This is not necessarily a justification, but I used to work at Pinkberry and we would do this too. It's because the way you get the nice, instagrammable "swirl" is by doing X amount of rings around the inner walls of the cup (X dependent on size) and then twisting into a peak in the middle, as the ice cream is quite stiff. The hollow inside technique also was the way we got to the weight requirement for each cup (I think it was 5oz for a small?).
If you get a flavour with more oil in it (Nutella and peanut butter were the worst for this) then you tend to get a little more product for your money because it's too soft and collapses in on itself, so we have to put extra on top for the peak.
That being said, people started complaining about the hollow inside and we started filling them. Managers then complained we were giving away too much product.
Some useless ice cream trivia for you all today.
Edit: did not realise this innocuous comment would spark ice cream discourse. The way I got told to swirl ice cream in my minimum wage job at a random pinkberry is not the be all end all of serving dessert. Apologies if it seemed like I was saying otherwise.
Livingaboard1919 on June 10th, 2019 at 11:23 UTC »
Was it ice cream or the Dole whip stuff?
BigBossu on June 10th, 2019 at 13:42 UTC »
My friend is currently in Florida on holiday from the UK He spent $120 (£94) on wands at Universal Studios. So $6 ice cream doesn’t sound so bad.
gladmedium on June 10th, 2019 at 14:04 UTC »
This is not necessarily a justification, but I used to work at Pinkberry and we would do this too. It's because the way you get the nice, instagrammable "swirl" is by doing X amount of rings around the inner walls of the cup (X dependent on size) and then twisting into a peak in the middle, as the ice cream is quite stiff. The hollow inside technique also was the way we got to the weight requirement for each cup (I think it was 5oz for a small?).
If you get a flavour with more oil in it (Nutella and peanut butter were the worst for this) then you tend to get a little more product for your money because it's too soft and collapses in on itself, so we have to put extra on top for the peak.
That being said, people started complaining about the hollow inside and we started filling them. Managers then complained we were giving away too much product.
Some useless ice cream trivia for you all today.
Edit: did not realise this innocuous comment would spark ice cream discourse. The way I got told to swirl ice cream in my minimum wage job at a random pinkberry is not the be all end all of serving dessert. Apologies if it seemed like I was saying otherwise.