Who remembers the early ‘90s when Justin King became the Managing Director of Haagen-Dazs, the first adult ice cream brand? Justin masterminded the famously provocative and erotic ad campaigns, and they became one of the most talked-about marketing campaigns of the decade, positioning the brand far ahead of their competitors.
This summer, my mind has once again turned to ice cream and, more specifically, ice cream parlours – or as they are becoming known as more and more, gelatarias. With the hottest June on record in the UK seeing ice cream sales nearly doubling, interest in the sweet treat has clearly risen. But what was, until recently, a treat reserved for children or trips to the seaside has now evolved into an all-round premium experience.
The Sunday Times Style magazine announced that ice cream had become “an artisanal way of life, loved by the fashion world”.
This July, for a fortnight, Loewe Perfumes took over The Dreamery, a natural wine and ice cream bar in Hackney, dressing the venue in pistachio green and serving a bespoke pistachio gelato to launch its pistachio-scented candle. Similarly, Bottega Veneta went a step further at Selfridges in the same month, rebuilding its ten-scent Alta collection into flavours of fig, rose, blood orange and vanilla, with each cup served at £7 with a matching fragrance sample. Within hours, the videos had gone viral.
Proving that ice cream really has transcended the place of simple dessert, Vittles published an eighty-page guide earlier this year entitled ‘Ruby Tandoh’s Ice Cream City’, which ranked London’s gelatarias in the same way that wine guides rank vineyards by focusing on flavour, service and queue length, whilst the Sunday Times Style magazine announced that it had become “an artisanal way of life, loved by the fashion world”.
Becoming desirable to the fashion world doesn’t happen by accident. In Brooklyn, Van Leeuwen’s newest store has been built around a working research kitchen which is visible through frameless glass walls, so that customers queuing can see new flavours being developed only a few feet away. Further still, the Museum of Ice Cream which opened as a Manhattan pop-up in 2016, now has five permanent US sites, one in Singapore and a $200 million valuation, all built around rooms which are meant to be photographed. Its own founder has called it “the most Instagrammed space in the world by square feet”.
And when social media goes right, it can do more than simply publicise the brand. Most recently, Australian frozen yoghurt brand Yo-Chi offered the clearest example of when social media can make or break a business after it opened its first UK store in Notting Hill this August. Queues reportedly stretched to four hours, with some customers arriving from six am, days after a wave of TikTok videos and Instagram posts had already turned the opening into an event. Part of its appeal? The 2,000 square foot venue – which is spread across two floors with a DJ booth and a signature strawberry disco ball – was designed as a late-night hangout, and, consequently, as a unique space for the customer.
This move towards beautiful looking spaces for products that have not previously been seen as luxury is only growing – ice cream shop design is forecast to grow at 8.7 per cent a year to 2033, and in a market being reshaped accordingly, 65 per cent of buyers now cite visual appeal as a key factor in where they choose to spend. Similarly, 60 per cent actively prefer a shop that presents itself as premium or artisanal over one that doesn’t.
With consumers taking a greater interest in the experience of buying an ice cream, the prices are reflecting that premium expectation. Amorino, the French gelato chain which has 36 UK stores, sells small cones for £4.70 and large ones with a wafer or sprinkles for £7.90. At Dreamery, where cups of oolong and prune have reportedly drawn in A-list popstars like Charli XCX and Dua Lipa, a scoop is £4, whilst Ice Cream Union, which has supplied gelato to Michelin-starred kitchens for two decades, now sells two scoops for up to £7 in its Soho parlour.
Ice cream shop design is forecast to grow at 8.7 per cent a year to 2033, and in a market being reshaped accordingly, 65 per cent of buyers now cite visual appeal as a key factor in where they choose to spend.
Although this is a shift that is now happening in the world of ice cream, this trajectory of premiumisation is not a new phenomenon in the sector. Ultra-luxury gym group, Equinox, has retained its clientele despite its high price point by offering spa-grade locker rooms, saunas and cold plunge pools alongside its workout facilities, whilst lifestyle and home brand Aesop created a destination out of its 400 stores worldwide, by using a different architect for each to reflect the history of the street it’s on. What both of these businesses have done is to create spaces for the customer to enjoy and spend time in, and it seems that this is the direction that ice cream parlours or gelatarias are also heading towards.
It is this, rather than any single flavour or fashion collaboration, that explains why an ice cream parlour now commands the same kind of relative loyalty, at the same kind of relative price, as a boutique gym or a considered skincare store. My favourite is Reenie’s around the corner from our office in Primrose Hill. It’s like going back in time including a juke box – the drop of the record with Elvis crooning, is as good as the Choc Mint with sprinkles in a crispy cone. Parlours have become as much a part of the product as the product itself, and I suspect that we will see more queues to come as boutique ice cream parlours continue to grow.
