For years, Baskin-Robbins was the undisputed king of premium ice cream in America. And good old Dairy Queen reigned supreme with the masses. But a recent poll reveals a shift to newer ice cream brands favoured by younger generations…
Coming, as I do, from a time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I have a lot of trouble acknowledging the new fact – supported by YouGov.com mass polling – that Dairy Queen is no longer at the top of the US national Ice Cream shop ratings.
DQ signaled summer
When I was young, and even not so young, Dairy Queen was everywhere. And that’s where folks stop-ped when craved a quick, cold treat. With its famous soft serve ice cream to the fore, and shakes and fizzy pops in close support, DQ was a summer tradition across North America. And when I was a kid, they closed for the winter. Come March, we all waited impatiently for DQ’s seasonal reopening – the unofficial start of summer!
Another world
But that was truly another world. My childhood was an era in which small independent dairies still ruled the range. In my town, we had the Riverside Dairy in the West End, and the Cooksville Jersey Dairy (‘Sweeter Milk From Contented Cows’) in the North End. Both delivered milk, cream, butter, and other products to your house.
Most homes had a ‘milk box’ at the side door. You left your empty milk bottles in it at night with a couple of dollars and a note detailing your needs for the next day. The milkman would come very early, during the cool of the dawn, to collect the glass empties and leave the products you wanted. There was also a bread man who operated in much the same way.
Tell kids today that, and they won’t believe you!
But I digress…
The local dairies had a lock on the ‘real ice cream’ business back then. That was where we went when the family made a special trip ‘out for ice cream’. Often on Sunday afternoon.
Now, the local dairies in Canada have all been bought up by mega-brands such as Sealtest, Agropur, Nielson’s and Saputo. And folks must likewise turn to a parallel sector made up of maga-scoop-shops such as Baskin-Robbins, Ben and Gerry’s and Cold Stone Creamery for what we now call ‘premium’ ice cream.
‘Survey says…’
The most recent data from YouGov.com reveals that, for the first time since the company started tracking major brands, that a relative upstart has ousted both Dairy Queen and Baskin-Robbins from their frosty thrones atop the Ice Cream pyramid.
Cold Stone Creamery is now officially the most loved national ice cream brand in the US. And it con-solidated its new hold on the popular taste, ranking second overall (behind Krispy Kreme) in a par-allel quality ranking of sweet treat brands.
Some caveats…
Cold Stone may be the preferred brand among ice cream lovers. But I’ll bet it’s not a place they go every day, or even every week. Independent surveys looking at price and availability note that CSC operates not quite 1,000 stores across the US, while Baskin Robbins has more than twice as many locations.
And with quality come costs. Cold Stone, along with B-R and competitors such as Culver’s, were noted by consumers in other polls as pricey compared to alternatives. And the most preferred alternative was to buy any of those premium brands by the tub at the supermarket and scoop your own at home.
My take
How far would you travel to get a cone from your fave ‘real ice cream’ vendor? Even with gas prices (temporarily, at least) moderating…
How often would you go?
How much are you willing to pay for your preferred ice cream brand?
I, for one, will not be moved the the results of the latest YouGov. ice cream poll. I will stick steadfastly to my long-established ice cream procurement protocol: get the best quality stuff I can find at the supermarket and scoop my own.
But there’s still one more option, preferred over all the rest, that I can access – albeit it with some risks involved. Sister Erin makes the best ice cream I’ve tasted, using her own egg-rich recipe and a couple of special prep hacks she’s developed all on her own. But it takes considerable time and effort to make. And it can take some heavy persuasion and even coercion to make a batch of her almost magical cream appear…
~ Maggie J.