Slushie machines serve as a great investment for restaurants, bars, stadiums, or just about any other high-volume establishment in the food service industry. And although slushie machines are simple to use and provide an excellent ROI, there are still businesses out there that rely on blenders to make frozen drinks and cocktails – we can’t understand why!
Continue reading to learn about some of the reasons using a frozen beverage machine to dispense frozen drinks is better option than using a blender.
Consistency
One of the top reasons using a frozen beverage machine to serve customers frozen drinks is the best option is because of the consistency! With Spaceman machines, you pre-batch your frozen drinks/cocktails (or smoothies, milkshakes, etc.!) before adding the mix to your machine. All mixtures that go into Spaceman machines must be mixed well before being poured into your machine’s hopper. This means that if you’re making a batch of margaritas, every single margarita that comes out of that machine is going to taste the same! Say goodbye to inconsistent drinks, and bartenders pouring too much alcohol, or not enough, into a blender while struggling to get the consistency right.
Speed of Service
Another reason why slushie machines are elite compared to blenders is SPEED! We all know the struggles of making frozen drinks in blenders. You add too much ice, so now your drink is all chunky, so you add some more liquid to thin it out and now it’s TOO thin, so now you must add MORE ice…You know the rest. It’s quite aggravating for the person making it, as well as the customer who is waiting over 5 minutes for a drink that will be either melted, too frozen, or flavorless by the time it’s in their hands. This is NEVER an issue when it comes to Spaceman machines. Our machines can remain on for the entire duration of a restaurant shift, meaning they are ready and waiting for you to pour some product. You can serve customers a frozen drink even faster than you can pour a draft beer!
Ease of Use
Spaceman slushie machines are also easier to use than blenders. There’s no eyeballing or winging it involved! If you know your batch recipe proportions, it is as simple as mixing a batch in a large bucket, pouring the entire mix into your hopper, and letting the machine do the rest of the work. Employees and servers can now focus on other tasks while the machine freezes, then all they need to do is simply pull up on our self-closing handles to dispense some slushie into a glass when a customer is ready to try some. Anyone can do it!
Maintenance
When looking at a frozen beverage machine vs. a blender, you may think that a blender is way easier to clean, but this isn’t the case. It’s hard to get a blender super clean when there are chunks of product stuck under and around the blades. Blenders may be smaller and can fit in a sink, but they also need to be washed after each use! If somebody orders a frozen Mojito, and then someone else orders a virgin Piña Colada, you need to get out every trace of Mojito before even attempting to make the next mocktail. This is not the case with Spaceman machines. They should be cleaned often as well, but surely not after serving only one person! Most of our frozen beverage models allow you to put your machine on standby mode, meaning your mix will remain refrigerated in your hopper and freezing cylinder. We recommend checking with your local and state guidelines to see how often you need to clean your slushie machine, but we guarantee it’s a lot fewer times per week than a blender would be!
Taste
A reason that cannot be overlooked is one of the most important of all: taste! It’s important to note that with Spaceman frozen beverage machines, there is no ice involved. For example, if you’re making a frozen Jack & Coke, you quite literally just need to mix Jack Daniels and Coca-Cola in a large bucket, check that your brix level is between 13 and 18, and then freeze the mix in your Spaceman machine. There is no ice involved- the machine will freeze the mix for you, preserving the rich taste of your ingredients. If you wanted to make a frozen Jack & Coke in a blender, you would need to add a ton of ice, which would water down your frozen cocktail and give it a crystallized, granular texture.
Cost Effectiveness
We’d like to sum up our reasoning with the fact that slushie machines are much more cost-effective than blenders. When looking at the price difference between a $5,000+ frozen beverage machine and a $100 blender, many may choose the latter. However, frozen beverage machines have a MUCH larger capacity than blenders, allowing you to sell much more frozen drinks per hour. Unless you have one dedicated bartender who is committed to only making frozen drinks, you’re probably not going to be able to serve more than 5 frozen drinks per hour. One of our smallest units, the 6450-C, can produce up to 80 servings per hour. Everyone knows that frozen drinks can sell for more than regular drinks, so if your price is right, you’ll make a return on your investment in no time! If your frozen drinks are $12 and you sell 50 a day, you can make your money back in less than 2 weeks. Then from there on, it’s all profits!
We hope this article helped you to understand the many differences between blenders and frozen beverage machines. While slushie machines may not be the right choice for every business, we believe that in most cases, they will be of better use than blenders.
Cheers!
