Out-of-home sales data
Ice cream out-of-home sales data: see where your ice cream sells during the season
Image generated with AIBefore the season starts, you know how much ice cream you shipped to each distributor and wholesaler. What you can’t see is where your ice cream sold afterwards. They resell your products to kiosks, bars, beach outlets and petrol stations, and their sales data often reaches head office as a monthly report. So you see what happened in those outlets about a month after it happened.
I work with manufacturers on Trade Data Hub, the Asseco Platform solution that collects and organises data from distributors. In this text I call distributors and wholesalers intermediaries. In Italy, they’re often exclusive regional concessionaires. Some manufacturers also deliver part of their volume through their own distribution network, and this text is about the part that goes through intermediaries.
Even the market data for this channel is thin. Froneri, which describes itself as the number 2 player in the global ice cream market, notes in its 2025 annual report that “for market data and share reads there are limitations with capturing the out-of-home data”. The same report lists more than 800,000 Froneri freezers in the out-of-home business worldwide. That’s a very large number of scattered outlets.
The number of intermediaries can be large too. The Magnum Ice Cream Company, in its 2025 registration document submitted to the US SEC, lists more than 2,000 distributors across six continents. That figure covers its whole distribution network across all channels.
Shipments show what the intermediary bought
Your sell-in figures show what left your warehouse and which intermediary received it. In the out-of-home channel, your direct view stops there. The intermediary then resells to a long list of small outlets: park kiosks, seafront bars, campsites and motorway petrol stations.
What the intermediary resells to those outlets is distributor sell-out (secondary sales). For an ice cream manufacturer, it’s the number that shows which outlets received your products and in what quantity, SKU by SKU.
In a monthly report, the difference between what you shipped and what the outlets received shows only after the fact. If an intermediary received too much in June, the surplus is still in its warehouse in September, when the warm weeks are over. If it received too little, its outlets had empty freezers on the hottest days. Your shipment report gives you no warning before it happens. Stock at the intermediary does: high stock warns of a surplus, low stock of a shortage.
A short season needs data more often
Magnum’s registration document calls May to September “the peak selling season in the Northern Hemisphere” and says that weather in those months “can have a disproportionate impact” on its results. Demand changes from week to week with the temperature. A cold, wet June and a hot June produce very different sales from the same outlets.
A monthly report arrives too late for weekly changes. June data that reaches you in mid-July describes a month you can no longer change. Over a May to September season, monthly data gives you at most four reports, each about a month that’s already over.
My advice is to ask each intermediary for data as often as its systems allow, ideally daily. If an intermediary can’t send data every day, ask for it every week. The more often data arrives, the more often you can adjust deliveries.
Before a forecast heatwave, you can send extra stock to intermediaries whose outlets are selling fast. You can also delay deliveries to those whose warehouse stock is still high. Both decisions need last week’s data.
Two numbers for the season: resale by outlet and intermediary stock
Two numbers answer the questions a sales team asks in July. The first is resale by outlet and SKU, taken from the intermediaries’ invoices. It shows which kiosks and bars buy and reorder your products. How often an outlet reorders tells you how fast it’s selling. The same data shows which flavours outlets reorder fastest at the seaside, and it picks out outlets that have received nothing for weeks.
Outlets
| Outlet | Intermediary | Sales value | Invoices | Days since last invoice | Products | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beach kiosk 014 | Intermediary A | 6,240 | 9 | 2 | 14 | Active |
| Seafront bar 102 | Intermediary B | 4,980 | 7 | 3 | 11 | Active |
| Campsite shop 033 | Intermediary C | 3,150 | 5 | 4 | 9 | Active |
| Park kiosk 207 | Intermediary A | 1,320 | 2 | 23 | 6 | No delivery |
| Petrol station 518 | Intermediary B | 980 | 1 | 27 | 4 | No delivery |
The second is stock in each intermediary’s warehouse. Compare it with recent sales and you can see which intermediary will run out of stock before a warm weekend. Drinks brands read distributor stock against sales in the same way, as I described in an earlier article.
One format from many intermediaries
The first problem is format. Intermediaries send data from their own systems, in their own formats, with product names and codes that differ from yours. To compare them during the season, you need all of it in one format. The summer peak is a bad moment to ask them for a new template, because it’s their busiest time too.
A second problem is the file that doesn’t arrive. If the file from one large intermediary is missing in a week of hot weather, the total for its region gives the wrong picture. Unless the missing file is flagged, you may plan deliveries on that total.
What Trade Data Hub does
The platform takes the files intermediaries already send: spreadsheets, PDFs or direct links from their systems (EDI or API). It maps them to your own product and customer codes. It holds invoiced sales by outlet and SKU and the stock in each intermediary’s warehouse. Once the contents of each pack are defined, multipacks and promotional sets can be split into individual SKUs, because a 4-pack counted as one unit would put that flavour too low in your flavour ranking. The reports show which intermediaries haven’t sent data recently and estimate how much of your sales is missing from the totals, so you know which regional totals are incomplete before you act on them.
| Intermediary | Region | Last file | Days with data (of 30) | Estimated missing sales | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intermediary A | North coast | 14 Jul | 30 | 0 | OK |
| Intermediary B | South coast | 14 Jul | 28 | 2,600 | OK |
| Intermediary C | Lakes | 5 Jul | 20 | 21,400 | No data for 10 days |
| Intermediary D | East | 3 Jul | 18 | 14,200 | No data for 12 days |
| 8 more intermediaries | Various | 14 Jul | 30 each | 0 | OK |
Trade Data Hub integrates 1,600+ distributors across 27 countries, giving 85+ FMCG manufacturers distributor sell-out visibility into 900,000+ outlets. In ice cream, Magnum Italy uses Trade Data Hub.
Asseco Platform’s Trade Terms & Settlement uses the same resale data to calculate promotional refunds for intermediaries while the season runs. So when settlement comes in October, you and your intermediaries work from the same data, apart from the last invoices of the settlement period. I wrote about that in an article on ice cream rebate settlement.
Connect your largest intermediaries before May
Connecting an intermediary takes time. First, you and the intermediary agree at business level to share the data. Then my team does the technical work: together with the intermediary we set how often it sends data, how it delivers the files and what they contain (sales by outlet and SKU, and warehouse stock), map its product and customer codes to yours and test the first deliveries. During the summer peak, intermediaries have little time for this.
I’d start in the winter months with your largest intermediaries. They have the biggest share of your out-of-home volume, so the first connections already cover a large part of the channel. Smaller intermediaries can follow in March and April and send data to the same reports.
If the largest intermediaries are connected and tested before May, their resale and stock data arrives in one format from the first warm weeks of the season.
Andrzej Masłowski
Deputy Director of Sales and Implementations
Asseco Business Solutions
Andrzej runs sales and implementation for Trade Data Hub and Trade Terms & Settlement. His work is bringing the resale and stock data that distributors and wholesalers send into one format, so manufacturers can act on it while the season runs.
If your out-of-home sales data still reaches you a month after the sales, talk to him.
Frequently asked questions
How can an ice cream manufacturer see out-of-home sales that go through concessionaires and wholesalers?
By collecting the resale data that these intermediaries already hold: their invoices to kiosks, bars, beach outlets and petrol stations, by outlet and SKU, together with the stock in their warehouses. Each intermediary sends this data in its own format, so it has to be mapped to the manufacturer’s own product and customer codes and brought into one format. Then the manufacturer can see during the season where its ice cream sells and which intermediaries will run out of stock.
What is ice cream out-of-home sales data?
It’s the data on what distributors, wholesalers and, in Italy, concessionaires resell to kiosks, bars, beach outlets and petrol stations. This is distributor sell-out (secondary sales), reported from invoices by outlet and SKU. Read together with the stock in each intermediary’s warehouse, it shows where your ice cream sells, where stock is building up and where it’s about to run out.
How often should intermediaries send data during the ice cream season?
As often as each intermediary’s systems allow, ideally daily, and weekly if daily data isn’t possible. In Europe, the peak season runs from May to September and the weather has a large effect on sales, so the more often data arrives, the more decisions you can make before the season ends.
When should an ice cream manufacturer start collecting out-of-home data?
In the winter months, before the season starts. First the manufacturer and each intermediary agree at business level to share the data. Then the technical work follows: how often and how the intermediary sends data, what the files contain, mapping its product and customer codes to the manufacturer’s, and testing the first deliveries. Intermediaries have little time for this during the summer peak. Start with the largest intermediaries, because they have the biggest share of out-of-home volume, and add smaller ones in March and April. If the largest are connected and tested before May, their data arrives in one format from the first warm weeks of the season.
Talk to us before the next season
Get in touch with my team through the Trade Data Hub page if your out-of-home sales data still reaches you a month after the sales. Tell us how many intermediaries you work with and what they send you today, and we’ll discuss what their resale data in one format could look like.
