HELP! New Bicycle Vendor Business

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Iceman

Thu Feb 15, 2018 12:42 pm

Hello!

I have started doing the research for what it would take to start a bicycle vendor shaved ice business here in Canada (only during the summer of course, haha). My main question is: what do you (the community) think that the best way to approach this is? My main concern is keeping the ice cold - ideally I would like to fresh shave everyones cone (we say snow cone here in Canada); however, it would be convenient to have a back-up stash to dish out in case things get busy. Some options that I have seen for ice cream vendors is to use a cold plate or italian ice cart, which would stay very cold all day. The negative to this set-up seems to be the cost of these things! ($3000 USD?). The other option I considered was to use an off-grid freezer w/ marine battery and solar panel - this would run at about half the price of the cold plate cart. Finally, is it even necessary to have a freezer if you are essentially just storing ice cubes and block ice? Could I simply use a large cooler to store the ice in?

I am also looking for cargo bike/trike recommendations if anyone has done this before.

Lastly, I have narrowed down the ice shaver I would like to 3 different brands: hatsuyuki, swan, and fujimarca. I would need a manual shaver as I will not be running a generator (or running it off of a 12V battery, lol). Any recommendations or pros/cons? I like the fujimarca because it's relatively cheap to the other two but wonder about performance issues.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read and respond!
Iceman
DerekinCanada
Posts: 90
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2014 1:17 pm

Thu Feb 15, 2018 2:43 pm

Why would you want to use a manual shaver when you could choose a 12 volt model? More work, and less output. We run a portable tent and table event business in eastern Canada and have cranked out around 500 shaved ice in a day with a compact Snowie 1000 cube shaver and a $100 Walmart marine battery. I would not want to do that manually, and the extra business you would do on busy days will quickly cover the price difference. For a mobile operation, I would suggest a lighter AGM battery instead of the lead acid one we use.

We use the standard $25 blue Coleman cooler from Walmart to store our loose cubes, and keep extra bags of ice in a marine cooler from Canadian Tire. You do not need expensive cold plate freezers - any standard marine cooler will keep ice several days. You would want a standard chest freezer at your home base to store ice between gigs. You can pick up used ones pretty cheap.

Carrying enough ice to get you through busy days would be your biggest problem. I would suggest you use cubes instead of block so that you can pick up extra ice at convenience stores during the day.

As for a cheap bike, there are still lots of the old Dickie Dee ice cream trikes in people's garages around Canada. Check kijiji.ca. Here's one in Toronto for $600: https://www.kijiji.ca/v-cars-other/city ... nFlag=true.

You'd need to add some sort of shelf to house the ice shaver and syrup bottles. For design ideas, Google "pinterest shaved ice bike".

Your health department, since you are "making" food instead of serving pre-packaged ice cream, will also require a hand wash station of some sort. Ours is just a plastic container with a tap, that we fill with warm water, and a plastic bucket to collect the waste water, along with paper towels in a dispenser, and liquid soap. I would strongly advise you talk with them first before spending any money, as they may want things that can't fit on a bike.
Last edited by DerekinCanada on Sat Feb 17, 2018 1:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
Iceman

Thu Feb 15, 2018 3:22 pm

Wow Derek! Thanks for your in-depth and insightful reply! I was wondering about the health side of things so I think that will definitely be the first step.

I will also need to rethink the manual shaver approach. Perhaps I was underestimating the amount of work required for high volume days. Also that's a great tip to be able to run to convenience stores that I never thought of.

I'll post a new response once I talk with the health sector and do some more research on DC snow shavers.

Cheers!
Iceman
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