Little bit about myself, Software Engineer, Tier 1 college, I live in Bengaluru but come from a Tier 3 city, I came across Icy Popps reel on Instagram, their bright, orangish cart with tons of people surrounding it and giving brighter than orange reviews about how it brought back their nostalgia blah blah.
For those whose don't know icy pops is basically ice + flavours (the chuski which you used to get in flimsy polythenes back in your childhoods) they built a brand around it and started offering franchisee.
Cost Breakdown:
Icy Pops Cart : 2 lakh
Initial Stock : 50k
And basically that's it.
The pops come in 2 variants small and big.
Small one will cost you 8 rs and sells at 15 (87.5% margin)
Big one costs you 15 and sells at 25 (67% margin)
Remove staff cost + electricity, your profit comes around 50% easily and on paper that is great, more than great for a 2.5 lakh investment plan.
But here the truth, the Bachpan ka nostalgia which the brand is trying to buy into is not working, the product is not something which people will crave again and again. The sales are entirely dependent on impulsive buying and the pricing is absurd, if you look at the 15 rs pack, it's so small and ultimately customers started to complain, comments like 'this should be priced at 5 rs or 10 rs max'.
And think ice cream space is so competitive I mean you can have a chocobar for 10 to a small cornetto for 15 why would anyone one want to buy ice and flavour for 15 rs.
I fell for this purely looking at the margins, thinking if I can see even sell 200 piece per day then my side income is around 30k (considering 2rs per piece is spent in staff and electricity).
Forget the maths, it's even hard to sell 50 of these because people are not ready to spend 15, 25 on it.
I took the franchise in my hometown and didn't factor in the price sensitive market but it's the same story here in banglore 560037 (aecs layout), I mean I am noticing it daily, hardly any sales, the guy stands there with his cart, there are loads and loads of people standing next to him, eating momos or Pani Puri but hardly anyone is interested in it.
I spent a total of 2.77 lakhs on this and 15 days in I am sure this is going to be an expensive lesson for me, to always do market research, understand the price tag, see alternatives and most importantly question unrealistic profit margins.
They are banking on Instagram reels and a lot of folks are jumping in on the wagon, but please stay away, spread the word, sales are there for 4-5 days but then they drastically drop.
Save your 3 lakhs and invest in something better.
Calling this out because I don't want people to fall into it thinking this side hustle is easy money and 2-3 lakhs is not a lot.
You might see good initial sales in tier 1 cities but sustained sales is still a big question mark.
Happy to answer any questions !!