Blue Bunny Ice Cream Parlor

In 1994, Le Mars was proclaimed the Ice Cream Capital of the World because Wells’ Dairy, makers of Blue Bunny brand ice cream, produces more ice cream than any other single company. Founded in 1913, Wells’ Dairy today is the largest family-owned dairy in the U.S. If you visit Le Mars, you can tour a visitors center that features a facsimile of the ice cream production line and a video presentation that tells the history of ice cream from ancient times to the present.

If the video inspires appetite, we highly recommend a seat on a booth at the Blue Bunny Ice Cream Parlor, where you can enjoy cups of Mocha Almond Fudge and Toffee Temptation as well as expertly-made chocolate sodas and sundaes.

Recently moved to a new downtown location, but still boasting its vintage marble bar and sundae sculpture, the ice cream parlor is now located in a building that started in 1875 as a hardware and agricultural tools company. The menu is huge, including cones and cups, malts and shakes, sundaes and sodas, floats and phosphates, banana splits and slices of ice cream cake. We are especially smitten with a sundae known as The Avalanche, a gloss on the classic turtle made with vanilla ice cream, hot chocolate syrup and hot caramel syrup, plus crumbled Oreo cookies and whipped cream.

The women who concoct these extravagant sweets are a super-friendly lot who seem genuinely to enjoy the looks of ecstasy that their work inspires. “It’s so much fun to work here,” one of them confided in us. “Ice cream is always such a happy thing.”