itself as the most popular month for producing ice cream.
Just how much is being made? Every year, about 1.5 billion gallons of ice cream of all different flavors is made, and this means that around 9% of all dairy produced on American farms is used for making ice cream. Gelato, frozen sherbet, frozen custard, and more, meanwhile, may have some slightly different ingredients, such as more or less milkfat, cream, eggs, sugar, and more. In fact, frozen yogurt often has healthy, edible bacteria colonies mixed in to enhance flavor, and frozen sherbet is often fruit-based.
Ways to Eat
There is no wrong way to eat ice cream, but some customers may have different preferences on how they eat their frozen treats. This is something for ice cream parlor owners to bear in mind. Ice cream may be eaten with a classic waffle cone, a mildly sweet, dry cone that holds the ice cream and can itself be eaten. Many people love this classic look, and it’s popular on image-sharing platforms, too. The potential issue is the mess. Even if the ice cream does not fall off the cone, melting ice cream may drip, and a cone does not make for good storage for leftovers. Some customers won’t be happy about the mess potential, so instead, they may opt for paper cups. In this case, a cup will contain any potential messes, and what’s more, the customer can stir around ice cream with their spoon to mix flavors and condiments if they like. On top of that, the customer has a ready-made container for storing their ice cream in the freezer later. This makes cups ideal for leftovers.
Similar treats such as gelato, meanwhile, require gelato cups to eat. Gelato is fairly similar to ice cream, but it’s somewhat creamier and would not hold a shape well on an ice cream cone. This treat is always eaten in gelato cups with plastic spoons, and something similar may be said for frozen custard or sherbet, or frozen yogurt. Cups, spoons, and straws are the best bet for these desserts.
A store owner will have both waffle cones and paper cups, spoons, and straws for customers where ice cream is concerned, since different customers may prefer one or the either. Once other items like gelato are added, the right supplies for those can be bought, too. And of course, ice cream machines should be flushed with water, then cleaned out and scrubbed after every day of use to clear out leftover food. A user may have to refer to the manual for taking them apart for washing.
