The Price of Ice Cream

07/03/2023 English German

Edition # 149
San Francisco, 07-03-2023

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The Price of Ice Cream

Figure [1]: This ice cream cone cost 8.20 Dollars in Manhattan Beach, California.

Michael I recently heard that the scoop of ice cream in Germany now costs two euros. That's shocking for a dinosaur like me, who can still vaguely remember a time when a scoop of ice cream with a cone once cost 10 pfennigs, but that's nothing compared to the murderous ice cream prices in America.

Ice cream has always been incredibly expensive in America, and that has nothing to do with the fact that the production of treats here would be more expensive than in Germany (quite the opposite), but rather that Americans are simply used to spending absurd amounts of money on such snacks.

Figure [2]: In the Bavarian city of Weißenburg, this scoop of ice cream cost 1.90 Euro a year ago.

At Mitchell's, an established ice cream parlor in San Francisco, people line up for twenty minutes in nice weather to get an ice cream for a whopping five dollars a scoop. It costs 75 cents more with a cone, and the sales tax adds about 10% on top of that. Also, the servers there also expect tips, like thirsty camels in the desert approaching a water hole. It's not a fancy store by any means, with mostly working-class customers, and you have to wonder how crazy you'd have to be to spend a third of your hourly wage on ice cream.

Figure [3]: The established ice cream shop Mitchell's in our neighborhood.

Figure [4]: At Mitchell's in San Francisco, a scoop of ice cream costs a whopping 5 dollars.

You also need to know that ice cream in America is not even particularly good, nor are the scoops significantly larger than in Germany. Okay, the aforementioned store "Mitchell's" has flavors like "Mexican Chocolate" that I don't think even Sarcletti in Munich has, but the ice cream quality is absolutely on par. As always, the price does not depend on how expensive the production and distribution of a product is, but solely on how much the consumer is willing to pay for it in the free market.