By Rieva Lesonsky
A new breed of frozen sweets goes beyond the ice cream sandwich
We’ve written about ice cream frequently here on TrendCast, perhaps because it’s my favorite dessert. But since most of America agrees with me (collectively we consume about 1.5 billion gallons of ice cream a year and spend about $14 billion doing so), ice cream remains a great entrepreneurial opportunity.
This time the focus is on ice cream sandwiches. But these aren’t the kinds of sandwiches you got from the ice cream truck or grocery store. Think of ice cream sandwiched between two freshly baked cookies. A number of these cookie/ice cream stores are cropping up—and here in Southern California where I live (and where many food trends are born), they’re really going strong.
Diddy Riese has been selling deluxe ice cream sandwiches in Westwood, California, home to UCLA, for more than 30 years. Some new chains are now trying to establish a foothold. In my city of Irvine alone there’s Cookie Connection (a small California chain), Stax Cookie Bar, Cream (an expanding franchise) and likely others I haven’t heard about yet. CoolHaus ice cream creations can be found in California, New York and Texas, sold both in stores and from their ice cream trucks.
But it’s not just about cookies. Think about what else you can make an ice cream sandwich out of. Snow Monster is sandwiching their ice cream between freshly baked large macarons. r you could make ice cream sandwiches out of donuts, waffles, cinnamon rolls or pop tarts. BuzzFeed offers recipes for those creations (and more).
As this shows you, there are endless ways to feed America’s ice cream habit. You can buy a franchise, open a store, sell ice cream from a truck or cart/kiosk, or add it to your restaurant’s menu. The only limit is your imagination.
Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media and custom content company focusing on small business and entrepreneurship. Email Rieva at rieva@smallbizdaily.com, follow her on Google+ and Twitter.com/Rieva.
Photo Courtesy: Cream
