America’s Best Ice Cream Is Now Officially In Minnesota

Americans have a serious soft spot for the cold stuff. The average person in this country puts away roughly 18 pounds — about 4 gallons — of ice cream every year, which works out to about 128 scoops.

Stretch that across the whole population, and the numbers get staggering: U.S. makers churned out more than 1.23 billion gallons in a single year.

It's not just a snack habit, either. Reports indicate the frozen dessert business delivers an $11.6 billion punch to the national economy and supports nearly 27,000 direct jobs.

And in a stat that says a lot about why every small town seems to have a beloved walk-up window, one survey found a remarkable 97% of American adults say they either like or love ice cream. Try naming another food that unites people like that.

A National Bracket Set Out To Crown One Winner

With that kind of devotion, it was only a matter of time before someone turned it into a competition. The website The 64 built an NCAA Tournament-style bracket to find America's best ice cream shop, seeding 64 scoop spots from coast to coast and letting fans decide the outcome through five rounds of online voting.

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The field was loaded. Shops from New York, Seattle, New Orleans, Nashville and Miami all earned spots, each carrying a hometown crowd ready to vote.

Getting out of the early rounds meant surviving a gauntlet of regional favorites, which is the frozen-treat equivalent of a bracket buster lurking in every matchup.

Minnesota's Strong National Showing

Here's where things get sweet for the home team. Minnesota ultimately landed three of the final eight shops, including two of the final four. Saint Paul's Grand Ole Creamery powered into the Elite Eight, while Minneapolis' Pumphouse Creamery pushed all the way to the championship semifinals.

However, the biggest story came out of the Twin Cities suburbs. Cup and Cone in White Bear Lake outlasted every challenger and took the whole thing, earning the title of "America's Best Ice Cream."

The seasonal stand at 2126 4th Street knocked off Boise's The STIL in the final after The STIL had eliminated Pumphouse in the semis.

More About Cup and Cone, a Soft-Serve Staple Since 1973

Cup and Cone has been slinging soft-serve — plus sandwiches and hot dogs — in the same community since 1973, the kind of family-first, decades-deep operation that the ice cream industry is practically built on.

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That's likely not a shock to people in Minnesota, where visiting favorite ice cream shops is a longstanding summer tradition from the first warm week of spring to the last golden evening of fall.