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Does anyone do softserve ice cream in their theatres?

We are considering it for the drive-in, as there is no ther place to get ice cream in the town.

One of the biggest drawbacks to soft serve is the machine. Trying to train a 16 year old kid NOT to loose any of the parts while breaking it down to clean would be a chore.

Nothing I hate worse than watching a kid take a plastic fork to the O-rings!!

Because the machine must be broken down every night, you'd have to be able to justify wasting the mix in the barrel.

The more we look at it... Frozen Novelties seem to be the better way to go. The distributors around here will provide the freezers for free if you sell enough of the product.

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Barry Floyd
Floyd Entertainment Group
Lebanon, Tennessee

Stardust Drive-In Theatre
Watertown, Tennessee

I'd opt for a good ice cream bar rather than soft serve or hand-dipped ice cream cones. The speed, convenience, and minimal wasted product win out for me. We serve bon bons, crunch bon bons and about 6 types of Hagaan Daz ice cream bars. We used to serve Ben and Jerry's too, but the distribution contract moved to another distrib in are area and they are too flakey for us.

Barry, I'll confirm that "pain in the a**" factor. We sold milkshakes for a summer, and breaking down/sanitizing that machine along with the sales required a whole dedicated staff member. Now, you'd do more sales at the drive-in, but will it be worth it? Machines are pricey....

We had soft serve for awhile but changed back to ice cream bars. It wasn't so much the cleaning of the machine that caused the switch as much as a few spoiling it for the many. Some kids would overflow their cups and just walk away and leave the mess there. We would always have to pull someone to go over and clean the mess. I guess we could have moved the machine to the counter if it were missed to any great extent. But it wasn't so we didn't.