We dusted off the jukebox to play the songs that best represent dairy foods and beverages. Our annual State of the Dairy Industry report examines the prospects for all dairy categories. For the ice cream category we are rocking out to 'Cold as Ice,' as ice cream is starting to make a comeback.
Well, it wasn’t the best-performing dairy category, but give ice cream processors a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Sales of their product rose 2.1% to $5.4 billion on a unit-sales increase of 1.4% to 1.4 billion packages, in the 52 weeks ended Aug. 10, 2014, according to IRI, Chicago. That’s an improvement from last year’s report when we noted that sales barely budged (up 0.3%) on a unit-sales increase of 1.4%.