High Road Ice Cream turns to Crisp to churn up sales.

Open road, limited visibility
After launching as a family business in 2010, demand for High Road’s chef-inspired, ultra-indulgent frozen treats quickly skyrocketed. They’re now the fastest-growing ice cream manufacturer in the U.S. with five widely distributed product lines. After acquiring Ciao Bella gelato, the company’s presence expanded overnight to practically every distributor and cold storage facility in the country.

To keep up with this rapid growth, Senior Director of Sales Madison Schroeder spent 90+ minutes per day downloading reports from retail partners to track sales and share trends with her production team. “I had 10 different spreadsheets up on 3 different monitors,” Madison said. “It was a disaster.”

Sitting in an executive meeting, Madison noticed that seemingly simple questions like “Where are our products being sold?” were nearly impossible to answer. She decided to join Crisp to get instant visibility into the business.

Using insights to drive sales and ops
Madison checks Crisp almost every day to track velocity, monitor sales, and find potential voids in the market. Armed with this information, she can talk to buyers about ideas to promote the product or expand shelf space. In category reviews, she highlights new opportunities where sales for certain SKUs were strong at nearby stores. “It gives the retailer the comfort to say, you’re clearly selling well here. We’re going to bring you into more doors,” Madison explained.

On the operations side, High Road’s demand planners use Crisp to manage production schedules based on the data. They closely monitor trends for popular SKUs to determine when, for instance, their lemon flavor should get another run before blood orange. This level of accuracy helps High Road stay lean and lower carrying costs -- a must given that cold storage is expensive and energy intensive. 

Even High Road’s office administrator uses Crisp to answer customer inquiries. Pulling up the insights dashboard on the phone, she can quickly tell a customer where they can find, say, Bourbon Burnt Sugar ice cream in Montana. Madison is thankful not to be her organization’s only point-person for business insights anymore. “I can just say, ‘Go check Crisp, and you’ll get your answer there.’”