Scooping Ice Cream 101

When you have 157 pails of ice cream to keep cold you should make sure you have enough electricity to power 6 chest freezers. We use an inverter that Mike build onto our Freightliner when we are driving. When we are parked and there is no available power we use 2 Honda generators. When we have access to outside electricity Mike has made various adaptors to be sure we can plug into pretty much anywhere.

There is also a technique to storing our ice cream. When we started it seemed like a good idea to store the ice cream into categories (all chocolates in one freezer, all florescent "kids" flavours in another etc.). This is not a good idea for 2 reasons.

1. It is difficult to explain to casual staff where to find each flavour, as you simply have to know how we categorize our flavours.
2. When all the popular flavours are in one freezer that freezer is almost always open, causing the air inside the freezer to warm up a lot. This melts the most popular flavours into soup.

Our solution has been to organize the ice cream alphabetically. I know, duh!! Anyway, this means that the popular flavours are fairly evenly distributed. We store duplicate flavours underneath the open pails on top. Some day Mike would like to build an insulated holder that seals in the cold air under the lips of the open pails. This would keep the ice cream colder and would also help keep our freezers clean. It gets a bit messy when you drop a scoop of bubble gum down beside the pail onto the floor. This only happens every 20th scoop depending on the experience of the scooper ; + ).

Scooping. There are a few techniques that are important.

• Speed ~ it is important to scoop quickly and get the lids of the freezers closed as fast as possible to prevent the cold air from being exchanged with too much warm air that causes melting.
  
• Keep your wrist straight ~ on a busy day scooping can become painful, especially if the ice cream is quite hard, if you bend your wrist too much. I try to scoop mostly with my bicep, and bending my arm at the elbow. Of course the deeper the ice cream is in the pail, the more difficult this becomes.
• Build the ball in the pail, not on the cone ~ I try to make my scoops about 6 to 8 ounces ( I just eyeball it), about the size of my palm. I form the ball in the pail, when it is nice and tight I press it firmly onto the cone. If you try to form the ball on the cone often the cone breaks and it generally takes more time.
• Keep the size the same ~ this takes practise. Sometimes customers try to pressure us to make the scoop bigger. I used to feel guilty if a customer commented on my scoop being too small, but I stopped to consider that we sell a quality product & our prices & sizes are on par with other ice cream venues in our area (Dairy Queen & Marble Slab Creamery). Usually customers complain just to see if they can get something for nothing, they will generally pay full price after complaining if the alternative is to go without. I'm taking a hard stance this year; I'm not cheating anyone, and I work hard for what I make, so complainers can just cough it up or move on!
• Don't touch the cone or ice cream ~ an inexperienced scooper will often have difficulty getting the ice cream on the cone and try to use their thumb to work it on. Don't do this, no one wants to have someone stick their thumb in their ice cream! If it is difficult to lift the scoop out of the pail I usually use the cone itself to pick up the ball of ice cream. Usually you can just work the scoop under the ball and pick it up. It is also very important to wrap a napkin around the cone you are using, preventing any hand to food contact. Even if you have gloves or have just washed your hands thoroughly people don't want their food touched with another person's hands.
  
• Don't look at the line up ~ it is easy to get flustered when there is a line up. This causes a person to forget orders, charge the wrong price, give the wrong change and generally make lots of little mistakes that cost money. The less flustered or rushed I am, the better the service and the less time I waste in silly mistakes. This takes practise. Never look at the line - keep your eyes on the person in front of you.
• Quality Control ~ one of the perks of this job is that it is actually necessary for me to taste the product. I need to be able to tell people what is in each flavour and whether or not a flavour really tastes like it should (like cream soda float, it really does taste like cream soda!) I know that now that I've scooped for 17 summers I probably don't have to taste as much as I do, but hey, someone's gotta make sure we're serving up the good stuff!