>Which it frequently doesn't? Nothing more fun than grabbing a pint of ice cream and then discovering it's full of ice crystals at home, because it thawed and r

>Which it frequently doesn't? Nothing more fun than grabbing a pint of ice cream and then discovering it's full of ice crystals at home, because it thawed and refroze somewhere in the shipping chain or at the supermarket. This is mostly a consumer problem. You (or, the HN demographics being what they are, more likely your SO) toss it in a cart and then proceed to shop recreationally for some time, toss it in the back of your potentially hot car, stop to get Starbucks and then eventually sometime later it gets into a freezer. It might've been out of the freezer for over an hour. Almost certainly 15-20min The next longest time it spends out of the freezer is the pallet jack ride from the walk in in the back of the store to the frozen food isle, typically single digit minutes, tops. >Of course it's more of an issue with Haagen-Dazs since it doesn't use the stabilizers like guar gum. Package size and resultant thermal mass has a big effect on it. Higher end ice creams suffer this more than cheaper ones bought in bigger sizes. >smaller supermarkets and shops with less staff where they're more likely to leave the ice cream sitting around for hours between delivery and loading into the freezer. This is just not how it works. The delivery person will put refrigerated goods specifically into the fridge specifically to avoid "well you left it on the dock and didn't tell us" accusations. I'm sure somewhere there's a foodservice supplier that doesn't do this but that's a them problem and it's the exception rather than rule, their suppliers are likely wheeling the stuff right from reefer to walk in when they deliver to the supplier.