With heat waves wildly spreading across the United States, having ice cream for dinner wouldn't make you a villain. But it could make you poor considering the prices of a couple of scoops.
Government data shows that a half-gallon of ice cream that cost an average of $4.77 in 2021, now carries a price tag of $6.47 -- a spike of 35%. It's up 6% in just the last twelve months.
But as triple digit heat settles over the country, not all prices are created equal. Per Delish, Tennessee and North Carolina have the cheapest scoops at $3.90 each, while Philadelphia is offering the most expensive at $5.35 each on average. California comes in somewhere in the middle at $4.50, while Michigan and Illinois enjoy an average price of $4.40, and Texas is a tiny bit more at $4.50. Check out a map of prices by state HERE.
And the cost of ice cream matters to us -- a lot -- because of how much Americans spend on the cold and tasty treat. According to data watcher Empower, Americans spent $289 on ice cream in the whole of 2024, and we topped ourselves by spending $170 between January 2025 and May 2025 alone.
Gen Z is leading the trend, per Empower, spending $63.20 in May —more than double any other age cohort. "This aligns with broader trends showing Gen Z’s openness to treat-based spending despite inflation," the company found.