Shave Ice Community Web Board

If you added preservatives (sodium benzoate and citric acid) to the simple syrup you used, it should be good for at least six months. If you didn't, we replace ours every three weeks or so, and examine it regularly for black specs, white mound strands, and container bulging and throw out immediately...

I've heard of many ideas, but none of the work 100%. Here are the most popular: Shop Vac to vacuum them up. Spray "sour spray" (citric acid and water) around your flavor station, table top etc., as apparently bees don't like it. Also try bleach solution. Kill them by spraying them with a solution of...

We added fresh-squeezed lemonade a few years ago and are doing OK with it, although we still sell 2 or 3 shaved ice to every one lemonade sold. At least here on PEI, shaved ice is still seen as "snow cones" and sold mainly to kids, so the lemonade, bought mostly by adults, helps attract an older dem...

10 x 10 foot. There's really no other choice, as 10 feet is the frontage you get at most events. We had five people working in there at our busiest event last season, and there was plenty of room to move around.

Percentage of sales. 20 percent is common, and the companies doing it may sure to get a picture of the "novelty check" presentation to the charity or school that is benefiting - it's great PR!

We keep our mixed syrups and our simple syrup in the refrigerator between event days, so we start each day with cold syrup, Also, we are in Canada, so we don't see 100 degree temperatures, Of course, it's no different if it's in a flavor station or individual manual pour bottles, but it's probably e...

We added a second homebuilt flavor station (both with the same flavors in the same order) this year for our busier events, as we were getting lineups at our one. It's worked well to solve this. We also added drain tubes to both our stations, to pipe any spilled syrup into containers on the ground. T...

Pouring your own flavors will slow you down at busy events and cost you money. It's the way to go for lower-volume permanent stands, but when you're doing a school with a serving time limit, a sporting event with 15 minute breaks in the action, or a busy fair with thousands of attendees and it's 10 ...

Most people mount a small tankless portable water heater on the outside of the trailer. Something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Camp-Chef-HWD5-Triton-Heater/dp/B001J4AU2E/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1532511542&sr=8-3&keywords=portable+hot+water+heater+for+camping You would need space for a 20 lb prop...

The two sanitizers recommended by our health dept are 100 ppm bleach solution and quaternary ammonium compounds (quats). The quats keep their strength but cost a lot. Bleach is ridiculously cheap, and available everywhere, but you have to test the strength with test strips (not a huge inconvenience)...