Last November, the Blue Bell Creameries brand announced they would be expanding their company’s dessert distribution to St. Louis and neighboring cities by March 18, 2024.
At this time all of their products are now available at local stores to citizens of St. Louis, Columbia, Jefferson City, central Missouri and southern parts of Illinois.
Blue Bell originated in Texas, where Jessica Risenhoover, School Store volunteer, said she was raised on the ice cream brand.
“Blue Bell is a Texas tradition that everybody supports, and we’ve always been proud of the fact that you could never get it outside of Texas,” Risenhoover said. “But since I don’t live in Texas anymore, I love that the brand has been able to grow because it is such a staple of my home state.”
As a kid, Risenhoover said her favorite Blue Bell ice cream flavor was Tin Roof, vanilla ice cream consisting of chocolate sauce and chocolate-dipped roasted peanuts. As an adult, however, Risenhoover’s favorite flavor is Buttered Pecan.
“It is hands down their best flavor,” Risenhoover said. “It’s so good and super buttery. No ice cream place makes it better.”
As an additional surprise and way to celebrate Blue Bell’s expansion to St. Louis, the brand introduced a new ice cream flavor, Gooey Butter Cake, that was opened to the public on March 18 as well.
“I feel like Gooey Butter is a St. Louis thing,” Risenhoover said. “Texas tried to replicate something that was not regional to them and did not do a good job. Regional flavors should be left to individual regions.”
After originating in Texas, Blue Bell began distributing to southern states years before it made its way up to Missouri.
Wesley Miller, freshman, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and said his family would always buy Blue Bell ice cream as it was a family favorite.
He said when he was young it was harder to differentiate between Blue Bell and any other ice cream, but once he moved to St. Louis and saw it wasn’t sold at stores, he realized how good it was.
“It’s definitely better than some of the other ice cream we have up here,” Miller said. “It has the best flavors.”
Dr. Pepper Float is one of the company’s year-round flavors now sold in St. Louis, and a flavor Miller saw but didn’t try while on a trip in Florida.
“I like Dr. Pepper and I like ice cream, so hopefully it’ll be the best of both worlds,” Miller said.
Another trip to Florida, for this year’s Spring Break, sparked a new love of Blue Bell ice cream for Claire Katsev, history teacher.

“I had seen things about the brand on Instagram, and my family and I were like ‘we have to get this’,” Katsev said.
They tried Cookie Two Step, vanilla ice cream consisting of chunks of chocolate chip cookie dough and crème filled chocolate cookies.
“We were obsessed with it for the whole week, and then we came back home to St. Louis and around a week later, my sister sent us a picture saying the Cookie Two Step was here,” Katsev said. “We were super pumped about it.”
The only setback about Blue Bell ice cream for Katsev is she said she wishes it were creamier.
“My absolute favorite ice cream brand is Tillamook, specifically for its flavor options and creaminess, but the variety of flavors in Blue Bell has started to do it for me,” Katsev said. “It has for sure become a close second to Tillamook.”
Katsev has only tried Cookie Two Step, but some of the other chocolate and peanut butter flavors she said are intriguing to her.
“I’m always into chocolate and peanut butter, so if there is anything like that, I would get it in a heartbeat,” Katsev said. “I would also definitely add sprinkles, extra peanut butter or extra Oreos to top off the ice cream.”