An abundance of other dessert options (like dessert yogurts, puddings and frozen pies) may be leaving its mark on the frozen novelty/frozen yogurt/sherbet segments because sales are down across the board. Meanwhile, ice cream sales ticked up slightly.
Sherbet sales dragged down the total sales in the ice cream/sherbet category. The category showed a minimal increase of 0.9% to $6.2 billion, while units fell 0.3% to 1.6 billion in the 52 weeks ended Oct. 5, 2014, according to Information Resources Inc. (IRI), Chicago. Ice cream actually performed better (see below). Meanwhile, sales for the frozen novelties category decreased 0.6% to $4.5 billion, and units were down 2.3% to 1.5 billion.