Same Ben & Jerry's Tub, ₪9.90 or ₪27.90 — We Checked How Wide Israel's Ice-Cream Price Gaps Really Get

By מערכת סופרקליר · 2026-07-22 · 5 min read

182% — The price gap between the cheapest and priciest branch of the very same chain — City Market — for the identical Ben & Jerry's mini tub, per Superclear's own data from July 2026

Summer 2026 brought back the annual complaint: ice cream got more expensive, again. A street gelato shop now charges ₪20-24 a scoop, so a family can easily pay ₪100-150 for just five scoops (Channel 14). Maariv described an ice-cream market "on fire," with gaps of more than 250% on identical products between chains (Maariv). But stories about boutique gelato parlors don't actually say much about the tub you buy at your neighborhood supermarket — and there, we found, the story gets even stranger: the biggest gap isn't necessarily between one chain and another, but between two branches of the very same chain.

What the press found

Ahead of summer, Mako surveyed 2026's new ice-cream launches — Magnum Double Raspberry at ₪12-14 a unit, Nestlé's Crunch Sandwich at ₪12-15 or ₪32-38 for a six-pack, Feldman's Yogurtia Plus at around ₪7-8, and a four-pack of Ben & Jerry's Toffee Crunch Waffle Cone at ₪27.90 (Mako). A few weeks later, Maariv described even sharper gaps of "more than 250%" on identical products: a single popsicle at about ₪13 in a convenience store versus about ₪8 apiece in a 10-pack at a discount chain, Cremissimo/La Cremeria at ₪10 at a discount chain versus ₪29.90 at a premium one — "almost triple for the exact same package" — Magnum ranging ₪8-15.90, a liter of Ben & Jerry's from ₪34 on sale to ₪56 at full price, and a liter of Häagen-Dazs at ₪50-66 (Maariv). By mid-June, Channel 14 was describing boutique gelato chains — Golda, Anita, La Glace — charging ₪20-24 a scoop, up 4-8% year over year (Channel 14).

The overall picture from the press: ice-cream prices are up, the gaps between chains are enormous, and boutique gelato has long since become a luxury. But none of these stories checked what happens inside a single chain — and that's where, once we pulled our own daily price-transparency data, we found the genuinely surprising gap.

What our own data shows

We checked the two Ben & Jerry's mini tubs we have the most data on: "Vanilla Shorty" (150ml, sold at 146 branches nationwide) and "Chunky Monkey Shorty" (150ml, at 155 branches). At most branches the price is fairly uniform: about 125 of the 146 Vanilla branches and about 126 of the 155 Chunky Monkey branches charge exactly ₪14.90 — a price driven mostly by the convenience chains Dor Alon and Yellow, the two most expensive chains in Israel on our priciness index (Yellow +31% vs. the national median, Dor Alon +20%). At the other end, branches of Rami Levy (Afula) and Politzer (Or Akiva) — chains that rank among the cheapest in Israel in our data — charge ₪10.40-10.90.

So far, that matches exactly the pattern the press described: expensive chains versus cheap chains. The real surprise comes from a single chain: City Market. For the identical "Chunky Monkey Shorty" tub, a City Market branch at Migdal in Tel Aviv charges ₪9.90 — the cheapest price we found anywhere in the country. But three other branches of the very same chain, all in Holon (Weizmann St., Shenkar St. and Hankin St.), charge ₪24.90-27.90 for the exact same tub. The gap between ₪9.90 and ₪27.90: 182%, nearly triple, inside a single chain, between branches a few minutes' drive apart.

It's worth being fair to the data here: this doesn't mean City Market is the least consistent chain in Israel. On our internal price-inequality index, which checks price gaps across hundreds of products rather than a single item, City Market ranks only 12th of 33 chains, with an overall spread of about 12% — not low, but far from the extreme. That's exactly what makes this finding interesting: even at a chain whose average internal gap is unremarkable, a single item — and specifically an impulse-buy summer item like ice cream — can sell for nearly triple the price from one branch to the next.

Is this about manufacturer costs?

Part of the general price rise does trace back to manufacturers: in November 2025, Strauss Ice Cream announced an average price increase of 4.8%, up to 9% on some products, effective from December, citing "significant and ongoing increases in production and distribution costs" — though a retail analyst quoted in the piece questioned the justification, noting the dollar remained weak and shipping costs had stabilized (Mako). That report is more than 90 days old, and we're not re-verifying it here — but it illustrates an important point: even if the manufacturer's increase is real, it's a single-digit percentage. It cannot explain a 182% gap inside one chain on the identical product. Whatever is happening at City Market's Holon branches is a local pricing decision, not a change in production cost.

It's not just ice cream

In early July, a price survey of 210 products across nine chains found a ₪796.46 (29.4%) gap between the cheapest and priciest identical shopping basket (Maariv). Ice cream is just the easiest example to grasp — it's small, relatively cheap and simple to compare — but the same logic runs through the entire cart: whoever doesn't check pays the higher price, and sometimes that happens even inside the very chain they already chose to shop at.

The bottom line

This summer's coverage got the basic point right: ice cream in Israel is expensive, and the gaps between chains are real. But our own data adds a layer none of these stories captured: sometimes the biggest gap isn't between a cheap chain and an expensive one, but between two branches of the chain you already shop at. It's worth checking especially on small, impulse-buy items like ice cream, which are easy to grab without comparing prices — and, as we've shown, that's exactly where the surprise can be biggest.