Ice Cream Parlor

[grain67]

Can I make a question?
I would to start a ice cream shop in Buenos Aires?
Who can me aswer me if it shold be a good idea or bad business.
Are in B.A. many ice cream shops, I mean handmade ice cream?

 

[ajoknoblauch]

Can I make a question?
I would to start a ice cream shop in Buenos Aires?
Who can me aswer me if it shold be a good idea or bad business.
Are in B.A. many ice cream shops, I mean handmade ice cream?

The quality of ice cream is extremely high here, and there's loads of competition. The question is what you can offer to appeal to Argentines that isn't here already.

 

[Joe]

Yes there are many handmade ice cream shops. The locals love ice cream. You could make a million!

Why have you chosen BA? Have you ever been here or did you read an article and fall in love?

 

[hannstew]

The question is what you can offer

How about Dulce de leche with maple syrup topping!! Just kidding.. B)

 

[Crema Americana]

Ice cream is one of the things Argentina excels at, so I think it would be difficult to start. It's also seasonal and we're entering fall soon.

I think a good bakery/panaderia would be better. French style croissants with chocolate and not dulce de leche bombs. At least that's what I would want.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

Ice cream is one of the things Argentina excels at, so I think it would be difficult to start. It's also seasonal and we're entering fall soon.

I think a good bakery/panaderia would be better. French style croissants with chocolate and not dulce de leche bombs. At least that's what I would want.

It's not so seasonal as it used to be.

 

[syngirl]

Ice cream isn`t all that seasonal -- go to a Persicco in Las Canitas on a Saturday night in the middle of winter and it will be packed. A lot of the larger shops enhance their business by providing coffee / breakfast fare, basic sandwiches, and desserts. The more de barrio places can really be loved though by the surrounding neighbours. I was saddened to see a huge flashy place is opening right across the street from one of our favourite places, I hope that the little guy survives. The good thing they have going for them is that even in ice cream there is huge competition -- in the 5 years or so we lived in Las Canitas we saw at least 4 different high end ice cream stores come and go because the quality of product was just not up to par. If you find the right property to rent -- and you don't need a huge property, which has been the mistake of a lot of these businesses -- and your product is high quality, you may have success. There are a certain number of standard flavours that you need to provide for local product, but after that you do have a bit of room for experimentation -- maybe not wasabi flavoured ice cream, but I bet for instance limoncello would be popular...

 

[Dublin2BuenosAires]

Ice cream isn`t all that seasonal -- go to a Persicco in Las Canitas on a Saturday night in the middle of winter and it will be packed. A lot of the larger shops enhance their business by providing coffee / breakfast fare, basic sandwiches, and desserts. The more de barrio places can really be loved though by the surrounding neighbours. I was saddened to see a huge flashy place is opening right across the street from one of our favourite places, I hope that the little guy survives. The good thing they have going for them is that even in ice cream there is huge competition -- in the 5 years or so we lived in Las Canitas we saw at least 4 different high end ice cream stores come and go because the quality of product was just not up to par. If you find the right property to rent -- and you don't need a huge property, which has been the mistake of a lot of these businesses -- and your product is high quality, you may have success. There are a certain number of standard flavours that you need to provide for local product, but after that you do have a bit of room for experimentation -- maybe not wasabi flavoured ice cream, but I bet for instance limoncello would be popular...

I think garlicgarlic´s beloved JauJa (ok, i like it too) may already have limoncello flavour? At least they defintely have some variant of lemon, they do have an impressive range of flavours.

Anyway, opening an ice cream business here would be like moving to Texas and asking them how they were fixed for burritos. You'd need to have some seriously outstanding burritos to convince the locals you knew what you were doing. I never have to walk more than 2 blocks to see an icecream shop and when I do I generally look for an artesanal place which I know is good then I go down through a descending list of the chain shops which I know to be good.

Really tricky market to crack, not impossible but by god you're ice cream would need to be awesome. Hand made is not enough of a qualification, more like your minimum acceptable entry point.

 

[Jaredberryman]

You can make tons of money, but you really have to do some major research on the location. If you have a good product, and put it in the right place, it can be highly successful. But if there is too much competition, it can be really tough. You might want to look into different franchises that can be purchased. Because competition is so stiff, I wouldn't dare put one up until I felt sure about the location.

 

[thorsten]

Honestly, an ice cream shop parlor is probably the worst business one can open in BsAs. Basically, the city and the country is full of companies that are managed bad or offer products that are of not the best quality. Ice cream is one of the few exceptions: you have tons of parlors (huge competition), with very good quality and surprisingly they actually have a big amount of different flavors on stock. So it will be pretty hard to make a big difference, i.e., get people to go to your place instead of the closest one. The only upside of this business would be a pretty big market. If you decide to open one, put your main focus on the location - and offer a good ice coffee, as this is the one thing that is lacking in most ice cream parlors here (if they even have it on the menu, they often use instant coffee powder instead of a good brew).