Scoop There It Is: Instacart Serves Up the ‘Coolest’ Ice Cream Trends

I scream, you scream, we all scream for a new take on ice cream!

With the summer ice cream season in full swing, what better time to dive into search and buying trends across the Instacart marketplace to better understand the latest consumer preferences and make some predictions about the next big ice cream trends? Here’s the inside scoop: While there’s something nostalgic and comforting about traditional ice creams from our childhood, consumers’ carts show that preferences are changing and people are gravitating toward something a little less vanilla these days. Non-traditional ice creams formats and categories — Keto-friendly, vegan, plant-based, and by the bar — are melting the competition one lick at a time…

Keto-friendly, but Make it Dessert

The low-carb, powered-by-fat Keto diet continues to take the country by storm. Instacart data confirms Keto’s surging popularity with consumer searches for “Keto ice cream” increasing 1,175% year over year.

“As more and more people experiment with the Keto diet, the demand continues to increase for Keto-approved products. Ice cream brands have also taken notice,” said Laurentia Romaniuk, Instacart’s Senior Product Manager and Trends Expert. “The number of ‘Keto’ or ‘high fat’ ice cream products available on Instacart has increased 93% year over year and purchase data shows that the category grew more than 561% within the same time period. In particular, we’ve noticed unprecedented growth for Keto-approved Rebel Ice Cream — in fact, the indicators we’re seeing with Rebel look a lot like what we saw with Halo Top before it burst onto the ice cream scene”

Non-Dairy Ice Cream Licks Its Competition

According to the FDA, upwards of 50 million people are lactose intolerant in the US, which could be one of the top reasons we’re seeing non-dairy ice creams rise in popularity. In fact, customer searches for “dairy-free ice cream” on Instacart increased 25% year over year. Here are the top five fasting-growing non-dairy ice cream brands, according to Instacart purchase data, to start scooping now:

1. Chloe’s Pops
2. Magnum (non-dairy line)
3. Enlightened
4. Hakuna Banana
5. Cado

With two plant-based ice creams in the top five list, we dug deeper to find out if this veggie-forward ice cream base trend is here to stay. Instacart’s data confirms that this new take on ice cream is rising in popularity, with searches for “plant-based ice cream” up 658% this year compared to the same period in 2019. Additionally, avocado-based ice cream Cado shows 122% growth over the past year while Hakuna Banana has experienced a 117% rise in year over year sales via Instacart.

Ice Cream Bars: Having a Moment Right Now

When it comes to ice cream, there’s a format for everyone — pints, popsicles, sandwiches, cones, bars — the list goes on and on. You’d likely assume that traditional ice cream by the pint is the fastest-growing product type within the frozen dessert aisle, but Instacart’s data tells a different story.

Somewhat unexpectedly, ice cream bars have caught the attention of dessert enthusiasts with the category experiencing a nearly 92% increase in items ordered from January to June this year. Coming in behind ice cream bars are sundae cones (18% increase) and frozen fruit pops (14% increase). In comparison, growth for traditional ice cream by the pint remained relatively stable with the smallest swing in overall fluctuation.

“We believe the bigger appetite for ice cream bars may be related to the onset of COVID-19 and the stay-at-home order issued in mid-March,” said Romaniuk. “We saw the first spike in ice cream bar sales on March 13 and the category has experienced tremendous growth since then. When consumers are looking for a quick snack for themselves or to satisfy their kids at home, grabbing an ice cream bar is an easy option — often preferable over a container of ice cream because they are pre-portioned and have a fixed amount of calories.”

Bar none, these are the top five fastest-growing ice cream bar brands according to Instacart purchase data:

1. Binggrae Ice Cream Bar
2. La Michoacana Ice Cream Bar
3. Kaurina’s Kulfi Ice Cream Bar
4. Sundae Shoppe Ice Cream Bar
5. PICS Ice Cream Bars

No matter how you scoop it, Americans’ love for ice cream runs deep — it’s in-cone-ceivable!

Instacart

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Instacart is the leading grocery technology company in North America, partnering with more than 1,400 national, regional, and local retail banners to deliver from more than 80,000 stores across more than 14,000 cities in North America. To read more Instacart posts, you can browse the company blog or search by keyword using the search bar at the top of the page.