Designing your ice cream shop menus to increase sales: Top Ideas & Tips

Tempting frozen dessert is all we need at times, no matter what the season!

And there’s always that one favorite ice cream shop that wins our hearts with all it has on offer!

But is it just the sweetmeats that get us all excited? Nope!

Even before walking in, there are the menu boards, posters, and billboards advertising the outlet offers that catch our attention.

In this blog, I’ve got you some ‘drool-worthy’ ideas on what makes your ice cream shop menu design the perfect hit!

5 irresistible design ideas & templates for your ice cream shop menu

Get ready to scoop up some inspiration with our list of 5 irresistible design ideas for your ice cream shop menu.

#1. Rainbow of flavors: the colorful ice cream menu

Visuals are always the first attractor.

An attractively designed ice cream menu, with a variety of colors, can be a powerful tool in drawing customers to your shop. Particularly, ice cream shops receive a large number of young customers between the ages of seven to seventeen. Children, as we know, enjoy a blast of colors and often their decisions are swayed by big bold texts, or tempting images of flavours.

Pickcel’s digital menu board app has all the tools that are needed to create a perfectly mouthwatering design, including templates like the one above (see image).

Perks of Pickcel’s Digital Menu Board:

• Fully customizable! Change the price currency, add QR codes, edit the text and background colors, add a logo for branding, and much more.

• Display real-time order updates on screen, and make wait-time entertaining by showing news or media alongside your menu with our 60+ content apps & platform integrations.

• Cloud-based software, allowing users the flexibility to update their ice cream parlour menu in real-time, and from anywhere.

#2 The ‘Menu-less’ Ice Cream Menu

Digital menus are now mobile natives.

Go to any restaurant and you will find a table-top QR code staring back at you and asking you to “Scan & Order.” Ice cream parlors, especially ice cream trucks- where having too many screens is logistically challenging- can simply create an ice menu design like the one above.

Make optimal use of your screen as a visual magnet by adding delightful images and a few quotes from happy customers. As for the actual list of offerings at your ice cream parlor, create a QR code for that. The Pickcel QR code app allows you to generate unique QR codes and customize the text and design along with it.

#3. Christmas Desert Menu with special offers

Designing a festive menu can be time-consuming! With the abundance of special offers to be showcased, effective layouts that consider the critical menu highlights are essential. Here are three things your festive ice cream menus must-have!

Ambiance: Ushering in the festive vibe via appropriate colors, symbols, and imagery can significantly contribute to the atmosphere. For example, traditional Christmas symbols such as snowflakes and Christmas trees for a Christmas celebration or Easter eggs for an Easter-special menu can bring cheer.

Presentation: A crisp and concise display of items on offer is crucial to ensure customers can easily navigate and make informed choices. Instead of cluttering your menu with too many offers, you can use a scrolling ticker that neatly informs your customers about all the discounts and deals. The best part is that creating a scrolling ticker with Pickcel’s Scroller App is easy.

Exclusivity: Limited-time deals, such as a special flavor, a chef’s signature dish, or a happy hour, can add elements of exclusivity to your menu, encouraging customers to go in for an impulse purchase almost instantaneously, creating the much-needed buzz for your ice cream parlor!

#4. Dark Minimalist Ice Cream Menu Design

Traditionally, ice cream shops tend to use warm and cheerful colors. But what’s stopping you from breaking the tradition.

Black-themed ice cream menus can be a breath of fresh air and can easily use the ‘shock’ factor to entice the customers. Even better, if you can add a video background.

Nothing beats that, right?

Moreover, this can be a perfect theme for your Halloween-special menu.

Once you sign up free with Pickcel, you can enjoy a host of tools like the digital menu board app, Canva, and free video & image libraries. Use these assets to design any menu and publish it directly to your screens.

Tips to make your Ice cream Digital Menu Board

1. Use high contrast colours and typography. As a result, you can see them from a long distance. Emphasis on readability.

2. Don’t overcrowd your menu board. Display only key messaging, flavours, and pricing.

3. Make your ice cream shop menu come to life with video clips such as melting ice cream or a behind-the-scene to show how you make and bake those delicious enjoyments.

4. Limit your ice cream menu to no more than 20 items when it comes to what you put on your ice cream shop’s digital menu board. This gives you more room for slideshows, photos, and other media. Remember that the more elements you include, the more difficult it will be to read. Less really is more!

5. Add testimonials of happy customers. Testimonials can REALLY make an impact in customers’ choices. This is a great way to promote your new flavours.

6. Categorize your offerings. Use labels like “Vegan,’ ‘Special,’ ‘Out-of-stock’ to help your customers make better choices. The digital menu board app from Pickcel allows you to add these labels with one-click.

7. Use images. This is so, so important. Your menu board must be visually attractive. But that doesn’t mean that you go overboard with images. If you have too many things to offer, it’s best to split your menu into two or more screens or create a playlist. You can book a free demo session to see how easy it is to create a playlist for your ice cream menu.

8. If you operate an ice cream shop, you should not only sell ice cream. Upselling and cross-selling will assist you boost the average check value by adding more items to the menu.