It’s not just hot, it’s brutal. With temperatures forecast to be near or above 110 degrees for several days this week we spent several minutes in the KRMG newsroom talking about how to get  a little relief. When one of us said “snow cones” we decided to check and see how the hot, dry conditions were affecting sales.

It turns out that the heat isn’t helping. “When you get up in the 100’s people don’t want to get out of their car and it makes it difficult for us” Josh Juarez told KRMG news. Juarez the owner of Josh’s Sno Shack, we went out to visit at his 91^st and Memorial location where he told us trying to figure out what drives business still makes him scratch his head. “It’s just completely random, you just never know what it’s going to be like” he began. “Some days when it’s 110 we will not have a customer all day and some days when it’s 110 we’ll have a line all day.”

Catch the entire interview with Josh with one click here.

Josh says while there is no flow to why people come or don’t come out to get a shaved ice, he did notice one trend. “Lemon-lime type flavors are a lot more popular when it’s superhot as opposed to the butterscotch or the sweeter cotton candy type flavors.”

Josh was busy getting everything cleaned up and ready to open when a mom and her two young kids came to the front window. I took the chance to ask her if the heat made the ice taste all that much better. “Yes, I think it does, definitely” she giggled. She added “ice make you think of winter and snow, it’s a mind thing.” I asked her if it would ever be too hot to go buy a big cup of chilly goodness “I don’t think so, not for the kids” she smiled as she said.

Listen to our conversation here.

Juarez says he has heard a customer or two comment that the ice was the only way they kept their sanity. “Some people think it’s so hot outside the only thing that’s gonna cool me off is a shaved ice.”

And that’s something Josh is just fine with.