The Huge Number Of Ice Cream Flavors Suggested To Ben & Jerry's Every Year
Ben and Jerry's is famous for its elaborate ice cream flavors like Chunky Monkey and Cherry Garcia. And it often releases new flavors, adding to the fun array you can choose from.
Most people don't realize that Ben and Jerry's comes up with its flavors in part thanks to suggestions from real customers. Ben and Jerry's reports that it receives more than 13,000 flavor suggestions each year. It also states that the team reads all the ideas sent in, which probably helps keep the suggestions coming year after year!
Aside from fan-suggested flavors, Ben and Jerry's has specialized flavor gurus who whip up new ideas. These guys think of ideas for flavor profiles and then come up with creative and fun names based on what's inside the pint. They also add to existing ideas for flavors, like peanut butter and chocolate, by getting creative and adding mix-ins like chocolate chunks, brownies, pretzels, and anything else you can imagine.
A few of the weirdest Ben and Jerry's flavor suggestions
While customers are welcome to submit their ideas for new Ben and Jerry's flavors, that doesn't mean all those ideas turn into ice creams. That's because some of the flavors that have been sent in over the years are downright strange.
One rather stomach-curdling suggestion that a customer sent in was a Gorgonzola flavor. This ice cream suggestion was dark chocolate with chunks of gorgonzola cheese and swirls of raspberry jam.
Another suggestion that didn't make the cut was titled Mac and Freeze and was just supposed to be a macaroni-flavored ice cream. Another strange flavor suggestion that was sent in featured nuts, chocolate, and a healthy dose of jalapeño jelly.
As you can probably tell by what's available in your supermarket, none of these flavors wound up getting made by Ben and Jerry's. However, that certainly didn't stop customers from getting creative and sending them in anyway!
What are the new flavors that Ben and Jerry's is adding in 2023?
Although Ben and Jerry's receives a lot of flavor suggestions from fans, many of its ice cream flavors are made by internal team members. While the company hasn't announced any fan-designed flavors for this year, it has created some new potentially popular ice cream flavors to release in 2023. This year, the company will come out with a new flavor called Oatmeal Dream Pie. This is a non-dairy oatmeal-flavored ice cream with marshmallows, and gluten-free oatmeal chunks swirled through it.
The Vermont-based creamery will also be releasing a flavor called Ice Cream Sammie. This flavor features a chocolate cookie and chocolate ice cream sandwich cookie swirled throughout a creamy vanilla.
Two other new flavors that the company has already talked about releasing include Bossin' Cream Pie and Raspberry Cheesecake, which will feature vanilla custard ice cream with pastry and cake chunks, and cheesecake ice cream with raspberry, graham cracker, and chocolate ganache, respectively.