Evils of Encouraging the Ice Cream Soda Trade

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Historical Article (1897)

Evils of Encouraging the Ice Cream Soda Trade
This Applies Especially to Druggists
D.W. Saxe
Saxe's New Guide, or Hints to Soda Water Dispensers - Revised and Enlarged. Milwaukee: The Saxe Guide Publishing Co., 1897. pp. 10-14.

In hot weather room is valuable and time is money at the soda counter, therefore the foreseeing and level headed dispenser will work every scheme possible to serve as many people in as short a space of time as he can. The old saw, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink," is, of course, true, - but experience teaches me that you can educate your soda trade to drink almost anything you have a mind to, providing always the drink has merit.

            I claim (and I speak from experience, - not theory) the Ice Cream Soda trade is becoming every day more and more a nuisance to the druggist especially, and while you nearly all acknowledge this fact you claim there is no help for it, or your customers want nothing else but Ice Cream Soda. This is all nonsense and can easily be overcome by a little tact and skill on your part by introducing something new to deviate the attention of your customers from Ice Cream.

            It is much easier now to make this change in your soda trade since nearly everybody, young and old, have taken to riding a wheel. Wheelmen of any experience whatever all know that Ice Cream Soda is not the proper drink to when riding, and they want something to quench thirst and relieve the dryness of the throat and tongue. There is nothing better for this purpose than one of Saxe's long, cool, Raspberry Cordials or Blood Orange Phosphates, and besides when you once get your customer educated to this style of drink while he will want three or four of them in an evening while riding; whereas one glass of Ice Cream Soda and two glasses of ice water is the old rule.

            You can wait on ten customers for still drinks as quickly as one for Ice Cream Soda, and the per cent of profit is more than double. In other words, 100 customers for still drinks will not take any more time or room at your counter than ten (10) will for Cream Soda.

            Now, then, is it not worth your while to push almost anything but Ice Cream Soda? I don't mean by this that you can do away with Ice Cream entirely, for there are lots of customers who will have nothing else, and especially if they think you are trying to palm off other drinks because you have no Ice Cream. Simply keep your Ice Cream in the back-ground and don't advertise it, for at present Ice Cream Soda needs no advertising. Get up a classified list of drinks in the form of a neat folder and place on your counter in a receiver of some kind suitable for the purpose; then every few days spring some new drink on your customers and push it hard for a week or so. Keep them guessing all the time and looking for something new. I don't mean in the way of new patent drinks, but something you can make yourself from SAXE'S FORMULA, cheap, practical, and easy to serve...

            In regard to Ice Cream Soda again. Many who read this article will think, "Well, Saxe's ideas on this subject may be all right for a large city like Chicago or Boston, but it wouldn't work with my trade, for they positively won't have anything else but Ice Cream Soda." Well, now, how do you know they won't have anything else? Is it not a fact that you have never tried any scheme, and it is not a fact that right now the only sign you have up at your soda counter is one that tells them what fine Ice Cream Soda you have and what lots of it you give for a nickel? I tell you my idea WILL WORK, and in fact IS working to good advantage with the better dispensers in lots of places. This change cannot be accomplished in a day, or a month, or even in a year, but by degrees a wide awake dispenser can educate his trade to let Ice Cream Soda alone and to drink something that is far better, more refreshing and that yields a better per cent of profit. An old saying and a true one is that a good salesman is one who can sell, not what the customer wants, but what he (the salesman) wants to sell, and I wouldn't give five cents for a soda dispenser who couldn't do this. The two drinks I referred to in the commencement of this article, SAXE'S BLOOD ORANGE PHOSPHATE and RASPBERRY CORDIAL, are both winners, and great thirst quenchers, and if made exactly according to my instructions (using the Black Raspberry juice in both drinks) and pushed a little sill soom secure a reputation for themselves and become old reliables. Try them.

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Maintaining this website (which you are enjoying for free!) takes a lot of time and resources.
Please show your support for all our hard work by telling your friends about Sarah's books —and by buying them yourself, too, of course!

Historical Article (1897)