Parlour tricks: how to pep up the ice cream fixture

This article is part of our Ice Cream Report 2015.

Ice cream parlours are happy places. Yet in the supermarkets little is done to differentiate the ice cream aisle from the rest of the store. Retailers are missing a trick, says David Martin, joint MD of retail design agency M Worldwide.

“If you take it out of the supermarket context, ice cream is full of positivity,” he says. “But in the supermarkets it’s never really been given the full treatment. The most it’s ever got is supplier led gondola end freezers. The ice cream fixture could be so much more.”

So we asked Martin to put his money where his mouth is and show us what retailers and suppliers could be doing to pep up the ice cream fixture in store. Here’s what they came up with…

Concept one: the big night in

The frozen food aisle often seems like an afterthought at the far end of stores. This concept aims to integrate ice cream into shoppers’ journey around a store by merchandising it with other products typically consumed on those ‘big nights in’ with the family.

“Ice cream goes with lots of things,” says Martin. “Our idea was to bring it together with other products, such as pastries or seasonal products in the summer, and make it more of an integral part of the store. There’s so much more mileage in ice cream and this is about realising that.”

That’s not all. The addition of a self-serve ice cream machine aims to make the shopping experience more interactive, allowing shoppers to make their own ice creams by choosing their own flavour mixes, chunks and sprinkles.

Concept two: ice cream world

Waitrose calls it the ‘grazing’ concept: the integration of food service into supermarkets. In recent years it’s been trialling wine bars and seating areas in their delicatessen and bakery sections to increase the profitability of its stores. So why not do the same with the ice cream fixture?

“Ice cream should be immersive and interactive,” says Martin. “This is about making it so, with the facility to customise ice cream and an area to sit down and eat it in store. The ice cream world concept could even be branded, with Unilever or one of the other big players taking over the area.”

Concept three: self-service kiosk

What better way to keep the kids on their best behaviour while you do the shopping than bribing them with the promise of an ice cream, made to their very own specifications, at the end of the journey around the store?

Of course, this about more than offering shoppers a handy way of bribing the kids: it’s about offsetting falling volume sales through larger stores with higher value products and services. What’s more, this kiosk is self-service, keeping operational costs down.

“We see these sorts of self-service machines in coffee and self-service salad counters where you pay for the pot and then fill it up yourself, so there’s no reason why this couldn’t work operationally,” says Martin. “The idea was to build this into the front of the store and increase shopper dwell time.”

In partnership with

By understanding how shoppers think, feel and behave – today and in the future – M Worldwide works with leading brands to develop omnichannel brand experiences, environments, and service design that expose shoppers to a wider range of products, influence behaviours, drive sales, build loyalty, and increase advocacy and word-of-mouth.http://www.mworldwide.co.uk/