The Ice Cream Capital Of The World Is Located In A Small City

How does a small Iowan town of less than 11,000 residents claim the crown of "The Ice Cream Capital of the World?" The answer: it houses the production facility that churns out more ice cream each year than any other family-owned company on Earth! The pride of Le Mars, Iowa is the over 100-years-old Wells Enterprises, Inc., creators of Blue Bunny ice cream and other household brands. The Le Mars production plant dishes up some 150 million gallons of ice cream annually, with tanker trucks of fresh milk arriving every hour during work days. Accordingly, ice cream is the thing when you visit tiny Le Mars, the motto of which claims that this is "Where Life is Sweet." The difference between ice cream and gelato is pretty significant, but when you visit the Wells Enterprises visitors' center and ice cream parlor, you get more than just a mouthful of delicious ice cream ... you get a taste of real small-town living.

To many, Le Mars feels uncannily like something out of a Hallmark movie, one where the heroine moves to a picturesque small town bursting with quaint charm. Visitors arrive under an arch announcing it as the Ice Cream Capital of the World, for instance, and ice cream statues are scattered through downtown. Le Mars comes together as a community for an immense Christmas festival every year in which the entire downtown area is bedecked in lights. Bucolic, pretty Le Mars is the perfect backdrop for eating ice cream at the Wells parlor, where you can find a couple dozen classic flavors. Spoiler alert: there's no Superman ice cream (but there is Super Scooper), and spumoni is on offer, but not Neapolitan ... and, yes, there's a difference!

Back in 1913, Fred H. Wells had $250 and a dream, to crib from a popular turn of speech. He invested his savings into a horse and carriage, some bottling supplies, and a milk distribution route from a local farmer with 15 heads of cattle. The milk from said cattle helped Wells and his sons get their ice cream business off the ground. Today, Wells Enterprises has grown phenomenally bigger than one ice cream truck (okay, wagon), as its Bomb Pops, Blue Bunny ice cream, Halo Top, and private-label frozen novelties are widely recognized names. In 2022, Wells was acquired by the international Ferrero Group with current leadership still in place. The aim was to propel worldwide expansion of the Wells name and secure the company's spot in the future of frozen confections.

Although Wells now also has production plants in Nevada and New York, its corporate headquarters remain in tiny Le Mars, where Fred H. Wells brought the business to life at the beginning of the 20th century. The Le Mars branch of Wells Enterprises employs some 2,500 workers from the greater Le Mars area, so its importance to the community really can't be overstated. It's impossible to tell the story of Le Mars without Wells, or Wells without Le Mars. In that way, it's fitting that the town claims the title of the world's ice cream capital, since ice cream is figuratively the beating heart of this hamlet.