The product changing the seasons in Southern Italian kiosks.

From Polignano to Lecce, more and more kiosk operators are replacing small cartridges with a 670g canister. Wider margins, smoother queues, flavours other kiosks do not have. Here is what is changing behind the counter before the 2026 season.

01 · The problemThe problem every kiosk in the South knows

Anyone who runs a kiosk on the coast knows it. The real season lasts three months. In those three months you have to do what others do in twelve. The good day is not the calm one, it is the one where the queue runs all the way to the parking lot. That is when you find out who can hold the counter and who cannot.

Salvatore has seen plenty of things change in twenty two years. He has seen credit cards arrive, then phone payments, then online reviews, then Instagram stories, then the new beach bars sprouting like mushrooms under freshly redone bathing clubs. But one thing always stayed the same: the struggle to keep up in the twenty hottest minutes of the day.

"The small cartridges were the worst part," he admits. "One cream, one cartridge. Two creams, one cartridge. Sometimes you swap halfway through an order because you can feel the gas is dying. Meanwhile the kids behind the counter slow down, the customer looks around, maybe glances at the kiosk next door."

Add to this costs creeping up every year, granita margins thinning out, energy, raw materials. The end of season balance, the real one, narrower year after year.

02 · The turnThe phone call from a gelato maker in Lecce

The turn came last February, off season, with a phone call Salvatore had not expected. On the other end an old friend, gelato maker in Lecce, someone who has known Salentine pastry since he was fifteen.

"He says, Salvo, you have to hear this. I changed the way I make cream in the shop. No more small cartridges, just one canister. And I have eight different flavours. I swear I would not go back even if they paid me."

The brand was Exotic Whip. Salvatore had never heard of it. He did what we all do: he searched online, read a few spec sheets, watched a couple of videos. The promise was simple. A six hundred and seventy gram canister, filled with food grade N2O at 99,95 per cent purity, replacing roughly eighty small cartridges. Seven flavours to pick from, from the classic Original to Coconut, from Green Apple to Blueberry-Strawberry.

But Salvatore is one of those who only buys what he can hold in his hand. "I placed a small order. One Original canister and one Coconut, just to try. If it does not work, I have lost an afternoon of phone calls."

03 · The first daysThe first days with something different

The canister arrived in two days. Salvatore tried it during a rainy Wednesday lunch break, with no one around. The first cream came out dense, stable, velvety like the ones you see in pastry photographs. The Coconut one, after that, changed his wife's face when she tasted it. "It does not look like spray cream. It looks like it came out of a pastry shop."

The first real test was the following Saturday, with the first wave of weekend tourists. Salvatore left the menu as it was. He only added, handwritten on the small chalkboard, one line: coffee granita with coconut cream · 3.50.

"The first guy who ordered it came back ten minutes later with his wife. They had another, between the two of them. Then another table. Then another. By the end of the day I had sold thirty two coffee granitas with coconut cream. And zero arguments at the counter because the cartridge would not push."

The thing that struck him the most, he says, was not the novelty of the flavour. It was the feeling of no longer having to think about the cream. "You charge the canister in the morning. You leave it there. You use it. Done. You do not even notice it exists, until it runs out."

04 · The numbersWhat actually happened to the numbers

Salvatore is not someone who gets carried away easily. But when he sat down to do the books at the end of July, he had to call his accountant just to be sure he had not made a mistake.

The most important part, however, is not in the numbers. It is in the fact that Salvatore now stands at the counter differently. He no longer eyes the queue with dread, no longer gets nervous when a tourist coach pulls up, no longer sends his son to the storeroom to grab another box of cartridges while the espresso sits cold on the saucer.

05 · The flavoursThe flavours that made the difference

The seven Exotic Whip flavours, for Salvatore, have become a small positioning weapon. "Before, I was a kiosk like the others. Now I am the kiosk with the unusual granitas. People come here on purpose, even from neighbouring villages."

The ones that work best on his counter, in order of sales:

• Coconut On coffee granita and on affogato. It became his number one, sells three times more than classic cream.
• Green Apple Topping for non alcoholic spritz and mocktails, the summer of underage customers and designated drivers got more colourful.
• Blueberry and Strawberry On vanilla frappè or on lemon granita. For kids it is the most requested, and for many mothers too.
• Banana On pistachio affogato and on crepes. Works particularly well in late afternoon, with the snack rush.
• Coconut and Strawberry The new flavour for 2026. Salvatore listed it as "house special", he serves it only on weekends.
• Original The base of everything. For classic pastry, for espresso with cream, for customers who want no novelties.

06 · The adviceWhat Salvatore would say to someone considering it

When we asked him what he would say to another kiosk owner currently weighing the switch, Salvatore thought about it for a moment. Then he said three things, in order.

First. "Do not buy everything at once. Get one canister, maybe the Original or a flavour you are curious about. Use it for a week. If after a week you have not understood, then maybe it is not for you. But that rarely happens."

Second. "Actually count how many cartridges you go through in a week, in high season. Not from memory, count them. If it is more than thirty, you have already proven to yourself that the switch makes sense. It is not a question of product, it is a question of arithmetic."

Third. "Think about the kid you have at the counter. If the kid does not waste time changing cartridges, he serves more customers, brings in more receipts, is less stressed. By the end of the season, you pay that kid the same. But he has produced more. And he has worked better."

07 · What staysThe part you do not see

Around eight in the evening, when the sun drops behind the cliff and the kiosk is almost empty, Salvatore pours himself a coffee and sits at the table next to the counter. It is the usual ritual, twenty two years long. But this year, he says, it tastes different.

"When I get home in the evening, I am less tired. My wife noticed before I did. She told me, you have less of those faces when you come back. It is true. It is not a revolution, mind you. It is a detail. But a detail that, by the end of the season, makes the difference."

The difference, for Salvatore, is a season closing in the black like he had not seen in years. It is the chance, already in May, to think about next summer without the usual anxiety. It is his eldest son who, for the first time, said: dad, next year I can help out too. Maybe that, in the end, is the real return on investment.

Marco Albanese writes about hospitality, venues and small entrepreneurship in the South for the HoReCa Innovazione editorial team. Born in Bari, lives in Lecce. He has covered the HoReCa supply chain in the regions of the Italian Mezzogiorno for the last eight years.