Holy Crap, Dole Whip IS Coming To Grocery Stores

Update, March 7, 2023: Be sure to swing by the liquor aisle for some champagne on your next grocery run, because we've got reason to celebrate: Representatives for Dole have confirmed to The Takeout that Dole Whip is indeed headed to the freezer aisle, for the very first time in the product's history.

The frozen treat, which the brand describes as "A better-for-you dessert with a creamy texture and made with real fruit," will hit stores in three different flavors: Pineapple, Mango, and Strawberry. And while I frankly couldn't care less about the "better for you" part, the "creamy texture" part is 100% true. Speaking from experience, Dole Whip is an incredibly satisfying alternative for anyone who can't have ice cream for any reason, and even for those who can.

Dole reps confirmed that the product will be available at select retailers starting in April/May. Only one mystery remains: Will the company be able to translate silky soft-serve Dole Whip into a prepackaged freezer aisle novelty? The image on the package shows the dessert dispensed into a cup with a swirling, satisfying peak, which obviously can't be achieved in a lidded container, but I remain hopeful. Maybe Dole food scientists have been hard at work over the past 39 years since the treat's inception, trying to achieve authentic "whip" consistency for a mass-market version of the product. If that's the case, it will have been worth the wait.

Original post, March 3, 2023: Disneyland might have opened its doors in 1955, but one could argue that it wasn't worth visiting until nearly 30 years later, in 1984, when Dole—official sponsor of Disneyland's Enchanted Tiki Room—developed a pineapple soft serve that could easily be carried around the park. It was named the Dole Whip, and it has achieved legendary status in the years since. (The Disney parks even celebrate an official Dole Whip Day.)

Part of what has made the Dole Whip special across the last 39 years is its elusiveness—it's available almost exclusively in Disney parks, Universal Studios, and select other locations. However, a recent press release from Dole indicates that we might all be treated to a taste of the tropics soon enough: Dole Whip is coming to the freezer aisle at grocery stores nationwide.

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Before I tasted a Dole Whip, I assumed it was just name-brand pineapple sherbet served in a swirl. I could not have been more wrong. Dole Whip is almost impossibly velvety, dense on your spoon but light in your belly, with perfectly balanced creamy and citrusy notes in every bite.

Though many copycat recipes are available online, many of them use ice cream, and Dole Whip is a famously dairy-free dessert. This copycat recipe gets closest to the real deal by using Cool Whip instead of ice cream, although because Cool Whip now includes skim milk in its recipe, we can't claim that the best copycat is dairy-free.

Dole sells industrial-sized bags of Soft Serve Mix, but other than that, anyone who wants an official taste of Dole Whip has historically been out of luck, unless they live in a place with lots of palm trees. Yet if the press release is to be believed, Dole is about to change that.

The press release doesn't say that much about Dole Whip; it's mainly heralding the brand's "major plans to accelerate the 170-year-old company's transformation into a purpose-led, nutrition and wellness company." But it highlights some of the new products that will be released as part of that accelerated transformation, including smoothie bowls, juices, dehydrated fruit snacks, and even probiotic sodas.

And then this, tucked somewhere in the middle: "Dole Whip®, a tropical frozen treat, will soon be available in three delicious flavors (pineapple, mango, and strawberry) in the freezer aisle at your local grocery store."

The product is premiering next week at Expo West, a trade show dedicated to natural products taking place March 7-11 in Anaheim, California—coincidentally the home of Disneyland. Representatives for Dole could not be reached at the time of publication, but Dole is certainly one of the bigger brands exhibiting at the expo. Readers, if you're in Anaheim and could believably pass as a wellness industry insider, please consider sneaking into the Anaheim Convention Center and snag a sample of this new freezer aisle Dole Whip. We simply must know whether it can approach the magic of the original. But if you get caught, we weren't the ones who put you up to it.