‘A 99 with a Flake? That will be £7, please’: what’s behind the surge in ice-cream van prices?

Name: Iceflation.

Appearance: An ice-cold rip-off, with a Flake on top.

Ah, here we go – expensive ice-creams. It seems like only yesterday the two eight-year-olds who went viral on TikTok were complaining about having to pay £9 for two screwballs from an ice cream van. It was 2024 – and the cost of licking has only risen since then.

Wow, gross expression, but go on. According to a survey of 2,000 British parents commissioned by Aldi, they are spending £50 a kid on ice-cream over the six-week summer holidays this year. The average cost of a 99 is £2.65, but one vendor outside the British Museum in London is reportedly charging £7 for one scoop with a flake. A survey of 33 seaside resorts by the credit card company Zable found a single-scoop cone in Porthmadog in north Wales cost £3.85.

Any cheaper spots? It would cost you a more reasonable £1.95 for one scoop at Barton-on-Sea in Hampshire.

I guess that’s where we’re heading on holiday then. What’s causing this round of iceflation? Exactly what you’d expect. As an Ice Cream Alliance spokesperson told the Daily Mail: “Almost every part of serving a 99 has become more expensive.” Milk and chocolate are among the five most climate-impacted foods, according to a recent report from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank, and ice-cream vans need to keep products cool and travel around at a time of rising diesel and electricity prices.

A sorry state of affairs. But hasn’t ice-cream always been pricey? Not everywhere: in Naples, it was a popular treat for all classes in the 18th century. “Penny licks” – reusable glasses filled with ice-cream customers licked and returned – democratised it as a street treat in Britain in Victorian times, though you might get a free cholera topping, according to an 1879 medical report.

Yuck! You’re putting me off ice-cream altogether. It may actually be good for you – a mysterious, seemingly beneficial “ice-cream effect” has been observed in diet-related research multiple times. One Harvard study in 2005 found men who ate two or more servings of ice-cream a week had a 22% lower risk of diabetes; a 2016 meta-analysis of multiple studies also found that eating as little as half a cup was associated with a 19% lower risk.

Ice-cream vans should broadcast those findings instead of catchy jingles. Unfortunately, many scientists are sceptical that the ice-cream effect is real.

Unlike the wallet effect, which definitely is real. Is it too late to tell the kids the van only plays a tune when it’s out of ice-cream?

Do say: “I got 99 problems but a Flake ain’t one.”

Don’t say: “I scream, you scream, we all scream for high ice-cream prices caused by acute and sustained climate and energy shocks!”