That is traditional grocery store wisdom, mainly so the product won’t melt in the cart as it winds through the aisles.

For shoppers worn down by the journey through a hangar-size Whole Foods, it’s also a reward: an ultradecadent bounty in an ever-multiplying variety of daring and imaginative flavours.

It has never been a better time to eat ice cream or a more cutthroat time to try to sell it.

Fuelled by pandemic trends of “at-home comfort” and “anytime eating,” the $7 billion industry grew 17% in 2020, after roughly 2.4% annual growth over the previous decade, said Jennifer Mapes-Christ of the market-research firm Packaged Facts. Artisan ice cream — a “squishy” term, she said, that usually refers to product with less air and more fat but “mostly just means ‘fancy’” — is growing even faster than mainstream ice cream and is considered the industry’s future.

Small, indie producers like Jennifer Dundas, co-founder of Blue Marble in Brooklyn, have driven the innovation in the past decade. Dundas has been in the field for 14 years, but I’ve known her even longer — we grew up in the same Boston suburb — and through her have seen how ruthless selling organic banana cream pie ice cream in biodegradable bowls can be.

The spoils of success — tens of millions of dollars in incubation deals, plus the potential for hundreds of millions more if a label is bought by a giant like Unilever — have heightened competition in the $10-a-pint world. Now the business of gourmet ice cream is go big or melt.

“Everyone’s like: ‘I’m going to be the next Talenti. I’m going to be the next Halo Top.’ But it’s one in 1,000, right?” said Crista Freeman, an industry veteran.