Hello Scoop Fans!
Half way through the 5th year of the New Scoop Deville, I’ve never been prouder to be the owner. With the same basic philosophy and our signature product unchanged, really the amount of things that have changed are countless. I am the first to admit that while preparing to open our doors in May 2013, we made A LOT of mistakes. But now, almost five years later, we have made some major changes that put all that in the rear view mirror!
The one thing that makes the world of difference is our team. Given the seasonality of the business and hiring a lot of college and high school students, it seems to be a revolving door of smiling faces and great personalities. Now sure, not everyone has worked out, but I pride myself on choosing great candidates and creating a great team. Over the years there have been some incredible highlights and many team members I will never forget. But our 5th summer was by far our best staffed season yet! Add to that I finally made the brilliant decision to bring on some additional management to really get the ball rolling, and we’ve been able to make some incredible changes in 2017.
So while there are all sorts of changes and updates I could discuss, I’m just going to mention a few that I’m most proud of and the ideas that really keep me excited every day. Menus - I love that we now have six menus and a full wall of menus. While we constantly hear that even one of our menus is overwhelming, there’s practically no ice cream or dessert shops where dairy free and vegan customers feel more welcome and have near as many options. I regularly make the statement that we have the most dairy free ice cream options in the country. I doubt I’ll ever be proved wrong. Digital Display Screen - This was the birth child of A LOT of conversation between myself and two great managers, Chris and Klaudia. We are all very pleased with the final result - a projector showing on a very large screen over top of our cashiers’ heads. We regularly update this with new products and promotions, our most popular blends “Leaderboard,” and even a current stream of our instagram page. Products - this is an endless list of it’s own. We definitely are not short on ideas, but it’s all about choosing the right products, pricing them right, and being able to produce them efficiently and consistently at a high (delicious) level. My favorite to date is the Partially Baked Cookie Sundae. Basically we take a piece of cookie dough, cook it half way, then top with ice cream and toppings. Just today we trialed two new products and worked out the kinks of a third. We’ll be launching two of those products tomorrow on our updates seasonal menu. More info to come!
Lastly, my favorite change so far is Growth! Within the next few weeks we will be making a huge announcement about the opening of our second location. We couldn’t be where we are without the tremendous support of our regular customers, awesome Philly visitors, a great community around us, and a reliable and hard working staff. It is so exciting to bring Scoop Deville to more parts of Philly and we can’t wait to continue to “Eat Dessert First” with more people every day!
Thanks for reading, my team and I look forward to sharing more Scoop Deville and industry insights and hopefully just some interesting info to check out.
-Spencer
