by Helen Bradshaw and Emilee Garber | July 7, 2025
Florida’s Ice Cream Trail: 8 Sweet-Treat Stops You Have to Try
Because in Florida, ice cream isn’t just a way to cool off—it’s a way to come together, one banana split at a time.
In Florida, where the heat demands something cool and sweet, ice cream becomes more than a treat—it’s a way of life. From small-town creameries to modern scoop shops with a mission, each cone tells a story, often rooted in place, heritage and heart. “People go out for ice cream because they want to feel community,” says Marie Mercado of Orlando ice cream parlor Sampaguita. Florida’s ice cream trail is full of delight and delicious storytelling, whether it’s a cup from a pastel pink ice cream truck or a cone from a local family-owned dairy farm. As Kelly Seidl of Kelly’s Homemade Ice Cream says, “Florida is truly a paradise for ice cream lovers—because every single day of the year is a good day for a scoop—or two!” To test her theory, we hit the road to taste our way through eight of the Sunshine State’s most beloved, independently owned ice cream spots—here’s the skinny.
Southern Craft Creamery
Marianna
Downtown Marianna looks like many Southern towns of a bygone era—until you turn onto Jefferson Street. That’s the home of Southern Craft Creamery, an ice cream shop that has transformed a quiet corner into a bustling block for diehard dairy fans. For founders Cindy and Dale Eade, it’s been a learning experience from start to finish. “I had never seen a dairy cow until I was 19 years old,” says Cindy. But the high school sweethearts quickly learned when Dale decided to pursue dairy science at the University of Florida after being inspired by his uncle’s farm in the Midwest. After decades of successfully running their dairy farm, appropriately named Cindale Farms, the family found a sweet spot to open Southern Craft Creamery’s retail location in 2018. Most of the store’s flavors are made from the same base, a signature sweet cream churned from the dairy produced by the family’s Jersey cows. But local ingredients like satsumas and pecans kick it up a notch and deliver a tang of Floridian flavor. A requisite for all first-time visitors? Their Tupelo honey ice cream is a sweet and buttery concoction of dairy and the Sunshine State’s take on ambrosia.
Mayday Ice Cream
St. Augustine
In an homage to American World War II pilots, Mayday Ice Cream’s mission is to bring a scoop of comfort to the community. In WWII, pilots bringing rations to soldiers overseas realized they could sweeten up the pot with some homemade ice cream. They attached a bucket of sugar and cream to the gunner’s pod and, using the colder temperatures at high altitude, created a frozen treat to bring to the front lines. Mayday encompasses that same outlook by offering flavors like the Aviator, which includes a chocolate and Nutella base with Biscoff cookies and chopped hazelnuts. The North Florida-based ice cream parlor offers sweet, nostalgic add-ons like homemade waffle cones, sprinkles and galettes—all of which are made daily in-store at their 15 locations. Director of Marketing Jessi Streator says it best: “When people need something that’s comforting and they need their day turned around, what better than ice cream?”
Neighbors Ice Cream Parlor
Port Orange
Neighbors Ice Cream Parlor may seem like a quintessential ice cream shop of yore, with its checkered floors and a buttery yellow exterior, but its extensive homemade flavors put a modern twist on old classics. Try the Purple Cow, a blend of blackberries and house-made white chocolate hard-shell ripples on a cone. Or, for a more portable option, order a butterbeer ice cream float. Every component, from ice cream bases to brownie bites, is made in-house, a feat that allows the Neighbors team to experiment with new flavors while retaining the quality their patrons know and love. The little yellow bungalow is the only commercial entity situated in the heart of a residential area. In a move inspired by the store’s name, the team at Neighbors is making the whole experience sweeter for every member of the community. Starting this summer, Neighbors will stop using artificial dyes in all of their ice cream. All of the hues of the flavors, ranging from cantaloupe and Key lime pie to the typically vibrant options like Cookie Monster, will come from organic ingredients.
Kelly’s Homemade Ice Cream
Orlando
While working as a full-time nurse, Kelly Seidl found her true calling in her family’s small kitchen, where she churned the first batch of product for Kelly’s Homemade Ice Cream in 2013. Now Seidl oversees six brick-and-mortar locations of Kelly’s in Central Florida, plus an additional two dozen Kelly’s counters at coffee shops and eateries across the state. “As we grow, we stay committed to crafting our ice cream with the same love, creativity and attention to detail that started it all,” Seidl says. Her personal favorite? Chocolate peanut butter brownie: an OG option with a decadent chocolate base, Ghirardelli brownie bits and Reese’s Peanut Butter Sauce. For an authentic Florida flavor, try Alligator Tracks, which is made with an orange zest ice cream, toasted almonds and dark chocolate chunks. Kelly’s, a Central Florida star on Florida’s Ice Cream Trail, also offers an exclusive Pint Club, where members pick up a pint of a retired flavor, a limited release or a brand-new recipe once a month.
Sampaguita
Orlando
Before she became a standout in Central Florida’s ice cream scene, Marie Mercado trained to be a professional opera singer in New York. Now she hits all the right notes in frozen desserts. It all started in the prelude of her life: picture a young Mercado taking extra mangoes from her South Florida neighborhood and churning them in a small Walmart ice cream machine. Backyard churning led to homemade custards, which led to flavor experimentation and eventually three acclaimed ice cream shops. One of them is Sampaguita, a location Mercado opened in 2023 as a tribute to her childhood and her Filipino heritage. “Every single flavor tells a different story,” she says. Take soy sauce butterscotch—Mercado’s version of a classic salted caramel. The flavor combines the Filipino pantry staple with her signature custard base for an unexpectedly addictive combination. Sampaguita’s ingredients—which range from ube to jackfruit to, of course, mango—help foster a sense of community grounded in the sweet nostalgia of a Filipino-Floridian upbringing. “Ice cream is just a blank canvas for sharing and communicating and connecting,” Mercado says.
Bright Ice Scoop Shop
St. Petersburg
When engineer Steven Garrahan and architect Kurt Drake teamed up in 2019, they didn’t start a design firm—they opened an ice cream shop. Bright Ice Scoop Shop was their wonderfully unexpected venture into entrepreneurship, inspired by a shared love of frozen treats and a desire to build something with minimal barriers to entry. “I also like ice cream a lot,” Garrahan says, “so it was an easy sell.” Inspired by the Michelin star-awarded culinary community in Tampa Bay, the St. Petersburg-based ice cream joint serves flavor-forward scoops like roasted strawberries with brown sugar and balsamic and Deepest Darkest Chocolate Secret, a blend of four different chocolates. Bright Ice is quickly expanding across Florida with five locations, the latest of which is in Lakeland, and each shop has its own personality. There are 19 classic flavors to choose from, plus a handful of seasonal picks—look for peach crisp this June. As for Garrahan’s favorite flavor? He laughs: “Um, what day of the week is it?”
Love Boat Ice Cream
Fort Myers
Founded in 1967 as a humble ice cream shop in Fort Myers, Love Boat Ice Cream has grown into a beloved spot by locals and vacationers alike. What started as a simple stop for hand-scooped treats has blossomed into a multigenerational business with five locations across Southwest Florida. Each store still evokes old-school charm, complete with a vintage soda shop vibe and more than 50 homemade rotating flavors. Community favorites include Dirty Turtle—a mix of chocolate ice cream, caramel swirls and crushed pecans—and Elvis—a banana ice cream with peanut butter and chocolate swirls. Whether it’s a first date or a 50th anniversary, sliding into a booth to split a brownie sundae is still one of the sweetest ways to share the love at Love Boat.
Dasher & Crank
Miami
Wynwood-based Dasher & Crank takes all the vibrancy and artistry of the neighborhood’s signature murals and carefully mixes them into batches of ice cream before adding sprinkles on top. Since the shop opened in 2017, its display counters have offered over 450 flavors of house-made ice cream. Bold standouts like ube macapuno and matcha could blend seamlessly into Wynwood’s colorful murals, but their nutty and sweet flavors make them customer favorites. Other menu items are even less predictable, part of a rotating assortment that changes weekly. In the pink walls of Dasher & Crank, a South-Florida-must-try on Florida’s Ice Cream Trail, patrons can choose between classics or snag experimental picks before they disappear. “Wynwood inspires us to take risks, to experiment with unexpected ingredients and to turn every scoop into a piece of edible art,” says owner Magali Lombardo.
