The world of ice cream is nothing if it is not heavily seasonal. Honestly, we used to be closed from November through February. Recently, however, we decided to give it a go and be open year round. We still have to pay bills, after all -- open or not. Our breakdown is something like this. With our new venue and indoor seating, I expect the winter months to pick up, though I have no clue how that will play out just yet.
January & February -- 5% of annual sales
March & April -- 15%
May through August -- 60%
September & October -- 15%
November & December -- 5%
I have two people who are with me year-round. Until now, their hours have been reduced during winter, mostly because we have been a walk-up window operation. With our new venue and indoor seating, I expect the dynamics of this will change, so who knows? I only hire seasonal help, otherwise. All of my team are high school or college age and only available during my busiest of times. They all work part-time -- 3 or 4 shifts (20 ish hours) a week regularly. But none of them wants full-time work since they have lives and activities. A benefit of hiring for only 3-4 part-time shifts a week is that when the inevitable time-off requests come in, I can easily move people around to cover those. In 10+ years, I've never had to reject a time-off request. My employees gladly cover as needed because they know that when they need time off there will be no worries or complaints.
Turnover and training almost never a problem when I'm gearing up for a new season. It helps that they make $16/hour base pay plus their prorated share of the weekly tip pool, which averages out to around $10/hour each during the busy season. Trust me, none of them are complaining about how much they pull in for a part-time summer ice cream gig. Part time work with us nets them as much, if not more, than full time in most other places. Ha. This year, I'm only going to have to hire one new team member as the rest are returning from last year. Even better, I get to work through a pool of siblings and friends who want to work for me when they are old enough to do so.
Besides seasonal staffing considerations, there is of course the seasonal cash flow consideration. For the first 10 years of Piper's existence I would set aside a certain percentage of busy season sales to use to pay bills during the slow months. This worked pretty well, though it was not good for quieting my worrying brain that loves to wake me up at 3am to review potential disasters! Ugh. Two years ago, I secured a couple of lines of credit that I now use to tide me through the slow months, as needed. Then, when the money is rolling in, my first priority is to pay those off or at least down significantly before the next series of slow months. Sure, that costs me some money in the form of interest, but it allows me to sleep peacefully through the night now.
It has taken years to get to this point but I think I've finally figured this seasonal business out.
Chip A.
Square Expert & Innovator and member of the Square Champions group. (But NOT a Square employee, just a seller like you)
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