Cold Stone Creamery's To-Go Pints And Quarts Can Rival The Cost Of A Sit-Down Meal
Can you put a price on good ice cream? Well, yes, actually — that's how the ice cream business works. The more relevant question is whether that price is worth it. Cold Stone Creamery has carved out a successful niche and set itself apart by making decadently creamy "super-premium" ice cream in-house daily and offering customers the chance to add fruit, nuts, candy, or cake to their specifications on Cold Stone's eponymous frozen granite slab.
Nevertheless, the chain has faced some backlash from those who feel the prices at certain Cold Stone locations may not be worth it. In a video posted on TikTok on December 7, 2025, which has since accrued almost 100,000 likes, a user highlighted the prices at a Cold Stone Creamery outlet in New York city's Times Square. The prices, which were partially hand-written and taped to the existing board, listed a pint of ice cream going for $16.99, a quart for $21.99, and a triple pint for $27.99. The poster wrote that he would "die on a cross ... and be buried alive" before ever paying that much for ice cream, concluding: "Y'all crazy."
The TikTok user's outrage soon prompted others to share similar complaints. On a Reddit thread devoted to the video, one user commented they paid $13 for an artisan lemon curd and blueberry basil ice cream from a local business, describing it as "amazing" but "still a stretch," and said they could not imagine spending 30% more for Cold Stone's "mass-produced" product. Another stated, "for that kind of money I can just buy an ice cream maker!"
Are Cold Stone prices really more than a sit-down meal?
The triple-pint of Cold Stone Creamery ice cream is more expensive in New York than a sit-down meal, even considering that the city is notoriously expensive to live in. At the NYC institution Katz's Delicatessen, you can get a cheesesteak with peppers, onions, and American cheese for $24.95, while $26.95 will get you a bowl of matzo ball soup and a half-portion of one of Katz's famously overloaded sandwiches.
It is not unusual for prices at food chains to vary by location, and in the case of Cold Stone, the franchisees who own many of their stores may have some say in setting the prices, so the example from TikTok should not be considered universal. However, it seems indisputable that prices at Cold Stone Creamery have risen. In March 2025, a Reddit user who identified as an employee of Cold Stone posted a picture of prices for take-home ice cream in 2011, posed against another showing their then-current prices. The first listed a pint at $6.99, a quart at $8.99, and a triple-pint at $12.99, while the 2025 sign showed $9.99 for a pint, $12.99 for a quart, and $15.99 for a triple-pint.
New York's most expensive ice cream isn't at Cold Stone Creamery, however. That honor goes to the Manhattan restaurant Serendipity3, which offers the appropriately named Golden Opulence Sundae, featuring three scoops of Tahitian vanilla ice cream covered with 23-karat gold leaf, for a price of $1,000 — something to think about the next time you pick up a pint of Cold Stone's Banana Caramel Crunch.