The Ice Cream Innovation Winning With Shoppers Now
HRA Global in The Dairymen: how ice cream brands are chasing growth on every front
In The Grocer’s Dairymen latest feature on ice cream innovation, three separate stories turn out to be one: brands are working harder than ever to keep shoppers buying, whatever the weather and whatever the shelf. Category value is up 5.6% to £1,685.5m, even though volumes are flat [Worldpanel by Numerator, 52 w/e 14 June 2026]. So growth is coming from what’s in the tub, not just how much of it sells.
How ice cream innovation is shrinking pack sizes
The clearest trend is size. Magnum’s 2024 launch of bite-sized Bon Bons is now worth more than £6.6m in grocery on its own, and the wider Magnum Ice Cream Company innovation programme generated over £43m in retail sales in the first half of 2026. In fact, Lidl, M&S and Oreo have all followed with their own mini formats.
As Lani Smith, project delivery executive at HRA Global, puts it in the feature, the format shrinkage isn’t really about children. It’s portion control, repackaged as something people choose to buy. Meanwhile, a separate kind of ice cream innovation is playing out through licensing rather than product design. Lyle’s, McVitie’s and Swizzels have all launched ice cream this year, despite having no history in the category. None of them needed to build a brand from scratch, Smith notes — borrowing the recognition from an existing name is simply a cheaper route to standing out.
Functional formats target a new kind of shopper
However, not every innovation is about eating less. 90% of people on GLP-1 medications still buy ice cream [Mintel], and suppliers are chasing that demand directly. High-protein gelato brand Forti closed a six-figure funding round in May, while startup Snooz landed listings with Gopuff for ice creams built around adaptogens linked to sleep. As a result, a 470ml tub of functional ice cream can now retail for £7.50 on Gopuff. Smith argues that functional cues change what a product competes against, not just what it costs: a £6 tub of protein ice cream isn’t up against a £3 tub of vanilla, but against protein bars and yogurts. This kind of ice cream innovation is a genuinely different growth story to the officially tracked “healthy” segment, which is down 7.9% in value and 17.9% in volume over the same period — a reminder that “functional” and “healthy” aren’t the same trade.
What ice cream innovation means for brands and retailers
Meanwhile, none of this works without supply chain resilience. The Met Office declared summer 2026 the hottest since records began, and suppliers are investing accordingly: own-label supplier Glacier has put €45m into production, warehousing and cooling capacity, running more than 260 trucks a day at peak. Brands have an opportunity to work all three levers at once — format size, borrowed recognition and functional positioning — rather than picking just one. Ultimately, the suppliers and retailers best placed to capture ice cream innovation this year are the ones treating hot weather as a certainty to plan around, not a bonus to hope for.
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