Ice cream is getting more and more expensive: prices up by 40% in five years

Packaged ice cream is becoming increasingly expensive. Over the past five years, the average prices of biscuits, croissants and ice lollies have soared by 40 per cent, with some supermarket brands seeing price increases of up to 75 per cent per kilo. Shrinkflation alone (the practice of reducing the quantity of product in packs whilst leaving the price unchanged editor’s note) is not enough to explain this extraordinary rise: behind this phenomenon lie food price inflation and price rises – often unclear – following the energy and logistics crisis of a few years ago.

There is a fairly widespread impression that packaged ice creams have become smaller and smaller over the years. Popsicles that fit in the palm of your hand and ice cream cones that, summer after summer, are shrinking before our very eyes. But this is not the only trend affecting one of summer’s most iconic snacks, because, in inverse proportion to the decrease in size, prices have risen. This is certainly not a new development: the surge in food prices is a significant trend that we have been observing for some time, so much so that even the Competition Authority is investigating to shed light on the situation and identify the real causes. Factors such as the energy crisis and rising raw material prices – including higher cocoa prices and significant price volatility – have also contributed to driving up the final costs for consumers, making ice cream production less cost-effective for the manufacturers themselves.

According to Istat data, ice cream prices have risen by 39.6% in just five years. The first real surge was recorded in 2022: prices jumped by 13% compared with the previous year. A similar situation occurred in 2023, when prices rose again, recording a further surge of 16 per cent compared with 2022. This trend is also evident for other food products, as demonstrated by the latest survey on pizza and soft drink prices carried out in April, in which we found price rises of up to 26 per cent compared with 2021.

This extraordinary growth is mainly linked to the energy and logistics crisis: in fact, over the two-year period 2022–2023, food prices in Italia rose to record levels, with average annual inflation for these goods standing at +8.8% in 2022 and +9.8% in 2023. According to the figures, ice cream prices have risen by more than the rate of food inflation.