Guides
Comparing ice cream shop locations by season, foot traffic, and the one question that decides it
Ice cream shop locations worth comparing, as a table: fifteen site types, the hour each one lives on, the winter each one has, and the question that decides it.
What to take away
- Ice cream shop locations compare better as a set of questions than as a ranking. Fifteen site types are set out below, each with a named real example, the hour it lives on, its winter, and the single question that most often decides it.
- Two columns explain most of the variationwhen the site is busy, and whether anyone is there in the cold months.
- The type tells you what to go and count. It does not tell you the answer; the pavement does.
How to read the table
Each row names a type of site, a real place that fits it, the hour it lives on, what its winter looks like, and the question to answer by standing there. There are no scores.
Site types by hour and winter
Location type
- Beach or boardwalk
- Warm afternoons into evening
- Lakefront or riverside path
- Warm weekends
- Tourist old town
- All day in season
- Small-town main street
- Weekend evenings in summer
- City neighborhood corner
- After dinner on warm evenings
- Next to a park with evening use
- Warm evenings and weekends
The hour it lives on
- Beach or boardwalk
- None; strip empties
- Lakefront or riverside path
- Thin; walkers persist
- Tourist old town
- Depends on locals
- Small-town main street
- Real but small
- City neighborhood corner
- Best of the lot
- Next to a park with evening use
- Weather-bound
Its winter
- Beach or boardwalk
- Lakefront or riverside path
- Tourist old town
- Small-town main street
- City neighborhood corner
- Next to a park with evening use
A score would be a claim about a street this page has never seen, and the field method for counting a candidate is the only thing that produces one.
| Location type, with a named example | The hour it lives on | Its winter | The question that decides it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beach or boardwalk: Santa Monica Pier, California | Warm afternoons into evening; the pier fills from mid-morning to sunset | None; the strip empties | Can you carry the rent through the empty months, or close without breaching the lease? |
| Lakefront or riverside path: Chicago Lakefront Trail | Warm weekends; about 18 miles of path along Lake Michigan | Thin; walkers persist | Is there parking or a path that brings people past the door, rather than straight to the water? |
| Tourist old town: Salem, Massachusetts | All day in season; October is Salem's crush | Depends on whether locals live there | Do residents walk here in the evening, or only visitors by day? |
| Small-town main street: Main Street, Stowe, Vermont | Weekend evenings in summer; ski weekends in winter | Real but small: pints and cakes | Does the street have life after the shops close? |
| City neighborhood corner: Hawthorne Boulevard, Portland, Oregon | After dinner on every warm evening | Best of the lot: regulars, take-home | Do families here walk, or drive to everything? |
| Park with evening use: Dolores Park, San Francisco | Warm evenings and weekends; the slope fills on weekend afternoons | Weather-bound | Is the park used after work, or only on Sunday afternoons? |
| Playground or sports fields: Cooperstown, New York in tournament weeks | After practice and matches | Dead when the season ends | When does the league finish, and what replaces it? |
| Cinema or theater district: Broadway, New York | Before and after shows; curtains at 7 or 8 p.m. | Steady if the venue runs all year | Do people linger after the show, or go straight to the car? |
| Business district: Midtown Manhattan | Weekday afternoons | Dead at weekends; worse in summer holidays | Is there anyone on this street on a Saturday? |
| Shopping mall: Mall of America, Bloomington, Minnesota | Mall hours, all weather | Flat, with holiday peaks | What hours and fees does the mall impose, and can a maker operate there? |
| Transit hub: Grand Central Terminal, New York | Commuter peaks | Steady but rushed | Do commuters stop, or is the sale a grab-and-go that suits soft serve better? |
| College or school area: State College, Pennsylvania | Term-time afternoons | Wrong way round: empty in July | Can you survive the summer break, which is your peak elsewhere? |
| Farm or orchard destination: Apple Hill, El Dorado County, California | Weekend days in harvest season | Closed with the farm | Is the destination's season your season? |
| Highway or road stop: Iowa 80 Truckstop, Walcott, Iowa | Travel days and holidays | Depends on the route | Is the stop a place people get out of the car for? |
| Food hall or market stall: Reading Terminal Market, Philadelphia | Market hours, open year round | Whatever the hall's is | What does the operator charge, and can the pitch carry a display case? |
Using the table on a real candidate
Take the row that fits your candidate and answer its question honestly. If you cannot, go and stand there at the right hour. Then move on to the building test and the lease clauses, because a type that passes its question can still fail on power, heat rejection or a permitted-use clause.
Deciding a candidate site
Does the row's question pass honestly?
move to building test and lease clauses
stand there at the right hour
Midtown Manhattan fails the Saturday question, and Grand Central Terminal fails the grab-and-go one, before any lease clause is read.
Some types can be counted from a desk, in part: the mall and the food hall publish hours and fees, and the U.S. Small Business Administration: SBA Business Guide sets out the general market research a lender expects to see. The rest are counted on foot.
A seasonal boardwalk pitch typically runs $2,000 to $8,000 a month in most U.S. markets, and the season may last four months. A mall cart typically runs $1,500 to $6,000 a month plus a percentage of sales.
A food hall stall typically runs $1,500 to $4,500 a month plus a percentage of sales, and its license often runs one year.
The types with no winter
Beach, boardwalk, farm destination and playground are seasonal businesses. Santa Monica Pier, the Ocean City boardwalk in Maryland, Apple Hill in El Dorado County and a Cooperstown ballfield go quiet in the cold.
Seasonal site requirements
- Can close in cold months
- Staff up quickly in spring
- Keep team through short season
- Lease allows closing
- Recruit and train seasonal crew yearly
They suit an operator who can close in the cold months, staff up quickly in spring, and keep a team through a short season.
Whether you can close depends on the lease. Whether you can staff up depends on how you recruit and train a seasonal crew every year from scratch.
The types with a real winter
The city neighborhood corner and the small-town main street are the year-round builder's sites. A corner on Portland's Hawthorne Boulevard and a main street like Stowe's trade through January; a pier kiosk in Santa Monica does not.
Year-round builder site traits
- Smaller summer
- Winter pints and cakes
- Regulars
- Children's parties
- Rewards a maker with a following
Their summer is smaller and their winter has pints, cakes, regulars and children's parties. They reward a maker with a following, and they are the sites where the broader plan for growing beyond the counter has the most to work with.
The types that look busy and are not yours
Business districts and transit hubs are full of people at the wrong hour. Midtown Manhattan at noon and Grand Central Terminal at 8 a.m. look like crowds.
The people are going somewhere, in daylight, on a weekday. That is coffee traffic, and it is soft-serve or grab-and-go traffic at best. A batch-made gelato counter needs people with time, and those two types have none.
What every row shares
Any type: the space must carry the operation and satisfy the authority. State retail food code sets fit-out requirements. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration: State Retail and Food Service Codes and Regulations directory names your state's agency.
The U.S. Department of Justice: ADA Guide for Small Businesses covers federal accessibility obligations for an existing building. A boardwalk kiosk step counts as much as a main-street one.
The framework behind all of this sets out the three terms, catchment, capture and carry, that every row above is really about.
Common questions
Which type is most profitable?
None, in the abstract. Return depends on the count at the right hour, the rent through the wrong months, and what the building costs to make ready. Two beach kiosks can sit on opposite sides of the line because one lease allows winter closure and one does not.
Should a first shop be a seasonal type or a year-round type?
A year-round type is more forgiving of a first winter, because there is someone to sell to while you learn. A seasonal type is simpler to run but harder to survive if the summer is wet.
How do I know what the winter looks like before I have traded one?
Count it in the cold, ask the neighboring businesses what their quietest month is like, and believe them.
