Online ordering for ice cream shops: pints, cakes and summer nights

Online ordering for an ice cream shop is for what travels: hand-packed pints and quarts, ice cream cakes booked a couple of days ahead, and sundae kits, picked up or delivered close by. Cones stay at the window. With Menuthere, customers order from your own link and pay into your own Stripe account, with no commission. Cakes need notice, delivery stops where the ice cream would melt, and your summer and winter hours change in one place. The Free plan takes 50 orders a month. Lite, at $17 a month, adds unlimited orders, card payments and booked pickups.

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What to sell online, and what to keep at the window

Every dish has three switches: Show on Delivery, Show on Takeaway and Show on Dine-in. Switch off delivery for cones and shakes, and they only appear to customers who chose pickup.

The pint and cake build sheet

Everything in the table is on the Free plan. Mark each dish's allergens: milk and eggs in most ice cream, tree nuts and peanuts in nut flavors and toppings, gluten in cones and cookie pieces, soy in many coatings. Customers see them, with calories, when they open the dish. Add-on options have no allergen mark of their own, so name nut options clearly ("Pistachio (tree nut)").

Ice cream cakes with notice

Cakes are made to order, so you need the order before you build them. Menuthere's Dishes that need notice (Lite):

1. In Prebooking settings, set Which orders can be prebooked to Specific items and tick your cakes.
2. Set Earliest booking time to 2 days.
3. Under Only made on, pick the days you build cakes, such as Tuesday to Saturday.
4. Use Fixed time ranges for pickup, such as 12:00 to 6:00 PM.

A basket with only cakes must be booked for a date that meets the notice. A cake and a pint in the same basket can't be scheduled together; Menuthere asks the customer to split the order. Booked cakes wait in the Prebookings tab, with a red Prepare now box an hour before each pickup, so the cake comes out of the freezer at the right time.

For orders taken by phone or at the counter, the free cake order form prints a clean order sheet. To price your cakes, see how to price cakes.

Seasonal hours and summer nights

Ice cream is seasonal. USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service counted 69.3 million gallons of regular (hard) ice cream made in the US in July 2025, and 48.9 million gallons in December 2025, about 42% more in July. Your online ordering should follow the same curve.

Working hours open and close the store on their own. Delivery and takeaway hours sit inside them, and outside its window an order type greys out with a line such as "Available 2:00 PM - 9:00 PM". With pre-orders on (Lite), a customer who finds you closed in January can still book a cake for Saturday.

Delivery that doesn't melt

Menuthere sets distances in kilometers. If you think in miles, 3 miles is about 4.8 km. Read more on Uber Direct for your own orders, or try the delivery fee calculator.

July: National Ice Cream Month

In 1984, Presidential Proclamation 5219 named July 1984 National Ice Cream Month and 15 July 1984 National Ice Cream Day. The day is now marked on the third Sunday of July, which in 2027 is 18 July. Plan the offer in June:

Should you call it ice cream?

The name on your menu has a federal meaning. FDA's standard of identity, 21 CFR 135.110, says ice cream contains not less than 10% milkfat, generally not less than 10% nonfat milk solids (less when the milkfat is higher), at least 1.6 pounds of total solids to the gallon, and weighs at least 4.5 pounds to the gallon. Frozen custard must contain 1.4% egg yolk solids. Many soft-serve mixes are sold under other names, such as reduced-fat ice cream or a frozen dairy dessert. Use the name on your mix supplier's label on your online menu too.

What it costs: a worked example

In July, a shop takes 700 online orders at $16 on average ($11,200), plus 40 cakes at $48 ($1,920).

With your own ordering you also pay for delivery: your driver, or an Uber Direct fee you pass to the customer at checkout. For a retail benchmark, BLS put prepackaged ice cream at $5.93 per half gallon in US stores in September 2026, so a hand-packed pint at $9.50 is selling something the supermarket doesn't. App rates are from our DoorDash and Uber Eats pages.

Not a fit if

• You need a scoop-shop POS with a cash drawer. Menuthere's POS is an add-on ($10 a month) for ringing up counter orders; it doesn't connect to a card terminal.
• You sell gift cards. Menuthere doesn't sell gift cards.
• Your POS must receive online orders. There's no ready-made link to Square, Toast or Clover.

Running an ice cream van in the UK? See how to start an ice cream van business. Selling cakes beyond ice cream? See online ordering for bakeries.

Set up online ordering for your ice cream shop

1. Create your store. Find your shop on Google to fill in your name, address, hours and photos.
2. Add pints and quarts. Sizes with their own prices and a "Choose 2 flavors" group capped at 2.
3. Hide what won't travel. Switch off Show on Delivery for cones and shakes.
4. Set up cakes with notice (Lite). Specific items, 2 days' notice, your cake days and pickup ranges.
5. Set seasonal hours. Working hours, then delivery hours inside them, such as 2:00 to 9:00 PM.
6. Set delivery. A short radius in km and a packaging charge, or your own Uber Direct account.
7. Connect Stripe and test. Book a 6" cake for Saturday and order a quart for delivery.

Pints, quarts and cakes from your own link, 0% commission.

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