Favor Station DIY?

[jmanley99]

The Snowie is too expensive and not very attractive IMHO. Im building a prototype for a custom flavor station right now. Go to walmart and get the arrow 1.5 gallon H2O container. They are $12 online, but at walmart the are $4, so they must be a loss leader. They have the spigots built in and they are skinny. Go to home depot and get sheets of PVC. They are a little expensive but nice. The build-out is for a good weekend DIY'er. I am building a custom 9 station to fit on the back of my golf cart for my 9 year old daughters shaved ice biz.

[IceMan326]

I'm also a big "NEH" towards this Flavor Station system. I prefer to pour my own syrups for my customers.

[IceClouds]

Sounds cool! I agree with IceMan though, I prefer to poor the flavors myself for the customer.

[DerekinCanada]

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 minutes before the fireworks show, speed is critical. Plus, kids LOVE pouring their own flavors. I just built a second station in advance of an air show this weekend so we can speed things up even more.

[IceClouds]

Very true it is more time consuming, but my business doesn't rely on events only. I have two locations and were open every single day. I found that to get repeat customers its best that I make the product and it comes out perfect every time. The pour stations are cool, but i see to many kids not knowing how much to put on and its usually to little or way to much. I guess in my situation i go for quality and not quantity. If your just doing events and wouldn't typically have repeat customers, I would go with a pour station too.

[ShaveIce]

What I found out is that if you are doing events that you are providing a all you can eat type of deal, or charging a higher price, then it is efficient. It is also good for high volume places.

If you are doing events that is based on head count, then a self serve won't be efficient in terms of cost.

With kids over pouring and wasting, you will end up with a lot of syrup on the floor which can be messy/dirty and end up using more syrup than you brought. It all depends on business type and cost.

[Craig]

Just finished the year and it was my first using a Snowie flavor station 8.

I had a few problems with it.
People kept trying to pick up the bottles, which would the pull thru the rubber on the bottom.
And they also got warm in the sun, and were hard to keep clean.

Some of the changes I'd make to them is
1. Put a space in between them for 1 inch thick ice pack, to help keep them cold
2. Put an insulated lid on it. It would keep them cooler and prevent people from trying to pick them up
3. Put some type of valve on the top, as sometimes they would get an airlock and I'd have to loosen the lid some more. Or sometimes the lid was too loose, and they would almost pour the whole bottle into their cup. Having a valve would help control the flow a little better.

Another problem I had was, I used the biodegradable flower cups and they are see thru.
Kids were putting a lot of syrup on because the wanted it to go to the bottom.

[DerekinCanada]

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. This is working well, too.
We are events only, and, as I've said before, flavor stations are essential for busy events, but are likely not the way to go for permanent stands where the customers don't all arrive at once, where quality, many flavors, and repeat business are extremely important, and where you want to upsell with toppings, ice cream inside, etc.

[MJL]

That looks great! I’m not in the business yet...still just absorbing as much info as I can find. One thing I’ve wondered about is dumping summer temperature syrup on the shaved ice. Doesn’t it melt the ice? Would it help to chill the syrup (like separating the compartment and putting some ice in there)?

[DerekinCanada]

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 easier to keep pour bottles in a cooler at an event if warm syrup becomes a problem. You could also design your flavor station with space in it behind the bottles for those blue cold packs that are used in the restaurant business and are sold for home coolers, too.