Snowie Shaved Ice Webinar #14 - "Making Sugar Water and Flavors (Recording)

In this webinar we address some flavor questions. Primarily the idea of doing this segment came when we had received quite a few calls from people wanting to run a shaved ice business, but they were ordering everything in "Ready To Use" form. We then quickly wanted to educate them on our concentrate flavors. Their initial reaction to the concentrates, were that they would be difficult.
Well, in comparison to the ready to use, yes, they will be a bit more work, but not as much work as you may imagine. So after explaining this a few times on the phone, we thought it might be nice to show us making some sugar water, mixing flavor, and how we actually use it in a static location and how we use it at events.
The beauty with our process for making shaved ice flavors is that with a couple of 5 gallon jugs, you can keep your building stocked for quite a while. And since the sugar water is preserved for a year, you do not have to worry about it going bad. You could literally line the bottom of your building with sugar waters and know that you will be stocked for a long time.
We change this up when we do events. The lifetime of that sugar water does not change when you add the flavor to it. It is still preserved for a year. So if you know that you are going to burn through a flavor, it is then wise to commit a whole 5-gallon head-pack to that flavor. Then when you are filling a flavor station with your snow cone syrup, you can just lift the 5 gallon jug on top and pour directly into the bottle within the flavor station. No mixing necessary while you are onsite.
I also mention that sometimes we bring blanks. A blank is our term for a sugar water that has not been committed to a flavor. We do this in a couple different scenarios. One, if we are at an event that may be a different demographic than we are used to, it is a hard to tell what may be the favorite flavor. I will usually commit (2) 5 gallon jugs to one flavor if I know that it is going to be popular, but if you are unsure, then it is easy enough to just leave them blank and mix them onsite.
The other reason, is really the same reason, but on a bigger scale. We run events where we have nine or more shaved ice stands. When you have that many stands, you may have some that will run out of certain flavors more quickly than others. This is very hard to predict, but very easy to remedy if you leave yourself some blanks to accommodate that.
We walk you through the process for making flavors from concentrate and show you how truly easy that process is. We were also able to show the 50 gallon mixer that we were unable to show last time. We discuss our flavor station, some lighting features that we have added as an option, and the new, sturdy wrap that we now dress them with.
We also received a couple of questions about the spigots leaking and another on the placement of the flavor station at events.
This is a shorter video as far as webinars are concerned. If you have questions about flavors, this is a great one to watch.
Thank you for tuning in,
- Snowie

[@benchkey]

Some of us with back injury problems might not be able to lift a 5 gallon container to the top of the self serve station. In that case it might be useful to invert a gallon jug and put the mouth into the open top of the containers of the station. The gallon jug would then feed to the mouth opening. Since it wouldn't overfill it would be easy and practical, and give a quick visual indication of the need for another refill. Another thought. The self serve station might have its lower area designed to fit right over the tongue of the trailer hitch, much easier than setting blocks especially for those who have kneeling disabilities. (we aren't all young and supple.)

[@prestonturner282]

Very informative, thanks for sharing!

[@pamelabarrett2498]

Do you sell the 4 ounce concentrates, and if so how much are they?

[@snowiellc]

We just stopped selling the 4 ounce bottles. We are going to be launching a 2 ounce bottle here in the next week or so, so look for that!