Placer Top 5: Metros for Ice Cream Lovers

What Are the Top 5 Metros for Ice Cream Lovers? 

Ice cream is the quintessential summer treat, with 2.1% of all dining visits nationwide in June and July 2026 going to ice cream parlors or frozen yogurt shops. Where do consumers love ice cream the most? We analyzed the data to find out. 

Four Beach Towns

Perhaps unsurprisingly, four of the five metros where ice cream and frozen yogurt shops accounted for the highest share of dining visits in June and July 2026 – Portland, ME; Atlantic City, NJ; Wilmington, NC; and Myrtle Beach, SC – are beach destinations. Vacationers coming to relax and enjoy their time off are more likely to indulge than they would at home, boosting demand for locally available frozen treats. 

One Rust Belt Market 

The one standout on the list is Youngstown, OH – a landlocked city that is decidedly not known as a vacation hotspot. So what is driving the city’s unusually high share of ice cream visits?

A closer look at the data points to Handel’s Homemade Ice Cream, a homegrown chain that has expanded from its Youngstown roots to more than 175 locations across the United States. Yet even as the brand has grown nationally, Youngstown locals appear to have remained especially loyal to their hometown favorite, generating enough visits to help propel the metro into Placer’s Top 5 Metros for Ice Cream Lovers.

Different Paths to Ice Cream Dominance 

Youngstown’s showing highlights a different path to ice cream dominance: While tourism may fuel demand in beach destinations, a deeply rooted local brand can inspire the kind of habitual loyalty that produces similarly outsized visitation.

For more data-driven dining insights, visits Placer.ai/anchor.