Kimball Farm Expands in the ever-changing ice cream market.

Two new activities this year, and expanded food service to come as the grill shacks expands to a restaurant and moves from the former parking lot to the area where the olde sawmill arcade and restroom house located next to the bumper boats.

Kimball Farm added the Soaring Eagle Zipline and the Spinzone bumper cars this past Memorial Day, and ground will break for expanded utility service towards the batting cages.  There's a brick oven and some fryers that are in place, serving fried dough, pizza, corn dogs, kettle corn, Italian sausage, and perhaps a satellite ice cream stand that would hopefully cut the lines at the front.  From there, Kimball Farm plans to add a multi story olde sawmill in place of the current one and add a restaurant.  The restaurant will have everything the grill/seafood shack had, plus some more items, perhaps pizza and is planning to have that year round.  Hopefully, ice cream will be served there in the future, or at least frappes and soft serve ice cream, finally doing what they needed to do...expand the ice cream service to year-round rather then the old-fashioned April to Columbus Day theme.

Hopefully what comes in the building is maybe a smaller spin-zone bumper cars (contains 8 cars and is about a third of the space of the spinzone out near the batting cage, some pinball machines and classic arcade machines.  From there, they can develop winter activities, even selling Christmas trees during December.  Maybe in the fall, they would start haunt weekend during October.

This is the ever changing market of ice cream.  Seasonal stands may be projected to go extinct by 2030 or 2040 (Maybe except these seaside stands on boardwalks, beaches, water parks, and amusement parks) as the likes of Cold Stone Creamery and Ben and Jerry's are taking hold.  Dairy Queen is in the move towards closing down the braziers and opening up year-round grill and chill spots and strop mall stores that sell food.  Sonic also has ice cream that they serve year-round.  Jay Gee's ice cream opened up a Salem NH location and went from seasonal to year round.  It is a nice move that Kimball Farm decides to do another push for year-round by upgrading the grill shacks to restaurants, particularly in Westford and hopefully later on, Lancaster.


Now before I end this, here's what Kimball Farm should do:

Get rid of the tents.  For the past 16 years, they rented tents for use as an eating area, animal adventures, and private events.  Kimball Farm doesn't see that it costs a lot of money to install the tents in the spring and bring them down in the fall past Columbus day.  Not only that, these tents are unsightly and make this place unfinished.  They should put down pavillions for private events (and possibly an air-conditioned enclosure maybe for year-round private events), an animal house for animal adventures, and expand the patio from the side of the farmhouse to the two parking lots.
Pave the parking lots, at the batting cages and in front of the ice cream stand.  Seriously, you spent all the money on new stuff.  Yea we like new activities, but it's time to pave the parking lots.  Yea your rides, activitiy, and food prices are inflated, so invest the money on improving the parking lots.  Because of the lack of parking stripes, many "spaces" are half car widths, upsetting other people who want to park there.
Upgrade the ice cream making machine and make year-round ice cream.  Seasonal is good, only in the 20th century.  But in a 21st century world, it's just uneconomical to run the ice cream seasonally.   You have to pay lots of taxes and liability even in the winter, so if the ammonia part is outside and not weather tight, this is a problem since the expense is high and no revenue is put out of the machine, thanks of it being dormant in freezing weather.  That, and more places going year round, it will be eventually time when you are forced to go year round, simply because people just go to another ice cream place that's open year round, seeing themselves as a missed revenue for the winter.

Now on to the more minor things that Kimball Farm could do.  They should put trails in the wooded area between the mini golf area, private event area, and the batting cage area.  It's could be a nice, inexpensive addition, maybe put picnic tables for the snacks and ice cream so that I can enjoy my banana split out in the woods while taking a good walk in the trails at the forested area.

I also see them adding go-karts in the near future.  Perhaps put one behind the batting cages but also make it hilly and have overpasses.  Put a connecting trail from the back of Kimballs that connects to Nashoba ski area to the watershed trails perhaps Bobby's Ranch, to the Bruce Freeman's trail in Westford/Acton to encourage people to walk or bike to Kimball Farm.  Bike racks should also be installed next to the ice cream stand and batting cages.

This is it for news right now.