Reference
The Ice Glossary
Every card keeps the same promise as the rest of the site: one claim, one example, no buzzwords. Every term has its own page — linked to its neighbors.
- A/B test
- An A/B test compares two variants under otherwise equal conditions — two pitches, two days of the week, one result. Without that comparison, any claim that one option 'does better' stays a guess.
- also: split test
- Break-even
- Break-even is the point where contribution margin exactly covers the wage — at €5 an hour in wages and €0.50 margin per ice cream, that's exactly 10 ice creams an hour. Below that she's losing money, above it she's earning.
- also: break-even point
- COGS
- COGS — cost of goods sold — is the money each ice cream costs you before you've sold it: €0.50 a piece. That cost is fixed whether the ice cream gets sold or melts in the box.
- also: cost of goods sold
- Confounder
- A confounder is a hidden factor that skews both sides of a comparison — more ice cream sales and more drownings move together not because one causes the other, but because hot days drive up both. Miss the confounder, and you mistake correlation for cause.
- also: confounding variable
- Contribution margin
- Contribution margin is what a single ice cream contributes toward fixed costs and profit after the cost of goods — at a €1 price and a €0.50 buy-in, that's €0.50 a unit. It's the number that decides whether a second seller is worth it.
- also: margin
- Fixed costs
- Fixed costs happen no matter how many ice creams get sold — the hourly wage is the story's example: ten hours at €5 is €50, whether the evening count reads 200 or 20. The cooler is borrowed and Mira pays no pitch fee — the wage stays the only fixed cost in this story.
- also: fixed expenses
- Gross profit
- Gross profit is revenue minus the cost of goods, before wages or anything else enters the picture. At a €1 price and a €0.50 buy-in, that's €0.50 of gross profit per ice cream — not yet the profit, but the first honest checkpoint.
- also: gross income
- Hypothesis
- A hypothesis is a guess that can be proven wrong — 'ice cream sells better on Mondays' can be measured, so it qualifies. 'That's just how the market is' doesn't. A priority list without a hypothesis is just an opinion with a running order.
- KPI
- A KPI is one of the handful of numbers you can actually decide something with — not the twenty that just look impressive. Sales per hour is a KPI; how many people were at the lake usually isn't.
- also: key performance indicator
- Leading & lagging indicator
- A leading indicator tells you early where things are headed — ice creams per hour in the morning. A lagging indicator only confirms it afterward — the profit at day's end. Measure only the lagging kind, and you learn about the problem after it's too late to fix.
- also: leading indicator, lagging indicator
- Profit
- Profit is what's left once the cost of goods and wages come off revenue — the only figure that's actually hers to keep. Sell 100 ice creams at €1 each on a 10-hour day, and €50 in stock leaves €50 in profit — and that day nobody drew a wage. Count her own ten hours and it comes to zero.
- also: net income
- Revenue
- Revenue is the money that comes in before anything gets subtracted — 100 ice creams at €1 each is €100 in revenue. It tells you how much business happened, not whether the day was worth it.
- also: sales
- Variable costs
- Variable costs grow with every ice cream sold — the €0.50 buy-in per unit is the cleanest example. Double the quantity, and these costs double right along with it.
- also: variable expenses