The Long Island Ice Cream Tour is now held three times a year. We visit a selection of the best homemade ice cream places on Long Island, NY. Our co-founders, Derek (a dessert fiend) and Jeff (a Long Island local), have been discovering the best ice cream on Long Island for well over a decade. We aim to share what we’ve discovered with all attendees so that you may know what the best ice cream is near you. During the tour, you’ll discover why homemade ice cream is different than store-bought or factory-made.
History
Back in the mid-1980s, two important events occurred:
- Jeff Noreman, a resident of Queens, became aware of a number of ice cream places on Long Island. He realized quite a few of them made their ice cream on the premises — what he consider to be homemade (not blended elsewhere in a factory and shipped in). On a sunny day soon thereafter, he took a friend to explore the variety of delicious homemade ice cream made on the Island. Over the years, he has taken other friends on a similar day-long ice cream adventure.
- Derek Steen was born in Sydney, Australia.
In 2011, Jeff blended his knowledge of homemade ice cream on Long Island with Derek’s sherbet-filled sense of adventure, and — together — they created the Long Island Ice Cream Tour. This first year they had just a few close friends and family. In 2012, that doubled to almost 20 people, and they were featured in Newsday (Long Island’s largest newspaper). In 2015, LIICT first publicized their event using Meetup and Facebook.
In 2019, Newsday’s article and News12’s video helped the tour gain over 90 registrations — more than double the attendees in 2018.
2020 was the tour’s 10th year. And despite the challenges of a global pandemic, two tours nearly sold out.
2023 was the first year with three LIICT tours — East, West, and South, each covering shops in different areas of the Island. Only locally-owned small businesses, employing local staff, and making their ice cream on-premises.
LIICT is open to ice cream lovers who want an exciting event filled with lots of ice cream, gelato, custard, a day of driving, meeting new friends, and lots of fun.