My 19-year-old son and I were in the grocery store recently, and he said to me, “Hey, Dad, don’t you think the number of ice cream flavors has exploded since I was a little kid? It’s crazy how many there are.”
He’s right. It’s crazy.
My Dad always talked about setting up an ice cream stand on the boardwalk at the beach with only two choices: vanilla or chocolate. And every scoop is served in a cone. No dishes here.
He’d smile, actually relish, as he could picture the conversation with the customer who asked for something off-script, “But don’t you have anything else? What about mint chocolate chip?”
“We got vanilla, and we got chocolate. Which would you like?”
He loved talking about that.
Vanilla and chocolate are by far the most popular ice cream flavors in America, and have been since the beginning. Most people choose one, even when presented with a potpourri of other choices.
So why all the flavors?
Do more flavors help the ice cream industry as a whole sell more ice cream? Do you, as an ice cream retailer, need to stock a million flavors? Can you build a better business with more choices?
I don’t know. Maybe.
I do know, however, that the number of choices, not just in ice cream but in all things, has increased exponentially over the last 50 years. That has split markets into ever-decreasing niches.
In a world of endless choices, find the one that you can most delight your people with, and focus there.
