Why Ice Cream POS Is the Smartest Seasonal Move Before Spring
Spring might look calm on the calendar, but from a retail perspective it’s one of the most decisive moments of the year. Shopper behaviour shifts quickly; footfall patterns change overnight.
Consumer demand wakes up faster than store execution. The first stretch of brighter evenings and milder weekends create an emotional buying window that doesn’t wait for perfect weather forecasts or late installations. If your ice cream point of sale isn’t already in place, the opportunity quietly passes you by.
This is where ice cream POS stops being seasonal decoration and becomes a strategic sales lever.
Why Ice Cream POS Matters
From a shopper behaviour standpoint, ice cream is rarely planned. It’s triggered, by colour, placement and visibility, this does the heavy lifting long before a customer checks a price or brand. Well executed POS acts as a visual shortcut and it tells the shopper now is the moment.
The first sunny weekend of the year almost always sparks a surge in impulse buying. Ice cream is rarely a planned purchase; customers respond to the moment, the mood, and what they see in front of them. If point of sale is not already in place, that initial first spike in demand is missed, along with the excitement that drives it.
Customers typically make purchasing decisions within three to five seconds, based almost entirely on what catches their eye first. High-quality point of sale such as branded freezer panels, pavement signs, stickers, wobblers and clear “Ice Cream Sold Here” flags is what turns casual browsers into buyers. Strong visibility both outside and inside the store ensures the category is noticed before a shopper has even decided they want ice cream. The Walls POS 2025 Brochure shows that the correct use of POS materials can increase ice cream sales by up to 77%; it is transformational.
Installation Timing: Why February Beats April Every Time
Installing ice cream POS materials in February when your shop is quiet gives you an advantage that is impossible to replicate if you wait until April. You have time to position materials properly, test customer flow, refine the layout based on what works.
Take the Pavement sign for example. Positioning a pavement outside your shop may seem straightforward, but the reality is far more nuanced. It needs to be visible to approaching foot traffic from at least 30 metres away. It must not obstruct the entrance or create a pinch point as customers enter and exit the store. Most importantly, it must be clear and legible at walking speed, which means bold visuals and minimal text
Getting this right requires iteration: you position it, observe customer behaviour for a few days, and refine until it works. Doing this in February when footfall is modest is straightforward. Doing it in April when you have 80 customers an hour walking past is disruptive and costs your sales while you experiment.
The Solution and why it works
This is exactly where Wall’s has the perfect solution. Walls continues to offer high impacting and purposeful POS solutions with the intention to grab the customer.
As Hina at Walls states- “Wall’s drives growth in its ice cream business by maximising availability and maintaining strong, consistent visibility across all consumer touchpoints. Its disruptive, high impact POS materials make the brand unmissable, trigger impulse purchases, and reinforce Wall’s distinctive “heart” asset. With one of the world’s largest visibility footprints with 3 million freezers, 20 million POSM items worldwide, and over 120 POS touchpoints in the UK, Wall’s invests heavily each year to keep designs fresh, modern, and effective.”
Walls offers a range of internal and external POS to drive sales, with designs featuring new products, famous brands, customer favourites and classic lines that shoppers instantly recognise. They communicate the offer in a split second, attract attention without confusion, and do precisely what good POS should do: stop foot traffic and pull customers inside.
Hina continues to add – “This visibility strategy supports mental and physical availability, boosts sales in all the OOH channels, and ensures consumers can see, choose, and buy ice cream easily. Wall’s provides free POS materials for sales teams, wholesalers, and retailers, strengthening partnerships and making the brand an attractive supplier, including valued collaborators like Consort who consistently engage with us providing feedback and requesting POS early in the year to kick start the season.” This continues to emphasise the importance of getting your store POS ready early.
The Competitive Reality: Your Competitors Are Already Installing
Here is the uncomfortable truth: while you are considering whether to upgrade your ice cream POS materials, your local competitors are already installing theirs.
The convenience store down the road who always seems to have the best Wall’s visibility. They locked in their POS allocation in February, and the materials arrived last week. The gap between you and them is not product availability you both have access to the same ice cream range. The gap is visibility and merchandising quality, and that gap widens every week you delay.
Modern ice cream retailing is not won on range alone. Every shop within 400 metres of you can stock Magnum, Cornetto, Twister, and Carte D’Or. What separates high performers from the rest is external visibility that drives impulse purchases, internal merchandising that speeds decision-making, and professional presentation that justifies premium pricing. All of that requires POS materials that your competitors are installing right now while you are still considering.
Shoppers notice when one store has clear external signage, well organised freezers with branded panels, and professional presentation versus another store with handwritten cards and generic visibility. Better POS presentation makes customers feel they just feel that one shop “looks right” for ice cream and the other does not, as customers shop with their eyes.
Hina finally adds – “We know that it’s important to get the POS out quickly and to activate all the touchpoints early in the year to ensure that consumers see the communication on our NPD’s and that the retailers have the latest information on our products to enable them to sell effectively, and thereby increasing their sales too.” Highlighting that this strategy has been tested and emphasising the importance of getting your POS ready before the big rush.
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