With the holiday season approaching, it’s important to spice up your menu with some soft serve flavors that will have your customers cone-ing back for more! In this article, we’re going to go over a few soft serve flavors that we think are going to be huge hits this season and will prove to be profitable for your business.
#1: PEPPERMINT
Number one on our list would have to be PEPPERMINT! One of the most popular flavors of the Christmas season, peppermint is a crowd favorite since people associate it with candy canes. While there are a few peppermint soft serve products on the market, we think the easiest way to create this flavor is by using a neutral soft serve base and then flavoring it with peppermint syrup. Here is a peppermint syrup we found that is made to be combined with soft serve mix, and here is another that can be used to flavor soft serve. If you want to jazz up the mix even more, you can add peppermint syrup to a chocolate soft serve mix to make a peppermint bark flavor!
#2: MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP
There’s something about mint and chocolate that just screams the holidays. How does soft serve that tastes like a York Peppermint Patty sound? We think that mint and chocolate go together like bread and butter, so we found this premade frozen yogurt mix that you can use in your Spaceman machine, no flavorings needed. (It’s vegan, so even our lactose-free friends can enjoy some!) If you’d rather use a neutral or flavored soft serve base and add your own syrup, this one is sugar-free and super affordable!
#3: SUGAR COOKIE
Everyone loves sugar cookies, especially the ones with the little Christmas icons on them! To join in on the fun, why not make a soft serve flavor that tastes just like those cookies?! We found this sugar cookie syrup that can easily be added to any soft serve mixture to give your mix the extra kick of sweetness that it needs. If you really want to excite your customers, you can even add in a cake-flavored vodka to make a boozy soft serve! This will be sure to bring your customers some warmth during the cold winter months. We recommend topping your sugar cookie soft serve with some rainbow non-pareil sprinkles to really give it that sugar cookie appeal.
#4: EGGNOG
One of the greatest holiday drinks of all: eggnog! Making an eggnog-flavored soft serve is the perfect way to celebrate the Christmas season. The best part of all is that this soft serve can be made non-alcoholic or boozy! There are plenty of eggnog liqueurs on the market that you can add to your soft serve mix, or you can simply add in regular eggnog mix that does not contain any alcohol. Lastly, there are eggnog-flavored syrups that you can also use, some of which contain no sugar, calories, or carbs!
No matter which flavors you choose, it’s always a good idea to stay updated on trends and listen to your customers. Take note of the soft serve flavors they enjoy, conduct polls on Instagram to learn about their preferences, and have some fun with it! Experimenting and trying new things is the enjoyable aspect of running a business.
Author’s Notes:
*While creating new soft serve flavors, please remember that concocting new flavors is not as simple as adding uncalculated proportions of liquor and syrup into your soft serve mix. The addition of alcohol, syrups, and sweeteners should be done in small amounts, and you should always check the brix level of your mix with a brix refractometer to ensure that the level is between 20 and 30 before freezing it in your machine. Additionally, modifying a soft serve mix may result in the improper ratio of stabilizers and solids which could prevent your soft serve from staying creamy or at the ideal overrun for as long as normal. It increases the likelihood of softer and icy-er products.
*Many neutral soft serve bases come with instructions on how much syrup to add to flavor the neutral mix. One neutral base that we like is Nanci’s which can be found here. Adding liquor to soft serve can also be done successfully if measured properly. Another brand you may try is made by our friends at Texas Blends. Recipes can be found on their website on how to incorporate liquor and spirits into their soft serve mix to ensure your brix level stays appropriate.
Cheers and Happy Holidays everyone!