This is kinda strange. I was going to post a super-fast (and hopefully funny) post about the So Delicious sundae cones that I picked up at the Grocery Outlet. My idea was simply to express my joy that they exist. They feel like a highlight from childhood – ice cream sundae cones – but a guilt-free, vegan version.
I felt a heady kind of happiness eating them, like a celebration that things weren’t so bad. Sure, the world is falling apart a little bit. Sure, our commitment to the best solution to our environmental problems – the adoption of plant-based diets – is wavering. These little ice cream cones became beacons of hope for me – a demonstration that we can make craveable delicious food (at a reasonable price) that’s compatible with the planet. This temporary remission to cavemen running the show is just a blip in our path.
I’ve researched So Delicious before – in fact I’ve reviewed three So Delicious products here on Ethical Bargains! Some of these plant-based products – a chocolate chip mousse, ice creams, and sliced cheese – were impressive. That mousse was so good that I still mourn its discontinuation.
So I was thinking that I don’t need to do a deep-dive into So Delicious or parent company, Danone North America. I’ll just focus on the joy of these sundae cones. Then I felt like I was falling down a rabbit hole. It started when I looked for the ingredients online…
So Delicious sundae cones: ingredients and nutrition facts
These sundae cones are no longer featured on the So Delicious website, indicating that they are being phased out. This is always a risk with Grocery Outlet – purchases that you’ve just fallen in love with are actually in the process of being… discontinued!
Is this the mousse all over again?!
With help from the wonderful internet archive, I found that these sundae cones had been featured on the So Delicious website until around April 2026. I’m going to pause that line of research for now (I’m writing this in real time, as I research it, for the lark) and just focus on those ingredients.
Vanilla peanut sundae: Water, cane sugar, coconut and/or sunflower oil, wheat flour, peanuts, chocolate liquor, organic tapioca syrup, contains 2% or less of: rice starch, potato starch, soy lecithin (emulsifier), pea protein, organic cocoa, cocoa powder (processed with alkali), tapioca starch, cocoa butter, salt, guar gum, natural flavor, locust bean gum, organic vanilla extract, annatto extract (for color), calcium phosphate. Contains peanut, wheat, soy, and coconut.
Salted caramel sundae: Water, cane sugar, coconut and/or sunflower oil, organic tapioca syrup, wheat flour, chocolate liquor, contains 2% or less of: rice starch, potato starch, soy lecithin (emulsifier), pea protein, cocoa powder (processed with alkali), salt, cocoa butter, natural flavor, guar gum, organic cocoa butter, organic molasses, pectin, sodium citrate, apple juice concentrate (for color), caramel syrup, locust bean gum, calcium phosphate. Contains wheat, soy, and coconut.
Of course this product is not healthy – it’s ice cream! I generally steer clear of items that deliver over 20 grams of added sugars in one go but I make an exception for hot summer days when the world seems to be falling apart. On the plus side, vegan ice cream offers benefits over animal-based: the fats are healthier and there’s no trans fats or cholesterol. The fat here is mostly coconut oil, so there’s probably some benefit from those medium-chain triglycerides. Plus there’s a small amount of fiber and protein, especially in the peanut sundae.
What’s up with Danone and So Delicious?
So now I need to go back to those headlines related to the product being discontinued. Because it looks like it might be bigger than this.
Indeed, Danone is shuttering its plant-based dairy facility in New Jersey.
Danone had opened the New Jersey plant in 2001. Spanning 185,000 sq ft, the company claims this was the first soy protein extraction facility in the US and its first site to achieve ‘zero waste to landfill’ status. – Green Queen.
For FY2025, Danone’s CFO Juergen Esser reported “unsatisfactory performance of our plant-based business” and so the company is eliminating one of the four plant-based production facilities and discontinuing some products. At the same time, Danone is increasing production at several conventional dairy facilities.
What to think about all of this? Does Danone bear any responsibility or is it simply market forces at work? Let’s take both sides of this:
The cut-throat capitalist:
Yes, the plant-based diet movement has been flagging in the US of A – there’s no doubt about that. This is partly thanks to meat industry tactics like the sudden worldwide obsession with ultraprocessed foods and partly due to a shift in the American zeitgeist from woke to Neanderthal. A public corporation doesn’t have the bandwidth to ride this out.
The bleeding-heart liberal:
The stakes of climate change are so high that corporations need to start making some decisions that are not entirely driven by bottom lines. Maintain that zero-waste facility and just do better on the plant-based front, and give it a proper marketing budget! If you abandon all principles, Danone, then we as consumers will disown you.
Consumer demand drives supply – this is *unavoidable. It’s unfortunate that the US has wavered in adopting plant-based diets while Europe (and other places) has not. Is this a testament to how successful marketing and public influence campaigns can be?
*Until the AI overlords decide we should focus on making power plants to keep them happy, and then later turn us all into batteries.
The bottom line (and then I should return to the topic of ice cream cones) is that Danone has disappointed me. But certainly some of this disappointment is due to the fact that we as consumers have molded the direction of Danone, as predicted in the chart below that I made in 2024.
In the meantime, I’ll hold onto that simple joy that I experienced eating these So Delicious ice cream cones
Ethical rating for So Delicious sundaes
Here’s a summary of how I feel about the social and environmental impact of So Delicious sundae cones, which I’m scoring 4/5 Green Stars:
- Like all So Delicious products these ice cream cones are vegan. Conventional dairy has some of the largest environmental footprints (carbon, land, water) in the world, after beef. The adoption of plant-rich diets helps us mitigate climate change, food scarcity, animal cruelty, deforestation, and other major environmental threats.
- The packaging is pretty much all paper/cardboard. The outer box can be recycled and the paper wrap composted.
- A few ingredients are organic – tapioca and some of the cocoa, for example. The products are certified non-GMO. This helps avoid some of the pesticides (e.g., bee-killing neonics) that agrichemical companies package with their GM seeds. The main ingredients: sugar, coconut oil, tapioca, wheat, peanuts are low impact.
- So Delicious is owned by the French multinational food company, Danone Group. Danone Group, like many multinationals, is a mix of good and bad. The negatives are similar to those of Nestlé – bottled water and pushing infant formula in developing countries. But Danone does look better than Nestlé, overall, thanks to effort on several fronts.
- So Delicious doesn’t report very much on ingredient sourcing, even in Danone’s annual reports.
- Danone North America is a certified B-corporation, and the score has increased over time from a modest 85 to a respectable 103. That score should drop now as the company pivots to conventional dairy (or else we should stop trusting B Corp).
Summary scores (out of 5) for So Delicious Sundaes:
- 4.5 gold stars for quality and value
- 4 green stars for social and environmental impact
This score applies specifically to these So Delicious products and not to Danone in general (especially not its bottled water and intensive dairy).
Danone: make more effort on plant-based products!!
Customers: support plant-based products!
Join the Green Stars Project
Join the movement to hold corporations accountable (and recognize those with more positive impacts) by including a Green Stars rating when you review a product or business. Also, check out my sister site, The Green Stars Project, for a wider discussion on ethical consumption and social/environmental issues.
Here are a few GSP articles relevant to this post:
Grocery Outlet Ethical Bargains 
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