The National Dipper is the only free trade magazine for ice cream, frozen custard, gelato, soft serve, frozen yogurt, Italian Ice, sorbet and other frozen dessert retail store owners and managers.
Regular Departments include:
- Industry news
- Association News
- New Products
- Calendar of Events
- Recipes
- Classified
- Yellow Pages
Feature articles are dedicated to helping store owners and managers sell more products. Features give owners information about products and services. Industry experts share their knowledge: selling techniques and management experiences. We also offer articles on the care and maintenance of equipment. Profiles of successful stores are also featured.
Our circulation is 100% ice cream and frozen desserts (hard ice cream, soft serve, frozen custard, frozen yogurt, gelato, water ice, sorbet) store owners and managers. We reach nearly 15,000 frozen dessert stores in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of our circulation are independent store owners, the other one-third are franchise stores and franchise store headquarters. In addition we mail to 600 distributors who are industry specific to the retail ice cream business.
Subscriptions are free for qualified recipients who provide a sales tax identification number to verify that they have a store before we include them on our mailing list. Our mailing list is updated on a weekly basis.
And The National Dipper gets results for its advertisers. Many of the advertisers who were in our first issue, 36 years ago are still advertising in every issue of the magazine today! Proof positive that The National Dipper delivers results.
Our web site is a powerful resource for you. We provide links on our web site to our advertiser’s web sites for every issue. These links are provided for advertisers’ ads as well as new product announcements to drive traffic to the advertiser’s web site 24/7. We call it Reader Service in a Nanosecond®. The links remain on our web site for an entire year for each issue. This service is free to our advertisers.
We are currently getting approximately 1,000 site visits a month, with 4,000 page views. This is an average. When the print issue is mailed, there is a definite spike in the site views. The average time spent on our web site is about 6 minutes, 84% are new visitors. We provide a Google Analytics report that shows how many subscribers visited our web site and then linked to an advertiser’s web site. Now, that’s action!
We are always looking for new industry trends and recipes to keep our subscribers up to date with any of the latest innovations in the ice cream industry. And we welcome suggestions from our advertisers. Our New Product section is free and is available for industry related new product announcements. It is provided on a space available basis, but we always place our advertiser’s new products information first.
Editorial calendars are issued in early October. Some of our editorial features are kept year-to-year because they are so popular with our readers.
The January/February issue is the “Source Book,” an invaluable industry resource subscribers keep on hand all year. It includes listings for manufacturers, including all contact information. There is a section listing manufacturers by product category and brand names. Distributors are listed by state. This issue has additional distribution, (between 4,000 and 5,000 copies) at trade shows, distributor open houses, industry meetings, seminars and classes throughout the year.
The March/April issue includes the Industry Outlook. Retail store owners, from around the country, are asked to look back at the previous year and share their sales results. They are also asked to tell us the new products they will be introducing in store for the coming season.
May/June issue has pertinent seasonal hiring and management information details.
July/August issue celebrates National Ice Cream Month and National Ice Cream Day.
The September/October issue gets additional distribution and exposure at the New England Ice Cream Restaurant Association and the National Ice Cream Retailers Association Annual Meetings.
The November/December issue includes the Industry Events Calendar for the following year, listing trade shows, distributor open houses, annual meetings, seminars and any event of interest to ice cream store operators. The issue also includes the Promotion of the Year Awards event.
To reach the frozen dessert retail store owners and managers (the purchasing decision makers) there is no better place to advertise than in The National Dipper.
For over 36 years The National Dipper has been providing accurate and timely information for frozen dessert store owners and managers and will continue to do that for many more years. We constantly strive to keep pace with new technology and will continue to look for new methods to support our advertisers and offer them new ways to reach our subscribers.
Thank you for considering The National Dipper as part of your web and print media strategies.