The cost of two ice-cream cones topped with bubble gum has famously risen to £9 in some parts of the UK. With inflation rampant in several countries around the world, is the price of cooling down on a hot day creeping up globally?
Australia
Soft-serve ice-cream vans are a common sight at the beach on a hot summer’s day. But prices are steep. At Bondi beach in Sydney, a vanilla waffle cone dipped in chocolate will set you back A$6 (£3.15), while a classic waffle flake is A$9 (£4.75).
The ice-cream van company Mr Softy said its prices ranged from A$4.50 for a single soft-serve vanilla cone, but could be as much as A$9.50 for a double vanilla scoop with toppings and a sugar waffle cone.
Jim Boras, Mr Softy’s director, said that after the Covid pandemic, prices had gone up by a third, with the cost of a single vanilla soft-serve rising from $3.50 to $4.50 owing to increased supplier costs.
“Before Covid, we were paying $60 a bucket for the choc-dip bucket, now we’re paying close to $160,” he said. “Our prices are guided by supply … if suppliers don’t increase their prices, we don’t increase our prices, because our main audience is kids.”
Sharlotte Thou in Sydney
Germany
Despite galloping inflation in recent years, German ice-cream prices (try the delectable one-word poem Speiseeispreise) remain affordable compared with those of many European neighbours. A scoop will set you back just €1.72 on average, according to a nationwide survey this spring by consumer magazine Coupons.de. That’s up 6.2% since 2023. Regions vary wildly, however, with Bochum in the Ruhr valley a veritable Schnäppchen (bargain) at €1.40 versus €2.12 in wealthy Munich. In keeping with their ardent love of Italian food, Germans consume an average of eight litres of ice-cream each every year – about 100 scoops.
Deborah Cole in Berlin
Germans tend to stick to the classics like chocolate, vanilla and stracciatella (gelato with chocolate flakes) but have a few national quirks, including the notorious Spaghettieis. The sundae, credited to the son of Italian immigrants in Mannheim, is a super-sweet concoction resembling a dish of pasta – essentially cognitive dissonance on a plate. It is made by pushing vanilla ice-cream through a Spätzle noodle press until it looks like spaghetti, then slathering it with strawberry sauce to mimic a marinara, and finally topping it with a grated parmesan stand-in – usually coconut flakes or flaked nuts.
Ivory Coast
This season’s heatwaves in west Africa have made ice-creams a necessary relief, and offered the perfect excuse for indulgence to residents of Abidjan, the commercial capital of Ivory Coast, where the atmospheric mantra is Abidjan est doux (“Abidjan is sweet” in the Ivorian Nouchi slang).
Coffee and tiramisu flavours are favourites in a country that remains the world’s largest cocoa producer, but vanilla and passion fruit are also popular.
Patisseries such as the French-owned retail chain Des Gâteaux et Du Pain on Rue des Jardins, a seemingly never-ending street of restaurants and cafes in the upmarket Deux Plateaux, sell scoops anywhere between 1,500and 2,000 CFA francs (£2-£2.60) each.
Customers seeking more economical prices can head to supermarkets in Marcory Zone 4 and Riviéra districts, where tubs of strawberry and vanilla ice-cream used to cost an average of 2,500 CFA (£3.25) but now cost anywhere from 3,200 to 3,500 CFA (£4.20-4.60) owing to the rise in the price of dairy products. Eromo Egbejule in Abidjan
Japan
Japan is known for its vast array of unusual ice-cream flavours – whitebait or squid ink, anyone? – but most opt for more conventional varieties: vanilla, chocolate and green tea. A “soft cream” cone from a specialist seller can cost anything from ¥500 (£2.50) to about ¥800 (£4), but most people get their ice-cream fix from supermarkets and convenience stores. If there are ice-cream vans in Japan, I have not seen one in all the years I’ve lived here.
The Guardian bought three popular ice-creams from the FamilyMart convenience-store chain: two waffle cones in different flavours, and a Choco Monaka Jumbo: a thin disc of chocolate covered in vanilla ice-cream and encased in a wafer.
Despite falling victim to the rising cost of ingredients, the price of regular Japanese ice-creams still puts Mr Whippy to shame: the Waffle Cone Uji Matcha, made with green tea from a tea-growing town near Kyoto, was the most expensive of the three at ¥328, followed by the Waffle Cone Rich Taste Milk & Vanilla at ¥248 and the Choco Monaka Jumbo – the Guardian Japan’s go-to ice-cream – at ¥173. Justin McCurry in Tokyo
New Zealand
From basic soft-serve cones whipped up in a truck on a hot day, to gourmet offerings from boutique stores, New Zealand is a nation of ice-cream lovers. The country tops the list of ice-cream eaters around the world, at 28.40 liters for each person a year, with vanilla and hokey pokey (a plain vanilla ice-cream with small lumps of honeycomb toffee) among the country’s favourite flavours.
The price of an ice-cream cone can vary, depending on the producer. At the cheaper end, The Ice Cream Truck charges NZ$3 (£1.45) for a kid’s cone, $5 (£2.40) for a standard single cone with trimmings and $7 (£3.40) for a double.
The company’s owner, Hamish Williams, says his sherbet flavour is his bestseller by far. Williams increased prices by $1 this year amid rising fuel, product and insurance costs, but has kept his kids’ cone prices consistent. “I want to be able to give kids an ice-cream if they do come out with loose change, and if you’ve got three kids you can get them all a treat for under $10.”
Boutique ice-cream stores such as Duck Island make small batches using local and seasonal ingredients, which is reflected in their higher prices – $5.50 for a kids’ cone, $7.50 for a single-serve and $10 for a double. The gourmet Auckland-based ice-cream maker Giapo, which boasts superstar fans such as Cher, is at the upper end of the market. Kids’ cones start at $7.50, increasing to $34 for some of Giapo’s more fanciful creations such as a “colossal squid” cone adorned with curling chocolate tentacles. Eva Corlett in Wellington
Spain
In a country where summer temperatures can climb to a punishing 47.6C (117.7F), it’s a relief to know that an ice lolly or ice-cream can be had from the freezer cabinet of a grocery shop for €1 or €2 (85p-£1.70).
The prices rise if you’re after something a little more artisanal – and, naturally, depending on which part of Spain you’re in. The well-known Heladería Sienna, which has been serving Italian gelato to the people of Madrid – and visitors strolling around the capital’s nearby Retiro park – for more than 40 years, offers a long list of choices, including passion fruit and basil, chocolate and dulce de leche, and carrot cake. A small cone will set you back €2.60, a medium one €3.50, and a large one €4.20.
Walk for half an hour into Chueca, Madrid’s vibrant LGBTQ+ district, and the prices at the popular Cuban-Dutch-run Labonata are similar, rising from about €2.80 for a small cone to €4.90 for a large one.
Those with more adventurous palates – and deeper pockets – can find something cool and challenging, at Parallelo in Barcelona. Tubs of gorgonzola and habanero chilli ice-cream range from €9 to €24, as do tubs of matcha tea ice-cream. Sam Jones in Madrid
Thailand
Thailand has a huge range of ice-creams, from fruit flavours such as lychee and durian, to sugary Thai tea, but the classic flavour is coconut. It can be eaten with toppings including sweetcorn, sweet potato, peanuts or palm seed, from a cup, cone or encased in bread. Ice-cream is sold at street-vendor carts, in markets or at convenience stores or malls. At a stall in central Bangkok’s Asok area on Monday, prices ranged from 19 baht (42p) for a cone to 39 baht (85p) for a cup. Rebecca Ratcliffe in Bangkok
The US
Ice-cream has evolved from a luxury item for the wealthy and elite in the 1700s to a staple – first as ice-cream parlours and soda shops were popularised in the early 20th century, and then after cheap refrigeration became widely available. The US even boasts the self-described ice-cream capital of the world – Le Mars, Iowa, which can brag of producing the most ice-cream by one manufacturer in one location globally since 1994, under the Blue Bunny brand.
Recently, however, prices have risen, with the retail cost of a half gallon of ice-cream in the US reaching $6.02 in 2023, a new all-time high – and hitting $6.20 (£4.88) in April 2024, according to the Federal Reserve. As prices have trended upwards, demand and consumption for ice-cream in the US has been in decline: on average, an individual American ate around 16lbs (10kg) of full-fat ice-cream in 2000, but this fell to about 12lb annually in 2021.
The decline has been attributed to health concerns, worries about the environmental impacts of the dairy industry, the increasing demand for dairy-free options, and the proliferation of smaller, pint-size ice-creams on the market. Despite declines in consumption, dairy ice-cream sales reached about $7bn in 2022.
