"Ice cream should be enjoyed, the price should not shock," Antonio Grossi, manager of the Lazzarin ice cream café, is convinced. His family has been running the ice cream parlour in Bonn's city centre for 90 years. Grossi is the third generation: "The prices for milk, cream and yoghurt have risen so much in the past few months that I don't know how it will go on." A scoop in his ice cream café now costs 1.30 Euro, and ice cream sundaes go for 6.70 to 7.70 Euro. "A few weeks ago we were able to give out the scoop for 1.20 Euro, sundaes were 30 cents cheaper, but we can't do that anymore because of the increased prices of raw materials," Grossi said.

In Italy, his home country, the price per scoop of gelato has also risen and is up to 1.90 Euro - he knows this from acquaintances. However, milk has always been more expensive in Italy than in Germany: "I hope that we won’t soon reach 1.90 Euro, but we can no longer rule it out. Actually, I would have to charge 1.50 Euro per scoop now. However, he wants to try to keep the current price until the end of the year. The fear that customers might stop coming is too great.

Instead, the ice cream seller has become creative. Especially frozen blackberries, which Grossi uses in many ice cream creations, are currently more expensive than ever. The price per kilogram has more than doubled in recent months: from 4.50 Euro to 9.70 Euro. The situation is similar for blueberries: "I bought a huge portion of fresh blueberries this week, and now I'm freezing them myself for later. He wants to do something similar in August, when blackberries are in season.

Daniel Almigamis also runs several ice cream parlours in Bonn with his family, including "La Dolce Vita" on Marktplatz. "In addition to the increased costs for cream and milk, we ice cream sellers are just being burdened with new costs," Almigamis explains. For some time now, there has been a new item called "fuel surcharge" on the receipt of his wholesale market, which amounts to almost 30 Euro more per delivery. "At the beginning of the year, we couldn't take that into account," Almigamis says. He also had to adjust the price per ice cream scoop: from 1.20 Euro to 1.40 Euro. However, he expects that he will soon have to go up to 1.50 Euro. La Dolce Vita" sells whole cups for about eight Euro - depending on the proportion of fruit, milk or fruit ice cream and yoghurt. Ice cream sales have already declined noticeably due to the higher prices. While Almigamis used to consume up to three cartons of cones on sunny Saturdays in the summer, it is now only one or two. "After the Corona pandemic, I actually thought things would pick up now, but the opposite is the case.“

One reason for the wholesalers' high delivery charges is rising electricity and fuel prices. "In mid-May we had to introduce logistics fees for the first time ever and have had many discussions with customers since then," says Andreas Jäger. He works in sales at the Bornheim-based gastro-fresh service "Baum", from where Almigamis also sources a large part of its ice cream ingredients. Five to ten per cent of Baum's customers have left in recent weeks. Jäger does not know where they have changed to. Logistics costs and milk prices are rising everywhere, says the wholesale employee. Another problem, he says, is the constantly persisting supply bottlenecks. "Due to the Ukraine war, we no longer receive goods reliably," says Jäger. Often the product is available again, but the packaging is not yet, which is why there is a shortage of many things at the moment.

Petra Recker, owner of the ice-cream laboratory, has also gained experience with packaging in recent months. Since sustainability plays a major role in the ice cream seller's concept, she banned plastic spoons and cups from her shops at the beginning of the year and instead relies only on wafer cups and cones. She raised the price per scoop by 20 cents in January. What was not foreseeable at the time, however, was the rising prices for chocolate, milk and wafers. The price of the latter has risen by over ten per cent since then. "We can't and don't want to raise prices again, but more and more costs are trickling in," says Recker. The increase from the beginning of the year has long since been eaten up. Like most of her competitors, the "Eislabor" cannot make any changes in the recipe or in purchasing to save costs. Many of their customers appreciate the regionality of the ice cream's ingredients: "That is our brand essence.“

Most customers are still understanding about the price increase. How long this will last is questionable. "Instead of a big sundae, I prefer to order a small one right now or have an iced coffee. Then I have both and it's much cheaper," says ice cream customer Hella Lenk. Her pain threshold of six Euro per cup has long since been exceeded.

Another alternative for many customers is to share a cup. "This year I'm always asked for two to three scoops to order," says Alberto Bajrami of "La Fontana" on Kaiserplatz: "Customers save, but we sell less, take in less and still have all the costs go on." The scoop price at "La Fontana" was raised from 1.20 to 1.30 Euro, but for him, too, it is clear: ice cream should not actually become an expensive luxury good that many can no longer afford. Where the journey will go, however, will only become clear in the coming months - depending on how raw material prices and energy costs develop.

Original text: Julia Rosner

Translation: Mareike Graepel