A creative ice cream shop design can provide a welcoming, fun and comfortable customer experience at your store. From color schemes and product displays to your shop’s layout and outdoor shade, you can create an enjoyable space that attracts customers, increases return visits and boosts revenue.
5 Ideas for Ice Cream Shop Interior Design
Tall scoops and tasty sundaes are even more enjoyable in a well-designed ice cream shop. Customers appreciate the details that go into an interior space, and the right decor may help tempt appetites and drive more sales.
1. Creating a Welcoming Atmosphere
Color schemes, specific themes and playful decor can evoke fun and excitement in your ice cream shop. The more visually appealing your indoor space is, the more likely customers are to enjoy their experience and return again. Your shop can feature fun decor and branding elements such as the following:
- Color schemes such as soft and sweet pastels or simple, elegant neutrals
- Fun and exciting wall decor
- Colorful and textured wallpaper
- Accent walls
- Creative menus, such as chalkboards or decorated menus
- Branding elements such as your business logo and colors
- Colorful neon signs
2. Mastering Efficiency With a Customer-Friendly Layout
Customer and staff traffic patterns can significantly impact your shop’s efficiency and customer experiences. An efficient layout enables customers to view your menu, wait in line and receive their frozen treats quickly and easily. The following factors can help you optimize your shop layout:
- Ordering queue: Customers can enjoy an easier, more comfortable experience when the ordering queue is simple, straightforward and spacious. Signs or ropes help indicate the start of the queue, so customers know where to wait as soon as they enter the building, and a large menu at the beginning or middle of the queue allows customers to decide what they want before their turn.
- Preparation areas: Placing your preparation areas near the ordering queue can help customers make decisions and receive their ice cream faster. This strategy enables your staff to take and prepare orders quickly and allows customers to see the shop’s delicious flavors up close.
- Cashier or point-of-sale (POS) stations: Your cashier station or POS system placements also contribute to efficiency. Placing cashiers at the end of an ordering counter enables customers to naturally flow from selection and ordering to payment. It’s also helpful to leave ample space in this area so multiple customers have room to pay and wait for their ice cream.
- Doors: Placing doors near the ordering queue makes it easy for customers to find the line. However, it’s also helpful to leave enough space between the door and the ordering queue to prevent customers from crowding the entrance. If your lines often extend outside, you can add outdoor ropes or signs to keep the line organized and the entrance clear.
- Dining and seating areas: Dining and seating areas are excellent additions to ice cream shops because they give customers a comfortable place to enjoy their treats. Customers can enjoy the seating area more when there is some distance between it and the ordering queue.
- Kitchen and storage areas: You can boost efficiency by placing kitchens and storage areas where staff can easily reach them without disturbing customer traffic flow.
- Restrooms: The best place for restrooms is where customers can easily reach them without blocking your ordering queue or payment areas.
3. Showcasing Products With Creative Displays
Easily visible preparation areas can help you sell more treats and increase your revenue. Open dipping cabinets display your delicious flavors, and preparation counters allow your staff to show off any additional toppings, mixtures or cones you offer.
For example, customers waiting in line are more likely to order extra toppings and add-ons when they watch staff make fresh waffle bowls or mix fruit in ice cream. You can also keep your toppings in a display case beside the ice cream, showcasing irresistible chocolate chips, strawberries and sprinkles.
Adorning your space with artwork, photography and marketing displays can also help you sell more frozen treats. Consider displaying professional, up-close photos of your most popular ice cream flavors, artwork related to your shop’s theme or marketing displays featuring new flavors.
4. Prioritizing Comfort and Aesthetics
You can incorporate fun elements in your seating and dining areas, such as funky chairs, raised barstools, cozy couches or fancy dining tables.
Consider your shop’s theme when designing your dining area. For example, vintage ice cream parlor chairs or barstools can create a classic old-fashioned soda shop aesthetic, while comfortable couches can create a unique casual atmosphere. You can also use themed chairs, such as stools resembling ice cream cones, to make your space fun and exciting.
5. Playing With Lighting
Lighting can affect your customers’ moods and experiences. Warm, soft lighting creates a cozy feel, while cool, bright lighting stimulates excitement and conversation. Accent lighting can highlight your displays or wall art, and elaborate light fixtures help enhance your interior space’s style.
Lighting with a high color rendering index (CRI) can make your colorful ice cream flavors and displays pop. Incandescent and LED bulbs typically have a high CRI, enabling the eye to distinguish more colors so customers can notice your beautiful space and delicious ice cream. Placing high-CRI lighting over your ice cream cabinet is an excellent way to draw more attention to it and sell more ice cream.
How to Extend Your Ice Cream Shop Design Outside
Creating an inviting ice cream shop front design can help you attract more customers. Your shop front is most likely the first part of your business that people notice when passing by, so it’s a great way to catch attention. Eye-catching signage and branding elements, such as your business logo and colors, can help attract customers, and you can showcase images of ice cream, toppings and various frozen delights in your window.
These additional elements can help you extend your ice cream shop’s charm outside:
Outdoor Seating
Outdoor seating provides more space for customers to enjoy their ice cream, and it can help attract more people to your shop. An outdoor seating area is especially beneficial if your indoor space is too small for indoor seating. You can create an inviting outdoor space with various seating options, such as the following:
- Tables
- Benches
- Lounge areas
- Swings
- Rocking chairs
- Hammocks
Shade Structures
Shade structures can significantly enhance your outdoor seating space. Customers are more likely to visit your ice cream shop if you provide a cool, relaxing space to escape the sun. Custom shade designs enable you to incorporate your shop’s style or theme into your outdoor spaces, enlivening your seating area with fun shapes such as butterflies, flowers, octagons, hexagons and sails. Choose from various structures and shapes to turn your outdoor design dreams into reality.
Comfortable Waiting Areas
You can also use shade structures to create relaxing waiting areas. When your ice cream is highly popular, you may find your lines extending outside your door. Encourage more customers to stop and wait in line with attractive shade structures that protect them from the sun.
Placing benches under your shade structures can make it even easier and more enjoyable for individuals to wait for your delicious ice cream. You might consider posting a large menu display or images of special flavors around your shaded areas to help your customers decide what they want before approaching your counter and entice more passersby to stop.
Ways to Enhance the Outdoor Experience
Landscaping, outdoor lighting and fun elements can enhance your customers’ experiences.
Landscaping and Greenery
Landscaping creates an inviting outdoor atmosphere. Greenery and plants such as the following are easy to maintain and can complement your shop’s theme or brand colors:
- Hydrangeas
- Black-eyed Susans
- Boxwood shrubs
- Sedge
- Daylilies
- Spirea
- Hosta
- Creeping Sedum
- Liriope
- Fescue
- Coreopsis
- Dianthus
Lighting
Outdoor lighting enables individuals to enjoy their ice cream outside your shop into the evening, helping you attract and serve more customers at later hours. Lighting can also enhance visibility around your shop, making customers feel safe and encouraging repeat visits. Your ice cream shop designs might use spotlights, yard lights and string lights to illuminate your outdoor seating and waiting areas.
Fun Elements
Fun outdoor elements such as art installations and games help create a family-friendly environment and an entertaining atmosphere, encouraging more customers to return. The following ideas are fantastic additions to an ice cream shop’s outdoor spaces:
- Lawn games such as cornhole or a giant chess board
- Miniature golf course
- Food-related ice cream sculptures or sculptures related to your shop’s theme
- An old van or truck renovated to resemble a vintage ice cream truck
- Sandbox and Adirondack chairs for relaxing
- Playground elements such as swings, slides and jungle gyms
- Fun photo cutout boards customers can pose with
- Painted walls for photo opportunities
Adding visually appealing or playful elements to your shop’s outdoor spaces can help your business trend on social media. Customers may post pictures of your installations or activities, placing your shop’s name and location in front of more people.
Seasonal and Weather Considerations
Flexible design solutions are important for different seasons, and it’s important to protect outdoor benches, chairs, shade structures and art installments from the elements. You can prepare your outdoor space for seasonal changes and weather conditions in the following ways:
- Utilize safe storage: Featuring lawn games in the spring and summer and placing them in safe storage during the fall and winter protects them from rain and moisture.
- Rotate seasonal activities and events: Planning seasonal activities enables you to attract more customers throughout the year. In the warmer months, you can host fun events such as ice cream tastings, outdoor movies or live music events under your shade structures. In the cooler months, you can plan activities like a fall festival with themed ice cream flavors. Waterproof shade structures can help encourage more people to visit your shop’s outdoor area because they provide coverage during inclement weather such as rain.
- Optimize shade structure sizes and arrangements: Consider the types of events and activities you want to host at your ice cream shop before choosing shade structure sizes and placements. For example, a wide shaded area or a semi-circle arrangement is perfect for events such as winter carnivals because it adequately covers vendor setups. Interspersed shade structures are an excellent option if you plan to host ice cream tastings or movies because you can spread them out and give customers various spaces to sit.
- Change seasonal decor: Your outdoor area is also the perfect space for winter decorating. Consider creating a light display or decorating an outdoor Christmas tree to bring cheer to your community.
- Invest in durable shade structures: Choosing shade structures with varied pole heights gives them a more slanted shape, reducing the weight of debris like hail during inclement weather.
Outdoor Ice Cream Shop Shade Options
Choosing the right shade structures for your ice cream shop can significantly enhance your outdoor space. USA SHADE designs and manufactures beautiful, durable shade structures to complement your space and meet your needs. Our following shade options can help you turn your dream ice cream shop outdoor space into reality:
- Squares and rectangles: Square and rectangle shade structures are classic options that fit various needs and work in numerous spaces.
- Multi-sided shade structures: Multi-sided shade structures are perfect for large or irregularly shaped areas.
- Cantilevers: Cantilevers are fantastic options when you need to maintain an unobstructed space, such as an entrance or walkway. Adding cantilevers outside your shop gives your customers a cool, beautiful space to wait when the line extends out the door.
- Sails: Sails are highly customizable structures that come in numerous shapes, colors and sizes. You can vary sail sizes, heights, colors and arrangements to create a visually appealing space.
- Single-post shade structures: Single-post shade structures are ideal if your outdoor space is limited. They leave more room for seating, and they allow your customers to move around easily.
Create a Beautiful Ice Cream Shop Design With USA SHADE’s Shade Structures
A thoughtful design can significantly boost your ice cream shop’s success by attracting more customers and encouraging return visits. Shade is an essential part of an enjoyable ice cream experience, and you can give your customers a cool, enjoyable outdoor space to enjoy their cones and sundaes.
USA SHADE designs and manufactures high-quality shade structures in various shapes, sizes and colors to help you bring your dream outdoor design to life. From sails and single-post structures to cantilevers and multi-sided structures, we can customize shade solutions to fit your space and complement your ice cream shop’s style.
Contact USA SHADE to learn more about our customizable shade solutions and how our in-house experts can create a beautiful, artistic, shaded space for your business.
