With ice cream industry sales down in recent years--and stagnant the past decade--Baskin-Robbins will announce today a risky marketing move that it has resisted since its founding 62 years ago: It
plans to sell soft-serve ice cream.
The world's largest ice cream chain wants a piece of one of ice cream's few growth areas. Soft-serve sales topped $4.6 billion in 2006, up from $4.3
billion in 2005, the last years tracked by the International Dairy Foods Association. Soft serve represents 70% of all ice cream servings, says NPD Group.
The soft-serve vanilla line will
be Baskin-Robbins' largest product rollout in decades, says Ken Kimmel, brand officer at Baskin-Robbins. The chain plans to sell soft serve in all 2,400 of its U.S. stores by next spring. By summer's
end, it will be in about half of its domestic locations. "This helps us overcome the veto vote, say, when a child wants a soft-serve cone," Kimmel says.
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