The London Ice Cream Price Index 2026: What the 99 Flake Tells Us About Pricing

The 99 Flake is still called a 99, but it no longer costs 99p. What does that tell us about reference pricing, price anchoring, inflation and consumer psychology?

The 99 Flake is one of the strangest products in British pricing.

For generations, its name has carried an implied price with it. Ask almost anyone in the UK what a “99” should cost and the instinctive answer is obvious: 99p.

Except, of course, it doesn’t.

So I decided to investigate a simple question: how much does a 99 Flake actually cost in London in 2026 — and where can you still find genuinely cheap ice cream?

What started as a slightly frivolous search turned into a useful case study in pricing strategy, reference prices, inflation, consumer psychology and geographic pricing.

I researched publicly available menus, delivery platforms, business listings, social media, menu photographs and other price evidence across London, looking not just at 99 Flakes but at soft serve, gelato, kulfi and other entry-level ice cream products.

The resulting dataset became the London Ice Cream Price Index 2026.

And while the subject is ice cream, the lessons are relevant to almost anyone working in pricing.

The 99 Flake is now a product name, not a price

The first question was the obvious one: can you still buy a 99 Flake for 99p in London?

Based on the research, I could not find credible current evidence of a genuine 99 Flake still being sold for 99p in London.

That matters because the name continues to act as an extraordinarily powerful reference-price anchor.

A reference price is the price a customer has in their head before they see the actual price.

It might come from:

• what they paid last time;
• what they remember paying as a child;
• a competitor’s price;
• a promotional price;
• or, unusually in this case, the actual name of the product.

The 99 Flake may be one of the clearest everyday examples of a product whose historic price became embedded in its identity.

The market price moved. The mental price stayed behind.

Why reference pricing matters

This is where the story becomes more useful than simply asking whether a cone costs £2, £3 or £4.

Consumers do not evaluate prices in isolation. They compare them with a benchmark.

If someone expects a product to cost £4 and sees it for £3.50, it may feel cheap. If they expect it to cost 99p and see exactly the same £3.50 price, it can feel expensive.

The actual transaction price is identical. The perceived value is not.

That gap between the price a business charges and the price a customer expects is one of the most important dynamics in pricing.

The 99 Flake has an unusually visible version of this problem because the historic anchor is literally sitting in the product name.

What is the cheapest ice cream in London?

The broader research looked beyond the 99. I wanted to understand the bottom end of London’s ice cream market:

• How cheap can a freshly served ice cream still be?
• Is sub-£2 ice cream disappearing?
• Are soft serves cheaper than gelato?
• Does Central London command a meaningful premium?
• Are the best bargains hiding outside the obvious tourist and premium areas?

The answer is more nuanced than “London is expensive”.

There are still unusually low-priced products out there, particularly among simpler soft-serve formats and some independent operators. But genuinely cheap freshly served ice cream is much harder to find than the nostalgia surrounding the 99 might suggest.

That distinction between commodity-style soft serve and premium gelato is also important. Consumers are not simply buying frozen dairy. They are buying different propositions.

A soft-serve cone might compete primarily on convenience and familiarity. An artisanal gelato shop may compete on:

• ingredients;
• flavour range;
• provenance;
• presentation;
• location;
• brand;
• experience.

The product category may look similar from a distance, but the pricing architecture is very different.

Pricing isn’t just about cost

It would be tempting to explain all of this with inflation. Ingredients cost more. Wages cost more. Energy costs more. Rent costs more.

But cost is only part of pricing.

A company does not automatically arrive at the correct price by calculating its costs and adding a margin. The customer doesn’t know — and usually doesn’t care — what the business’s spreadsheet says the product should cost.

What matters commercially is the intersection between:

• cost;
• willingness to pay;
• competition;
• positioning;
• customer expectations;
• and perceived value.

The 99 Flake is interesting because it shows what happens when those forces move at different speeds.

Costs can rise quickly. Market prices can follow. But customer expectations may take much longer to reset.

A lesson in price anchoring

The 99 is also a lesson in price anchoring. Anchors give customers a starting point from which they judge another price.

Retailers do this deliberately all the time: was £100, now £70. The £100 makes the £70 feel more attractive.

Restaurants may place a very expensive bottle of wine on a menu partly because it changes how the £55 bottle beside it feels. Subscription businesses frequently show monthly and annual plans next to each other to frame relative value.

But the 99 Flake has a different kind of anchor. Nobody needs to actively display the anchor. The consumer brings it with them.

That can be incredibly powerful. It can also be incredibly inconvenient.

When a product outgrows its own name

There is another fascinating aspect to the 99.

Brands often benefit from familiarity. Renaming an iconic product because its original price no longer applies could destroy decades of recognition. So the name survives even when its literal meaning becomes economically irrelevant.

In pricing terms, the “99” has effectively transitioned from a price signal to a brand asset.

That transformation is not unique to ice cream. There are plenty of examples where a number, value or proposition survives long after its original commercial meaning has changed. But few are as visible.

And that creates an interesting strategic trade-off: at what point does the value of the familiar name outweigh the mismatch between the customer’s historic expectation and the current price?

For the 99 Flake, the market appears to have answered that question quite decisively. Keep the name. Change the price.

London also demonstrates geographic pricing

Another thing the research highlights is the importance of geography.

A product can be technically identical while customers are willing to accept different prices in different locations. A cone bought beside a tourist attraction is not necessarily competing in the same market as a cone bought from a neighbourhood café.

Location changes:

• footfall;
• rent;
• competitive density;
• customer mix;
• convenience;
• purchasing occasion;
• willingness to search for alternatives.

This is why “What does an ice cream cost?” is actually a poor pricing question. A better question is: what does this type of ice cream cost, for this customer, in this location, in this context?

That principle applies far beyond ice cream. Ticketing, hospitality, events, travel and entertainment all operate with exactly the same tension.

There is rarely one universal market price. There are overlapping willingness-to-pay curves.

The psychology of £2.99

The research also surfaced another familiar pricing mechanism: psychological price points.

Prices ending in £1.99, £2.50, £2.95, £2.99 and £3.50 are not random. Businesses frequently cluster around recognisable thresholds because customers do not perceive a £2.99 price in exactly the same way as £3.00.

The economic difference is a penny. The perceptual difference can be much larger.

The same principle is why pricing teams should be careful about modelling price purely as a continuous numerical variable. A £1 increase is not always perceived as the same £1 increase. Crossing from £2.99 to £3.00 may matter differently from moving from £3.00 to £3.01.

Thresholds matter.

What can businesses learn from a 99 Flake?

The most useful lessons from this research are surprisingly broad.

1. Customers remember old prices

Your customer may be judging today’s price against a benchmark that has almost nothing to do with today’s economics. Understanding that benchmark is essential.

2. Price perception matters as much as price

A price can be financially reasonable and still feel expensive. That perception affects conversion, satisfaction and brand sentiment.

3. The same product can support different prices in different contexts

Location, occasion and convenience all influence willingness to pay.

4. Product names can become price anchors

If a brand or product contains a number or explicit value proposition, customers may hold you to it for much longer than expected.

5. Premiumisation changes the comparison set

Gelato doesn’t necessarily compete with soft serve simply because both are ice cream. Positioning determines what customers compare you with.

6. Pricing thresholds matter

£2.99 and £3.00 may be almost identical economically, but they are not necessarily identical psychologically.

7. Historic anchors are difficult to erase

Once customers internalise a price, resetting expectations can take years. That is why large price changes often need to be accompanied by changes in product, packaging, experience or communication.

Why I am building a pricing research library

This ice cream research is part of a broader idea I am exploring through Pricing Gods.

I want to build a searchable library of real-world pricing evidence across categories such as food and drink, tickets, sport, entertainment, hospitality, travel, subscriptions, events and retail.

The aim is not simply to produce lists of prices. It is to understand what those prices tell us.

For example:

• What does a Premier League ticket actually cost across clubs?
• How much does a pint vary between cities?
• What does dynamic pricing look like in live entertainment?
• Where do consumers accept premium pricing?
• Which categories have the strongest historic reference prices?
• How quickly do prices reset after inflation?
• How much of a premium does location create?

The more real pricing evidence we collect, the easier it becomes to move pricing discussions away from instinct and toward observable market behaviour.

The wider pricing question

The most interesting thing about the 99 Flake isn’t that it costs more than 99p. Everyone already knows that.

It’s that people still care. The price has moved, but the anchor remains.

And that is a useful reminder for anyone responsible for pricing:

Your customers don’t experience your price through your cost model. They experience it through their expectations.

Understanding those expectations is where good pricing starts.

About the research

The London Ice Cream Price Index 2026 was compiled from publicly available pricing evidence including business menus, websites, delivery platforms, social media and other sources.

Prices can change and individual observations should be treated as evidence from the date on which they were identified rather than permanently current prices.

The research forms part of the growing Pricing Gods pricing research library.

If you work in pricing, ticketing, events, hospitality or commercial strategy and want to discuss pricing research or how these principles apply to your business, you can find more of my work on this site and at Pricing Gods.