Serving up the new ice cream season, carefully
Business is back, but safety protocols are still priority
The 2020 season for ice-cream stands still had sprinkles and waffle cones and banana splits, but one thing noticeably missing was the deep connection to the customer.
“There were no hugs last year,” said Lynn Devoe-warn of Devoe’s Rainbow Delights icecream stand in Halfmoon.
Her business, which runs as an extension of her family’s Devoe Rainbow Orchards, is a spring and summer institution for local families, and Devoewarn has developed deep bonds and friendships with the customers who rely on her ice-cream stand for sweet treats. The COVID-19 pandemic made people hesitant to visit restaurants, and it also caused a sharp decline in ice-cream stand visits. Devoewarn said her revenues were down by a third in 2020.
While ice-cream sales as a whole were up last year, those sales mostly occurred at grocery stores as part of the comfortfood cravings for at-home consumption. (Research firm IRI reported that ice-cream sales were up 13.4 percent in 2020.) Taking the time to understand how pandemic-related restrictions would impact business caused most local stands to delay seasonal openings last year.
Instead of opening in midapril, Devoe’s opened after Mother’s Day in 2020 and closed more than a month earlier than usual.
“We had to have less staff, and that made serving people slower,” Devoe-warn said. She switched to a carhop-style service, with staff taking orders and delivering to vehicles instead of customers coming up to the service window or dining inside. She operated for fewer hours a day last year, a trend she is continuing for this year.
“In most years, if you close at 9 p.m., people come five minutes to 9,” Devoe-warn said, but last year later customers were nonexistent. Together, these factors nearly licked local ice creamstands.
“Ice cream is seasonal, and the first 10 weeks are the busiest weeks,” Devoe-warn said. Bob Draiss, owner of Curry Freeze in Rotterdam, agreed. He called it “spring fever,” with people eager to leave their houses at the first stretches of warm weather, and many families stop by his stand for dessert after school events and sports games.
In 2020, Draiss opened Curry Freeze for the season on the traditional day — March 17 — but closed the next day as more details about the global shutdown emerged. He visited other ice-cream stands to learn how they were rolling with restrictions and rearranged his staffing processes and operations to transform into a drive-thru shop, reopening April 24, 2020.
“I’m responsible for the people who work here and for our customers. I have many obligations outside of my books,” said Draiss, citing last year’s 30 percent drop in revenues. Besides slower sales, he also faced increased prices on ingredients and service ware. (Curry Freeze did not offer samples of products last year.) The traffic backups caused by the drive-thru format were a nuisance to his stretch of Curry Road.
“We tried to be respectful of people in the neighborhood,” Draiss said, and opted out of drive-thru for this year, allowing people to order at one window and pick up at another for 2021.
At Moxie’s Ice Cream in Wynantskill, owner Pamela Alliemorrill, who lives in El Salvador most of the year, was not able to get back into the country at the start of the pandemic. It caused Moxie’s to open on Father’s Day weekend instead of Mother’s Day weekend last year.
“By the time I opened in midjune, everyone already understood the guidelines,” Allie-morrill said. Her stand has plenty of open space around it, social distancing was no issue. Most people stayed in their cars and the stand operated like a carhop, but the biggest change was sanitation procedures.
“We are normally super clean here, but in the past we never ever cleaned in front of the customers. It was more behind the scenes,” she said. Last season it was crucial to clean in front of customers to reassure them sanitation protocols were being followed. People are allowed to come to the service window this year, and some outdoor seating has been reinstated, but most other protocols continue.
“Because I’m seasonal and I only serve ice cream, the regulations don’t change,” Alliemorrill said.
Humpty Dumpty Ice Cream and Subs in Saratoga Springs lost 40 percent of its business in 2020, but it hired extra staff to accommodate the carhop-style operations. Owner Brenda Jennings anticipates a better season this year, “closer to normal but not back to normal,” she said.
“I think less people are hesitant. People are more relaxed and not as worried, and I think that’s because more people are vaccinated,” Jennings said. Her concern is that she will not have as many available employees to work shifts this year, as last year’s staff was comprised of college students sent away from campus to curb COVID-19 spreads.
At Curry Freeze, Draiss opened a week earlier than usual (March 10) and even in the rain, fans have been patronizing his stand.
“Maybe people see this is coming to an end,” he said. Draiss continues to make accommodations for customers who prefer to order from their cars. With only one window open for orders, customers are waiting longer to place their requests, “but people are pretty decent with the wait time,” Draiss said.
Devoe-warn is anticipating a 15 percent decline in revenue this year versus normal years, but that shows people are beginning to visit ice-cream stands again.
“I’m not as nervous this year, though people are still being cautious,” she said. It will be a few more seasons before operations are back to normal, and “there will be a percentage of the population that will never feel comfortable,” she added. While Devoe-warn is opening up her service windows, she will still accommodate visitors who feel safer ordering from their cars. If visitors pick up over the summer, she will expand hours, but she has already committed to closing in September instead of October.
It will be awhile, Devoe-warn said, before pandemic concerns melt as quick as a swirl of soft serve, but as much as she looks forward to better sales figures, she is hoping to soon dole out hugs to customers as readily as she scoops ice cream.