If you’ve been by Spencer’s in the past couple days, you may have noticed a few changes — the biggest being that our ice cream dipping cabinet no longer graces the front of our dining room.
Yes, it’s true — We are no longer selling Chaney’s Ice Cream at Spencer’s. Why? Here’s the short version:
As we’ve grown over the years (and we’ve grown A LOT), we’ve added more and more offerings to our lineup. First breakfast sandwiches, now made-in-house pastries… all done with the same focus on excellence that we bring to our coffees. Ice cream, however, has proven to be a product we just aren’t set up to handle. Inventory is tricky, as is the seemingly simple act of serving it in a consistent, quality manner. Though we loved having it available (and occasionally sneaking a bite ourselves), it was never our strong suit, nor were we able to pull it off in a way that made financial sense for us.
When our ice cream dipping cabinet (a glorified freezer) died a couple weeks back, it put us face to face with a choice: invest thousands of dollars on a new machine — one that would take us years to pay for in terms of ice cream profits — or go back to the drawing board in terms of using our tight space wisely. The choice was easy, even though it meant giving up something we loved — after all, a business has to be profitable, and we’re convinced that means doing everything at a high level. We couldn’t do that with the ice cream, and that’s OK.
Will we try ice cream again in the future? Perhaps, though probably not in the same way. But rest assured that everything we do is aimed at providing you, our customers, with great stuff in a great atmosphere with great service — but in order to do that, sometimes we have to say no.
So no, no more ice cream for you. Not right now, not here. And we sincerely hope that’s a “No” that you can appreciate.
