Ice Cream Shipping Guide

Everything you need to know about how to ship ice cream, and the insulated packaging solutions that make it easy

Shipping ice cream is often one of the trickiest products to transport using DTC shipping services. Whether you’re a large franchise operation or a boutique ice cream shop looking to expand your market, shipping ice cream for your business is difficult.

So, what’s the best way to ship ice cream for your business? In this article we explore how to ship ice cream and the considerations you’ll make before going all in on delivery. We’ll go over packaging options for last mile delivery and eCommerce operations, best practices for refrigeration and other tips to keep your ice cream rock solid frozen.

Read on to learn how to keep your cold chain unbroken and your customers smiling.

The Challenges of Shipping Ice Cream

We’ve identified three main challenges when shipping ice cream.

  1. It’s likely that you are attempting to upgrade your last mile delivery operations, to prevent melting during the summer months and address various delivery times while your precious cargo slides back and forth in the front seat of a delivery driver’s car.
  2. The second is considerably more challenging, shipping ice cream at a profit through a shipping carrier service like Fedex, UPS or USPS in order to expand brand awareness beyond the geographical limits of your shop.
  3. The third application for cold chain packaging in ice cream delivery is to cut costs of transport from business-to-business operations by substituting refrigerated transport by using insulated box liners.

TLDR
How to Ship Ice Cream

In order to ship ice cream, pack your ice cream in a high-performance insulated box liner with dry ice surrounding the ice cream. Ratio by weight for dry ice to ice cream should be 1:1 for one to two day shipping and 1.5:1 for two to three day shipping. Use our table to determine how much dry ice to use to reach your destination frozen. For local delivery use an insulated grocery bag.

Your customer will feel disappointed with your product if you don’t safeguard the integrity of the ice cream in a variety of ways. 

  1. ice cream that has melted, expanded and spilled out of the container it was shipped in
  2. melted ice cream has been unknowingly refrozen and is now a tough substance that you work your way through by shaving off peels of ice cream from the surface of a pint.
  3. A bite with an icy consistency paired with a chalky taste. 

Ice cream is one of the hardest things to ship due to how quickly it can melt while in transit. When shipping ice cream, take great care in choosing your insulated packaging, carrier services and refrigerant quantities, so you can delight your customers every time.

The Ice Cream Supply Chain

How to Ship Ice Cream

Ice cream being shipped inside an EcoLiner Insulated Pouch

Large scale franchise operations like Baskin Robbins have manufacturing and distribution centers across the country that ship ice cream using ‘reefer’ or refrigerated trucks. Distribution centers supply franchise locations with ice cream using multi-temp freezer compartments in a trailer or a freezer box on a chilled perishable load. These supply chain steps have been honed over decades to ensure that retail stores have delicious ice cream for their customers.

In recent years, however, interest has risen in the home delivery of ice cream. Given the sensitivity ice cream product at the correct temperature. Large scale franchises have invested in software development to route online orders to the closest locations. They’ve also paired up with driver delivery apps to create a network of effective last mile delivery networks packaging their local orders in insulated delivery bags to arrive in perfect condition.

Boutique ice cream shops have also grown, and some have even turned into large franchise operations. These shops also engage in last mile delivery, but they’re also looking for a larger footprint to catapult their brand into the big leagues. Brands like Jenny’s have found that shipping ice cream can be a way to expand beyond your geographic limitations and cultivate a following in potential future markets. Online platforms like Goldbelly allow boutique ice cream shops to market new flavors across the country. Nailing the logistical challenges like choosing and sizing the right high performance insulated box liner when shipping ice cream can be the difference between success and failure.

Keep reading for our tips on how to ship ice cream successfully.

Essential Tips for Ice Cream Shipping

  1. Use effective insulated packaging to protect ice cream shipments against ambient heat

    The first consideration when planning how to deliver ice cream to your customers is packaging. A simple corrugated container will not do. The correct temperature control packaging for ice cream will need to continuously maintain product temperature at a minimum of 0°F (-18 °C) or colder.

    1. BOXES:
      You’ll need to source a box with an insulated box liner that limits the exchange of heat between the ambient temperature and the inside of the package.  Insulated box liners like our ultra-high performance PopupLiner extend the time in which the temperature inside the package reaches equilibrium with the temperature outside.Expanded polystyrene foam (EPS) shipping coolers have proven popular in the past as they are thermally insulating, relatively lightweight, and cheap. EPS coolers have considerable disadvantages, however, including mediocre thermal performance, high storage volume, and non- biodegradability, making its use economically unjustifiable.IPC’s PopupLiner insulated box liners are an excellent alternative insulating solution to EPS coolers for businesses.
      Our production runs have no tooling cost and minimum order quantities are low for the industry, starting at 1000 sets per size. PopupLiner comes vacuum compressed and can provide uptime to 75% savings in storage space. Its high performance can also significantly reduce (up to 33%) the amount of dry ice required for ice cream shipment.
    2. BAGS
      For last mile delivery, take a look at our insulated grocery bag. We manufacture a smaller version (size)for ice cream deliveries.  Our CelluLiner delivery bag is curbside recyclable with multi-layer insulation and a thin metallic barrier, our delivery bag extends last mile delivery times up to 6 hours without gel packs. For more custom delivery options, we’ve also provided insulating sleeves with materials like PopupLiner for the deliveries of pints in warmer climates.

  2. Use dry ice to keep the ice cream frozen – for box shipping

    For frozen shipping ice cream dry ice is the favored solution. Unlike gel packs, dry ice is significantly colder than ice cream and will bring the temperature inside the insulated box liner lower than the ice cream storage temperature. Conventional gel packs do not do this and in reality, may warm up the ice cream.

    FOR EXAMPLE
    A boutique ice cream shop with a solid media presence sells 4 pints for around 100 shipped across the country with shipping included on a niche food online platform. Which is just a little over 4 pounds, let’s call it 4.5 lbs for simplicity. If you use our dry ice table, you’ll need about 5 pounds to ship 2 days and 10 pounds for 3-day shipping. This is a bit on the optimistic side, and it doesn’t account for extreme weather or the type of insulation you’re using. For instance, if you use our PopupLiner insulated box liner, you’ll need 33% less dry ice to accomplish the same performance than using EPS.

    It’s crucial to follow proper safety precautions when handling dry ice. Make sure you use personal protective equipment when packing your ice cream. Whenever possible, use textile or leather gloves to handle dry ice. Never touch dry ice with bare hands.

    When shipping products with dry ice to end consumers, ensure that it is securely enclosed and that clear handling instructions are provided. In the United States, ice cream shipment using more than 5.5 pounds of dry ice must comply with Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations (49 CFR) or International Air Transportation Association (IATA) guidelines, depending on the transportation mode. For ice cream shipments below this weight, only basic packaging markings are required, provided the chilled goods are non-hazardous.

    As dry ice sublimates, it releases CO2 gas, so use an insulated box liner that isn’t airtight and is designed to allow for very gradual off-gassing, like our PopupLiner. This will prevent the package from expanding and potentially exploding.

  3. Protect your shipment by limiting the transportation duration

    Shipping frozen products like ice cream requires careful consideration of transit time, refrigerant choice, and insulation, all balanced against cost. Once ice cream leaves a blast freezer, the race against time begins. Dry ice and high-performance insulators slow the warming process, but they can’t stop it indefinitely. The shorter the transportation time, the less refrigerant you’ll need, which not only keeps shipping costs lower but also reduces the risk of product degradation.

    Expedited delivery options can help ensure timely arrival, safeguarding the quality of your delicious ice cream. It’s essential to account for any potential delays, like weekends or holidays, which could strand shipments in transit and increase the risk of melting.

    For last mile delivery, strategically minimizing transit time by ensuring the closest delivery location is used when an order arrives online can provide peace of mind. Using a high performing insulated delivery bag rather than the standard white paper bag can also buy your driver more time allowing them to batch orders and reducing the cost of delivery.

  4. Always monitor your shipments to ensure they arrive on time

    Product tracking is essential to determine your success in on-time deliveries. Benchmarking successful delivery metrics against time of year and location allow your shipping team to create effective pack-outs for your product. This internal knowledge and standardization guarantee happy customers time and time again. Some carriers offer sophisticated tracking services. As newer tracking technologies like temperature loggers for testing have become accessible and affordable.

    Aside from internal data, you can create automated text and email alerts letting your customers know about the delivery of their ice cream. This limits the amount of time your ice cream spends on a warm doorstep.

Ice Cream Insulated Shipper

Ice cream being shipped inside an PopupLiner Insulated Box Liner

Case study: The best insulated packaging for reliable ice cream delivery

With the rise of eCommerce and home delivery, customers now want ice cream delivered to their doors. Unfortunately, ice cream loses its ideal texture and flavor as soon as temperatures rise above 0°C, causing the product to melt.

A grocery retailer approached IPC, seeking a reliable, eco-friendly packaging solution to maintain frozen temperatures during last-mile delivery. IPC recommended the Celluliner Insulated Pouch, similar to our PopupLiner pouch, which provides high-performance insulation for over 48 hours and a space-saving design to reduce shipping and storage costs. Made from environmentally friendly materials, the EcoLiner can be customized to fit various ice cream containers.

IPC recommended the EcoLiner Insulated Pouch, an eco-friendly insulating pouch that provides high performance insulation and can be custom designed to fit all sorts of ice cream containers. EcoLiner not only offers effective thermal protection for more than 48 hours, but it is also made of environmentally friendly materials and offers a space-saving design to reduce shipping and warehousing costs.

IPC was tasked with developing a test to prove the efficacy of the EcoLiner pouch in extreme summer conditions. The test will assess whether the ice cream stays below the 0⁰C threshold for a four hour transit duration. The retailer determined that the EcoLiner insulated pouches provide enough protection for last-mile delivery of their ice cream. Extreme summer temperatures profiles ensure that the pouches can be used year round. The retailer now regularly uses EcoLiner pouches for last mile delivery of ice cream.

Read more information about the ice cream shipping case study here.

Ice Cream Insulated Delivery Testing

As shown in the graph, EcoLiner Insulated Pouches proved to be able to successfully keep the ice cream shipments frozen throughout the 4-hour shipment in summer conditions. 

IPC also performed a study comparing our PopupLiner insulation to EPS coolers for shipping ice cream. Our study found that our alternative provided a substantial 75% saving in shipping space and significant reduction in the requirement for dry ice when compared to EPS coolers.

Shipping Ice Cream? Talk to our experts and get a quote on our insulated packaging.

IPC provides custom packaging solutions for those in the ice cream business, from CelluLiner delivery bags and pouches to act as sleeves for last-mile delivery to high performance insulated box liners like PopupLiner for ground and 2 day shipping. Our experts are here to work with you to come up with custom tailored solutions that keep your products frozen and your bank account liquid.

Insulated Shipping

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