The average American eats roughly 18 pounds, or about four gallons, of ice cream each year according to the International Dairy Foods Association. On July 19, ice cream lovers across the country will be enjoying this delicious frozen dessert in celebration of
National Ice Cream Day! One Choose Iowa member and ice cream maker is looking forward to celebrating the holiday in a special way on the campus of Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.
The Iowa State University (ISU) Creamery was Choose Iowa’s first member and has been awarded both a Dairy Innovation Grant and Value-Added Grant to support their operations.
“Choose Iowa has been a gamechanger for the Creamery,” Creamery staff shared. “It has helped us increase our production volume of ice cream and cheese.” Iowa produces over 150 million gallons of ice cream a year, adding to the national total in 2025 of 1.23 billion gallons of ice cream produced.
The Creamery is run by 20 undergraduate students working part-time in various roles, including social media management, cash management, production of ice cream and cheese, inventory control, customer service, catering, and more.
“ISU students are the backbone of the Creamery,” they said. “The mission of the Creamery is to educate students, so we teach the students procedures and then welcome them to make changes and innovate from the base procedure.”
The Creamery creates ice cream flavors to honor and represent the various unique aspects of ISU. Every year, they partner with the ISU New Student Programs. Incoming students participating in the “Destination Iowa State” orientation program are encouraged to create new ice cream flavors with their team. The Creamery picks the winning flavor and then serves that flavor for a limited sale in the fall semester.
Looking forward, they will be adding a homogenizer to their ice cream making process to help improve the texture of their ice creams and focus on providing more workshop opportunities for community members to learn how to make ice cream and cheese.
The ISU Creamery will be celebrating National Ice Cream Day on Saturday, July 18, with free samples of their new root beer floats. You can watch their Facebook and Instagram pages for more details.