Ghirardelli Carries Vegan Ice Cream Nationwide for First Time in 169 Years

Ghirardelli is breaking with tradition and stocking its first all-vegan ice cream nationwide. The gourmet chocolatier now serves a dairy-free vanilla ice cream from the plant-based frozen dessert brand, Coconut Bliss. The coconut milk-based ice cream showcases the flavor of the Madagascan vanilla bean with no dairy added. Coconut Bliss offers a variety of frozen desserts including sandwiches, soft serves, cups, and a pint, but this partnership will be increasing the brand’s consumer accessibility by adding the vanilla flavor to Ghirardelli menus nationwide.

Coconut Bliss also champions its sustainability in manufacturing and product. The company has taken steps to enhance its environmentally-friendly practices, powering its office with renewable energy and changing the conventional packaging process. The company uses materials sourced from sugar cane husks rather than traditional petroleum-based resin packaging.

“For most plastic, the source of carbon is petroleum, we wanted to move our packaging to more renewable materials,” Coconut Bliss’ sustainability manager Megan Miller said in a statement.

The global plant-based ice cream industry continues to see a significant rise. Ghiradelli became the latest dessert company to notice the rapidly growing market and move to capitalize on the spiking consumer trend. A Grand View Research report predicts that the vegan ice cream market could be worth $1.2 billion by 2025. With the growing market, several companies beyond Ghiradelli have taken to the new and quickly growing industry.

Baskin-Robbins debuted its first oat-milk ice cream in April, rolling out its limited-time flavor Non-Dairy Strawberry Streusel. The company has featured different dairy-free ice creams in the past for limited availability, but consumers can hope that based on the customer response to the new Strawberry Streusel flavor Baskin-Robbins may develop more oat milk-based ice creams.

Ice cream giant Ben & Jerry’s has accelerated its plant-based ice cream development in recent years using both almond milk and sunflower butter bases. Initially releasing four flavors in 2016, the company has now introduced 17 completely dairy-free ice cream pints. The plant-based ice cream options are available at the company’s ice cream shops and in pints nationwide.