This is our third year as an ice cream truck business so we have two full summer seasons to look back on. We saw worked and what we didn't. We use data to inform all of our decision making. So, every year that we go into, we approach it differently. The first year it was about starting up the business, getting into routine, figuring things out. We were really fortunate in the first year to have broken even as a new business."
Listen 🎧 : Weiss and Roedel say leveraging the tools they have on hand have helped them maintain their finances actively.
a Detroit based ice cream truck and digital media agency. Long time friends and former colleagues Victoria Roedel and Mike Weiss met as ad strategists. After losing their jobs in 2020, they decided to pursue their dream of opening a digital agency and alongside it a 53-year old Good Humor truck they would restore and modernize. The first summer in business, the business was profitable. By the second summer, they added a second truck to the fleet. Soon they would be experimenting with fall seasonal offerings to extend its business season.
By offering contactless payment options like tap to pay and mobile wallets, the duo has connected with their customers in real-time on social media and in-person in a seamless way. They've modernized the ice cream truck experience by leveraging these tools and pulling reports for insights into how they can best optimize their routes, cost of goods sold, offerings, and more. Weiss says this has helped them focus on their goal of overall profitability and not just their profit margins.
"The ice cream business in 2021, we were seeing around a 44% cost of goods sold. The donut business in the fall is closer to a 67% cost of goods sold. Now the difference there is that the average ticket is much higher. So, we're seeing a higher daily average sales than we did with the ice cream truck business. The profit margin, given that the sales volume is higher, even though the cost of goods sold is higher, the profit margin is about the same as it is when we see and sell ice cream." said Weiss "Of course, as any business, we do want to be profitable. The first year was really unsure because we had no idea what we were doing or even how to launch an ice cream truck business. So we were really lucky to break even. We saw additional pressures in 2021, like lower customer counts and flat pricing, whereas our costs were rising. So we saw a little bit less profitability in 2021 and we're reacting to that in 2022."
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