The Not-So-Surprising Food In President Biden's Fridge

President Joe Biden's love of ice cream is no state secret. Biden has gone public with this information many times — so often, in fact, that the usually staid network CNN made a short video poking a little fun at how often the leader of the free world has licked an ice cream cone while cameras were rolling. In 2016, when he was vice president, Biden opened a press conference by saying, "My name is Joe Biden, and I love ice cream" (via Columbus Monthly). This introduction wasn't as random as it might sound. Biden was holding the press conference at Jeni's ice cream headquarters in Columbus, Ohio. He went on to tell the audience just how much he loves ice cream: "I eat more ice cream than any three other people you'd like to be with — all at once."

During the 2020 presidential election campaign, after Donald Trump accused Biden of using performance-enhancing drugs during debates, Biden jokingly responded by revealing his performance enhancer in an Instagram post: a pint of Jeni's Salted Peanut Butter With Chocolate Flecks. This wasn't Biden's favorite ice cream flavor, but apparently his longtime love of Jeni's trumped (so to speak) any flavor issues.

Jeni Britton Bauer, founder of Jeni's ice cream, jumped onto her blog in January 2012, mere hours after Joe Biden made his first-ever visit to her Columbus scoop shop. Britton Bauer served then-Vice President Biden herself, and she quickly learned he wasn't at all interested in some of Jeni's fancier flavors. He even turned down her personal recommendation to try Salty Caramel. Biden may love ice cream, but caramel ... not so much. What he really wanted that day at Jeni's was a double scoop of chocolate chip ice cream — a flavor Jeni's didn't have. As Britton Bauer suggested in her blog post, chocolate chip was a little too basic for her artisanal brand. So, like any good politician, Biden found a compromise. He ordered a combo double scoop with Dark Chocolate and Ugandan Vanilla Bean.

But Jeni Britton Bauer would remember the future president's request for chocolate chip. When Biden made that first visit to Jeni's scoop shop nearly a decade ago, no one could have predicted that Jeni's would go on to create a special flavor for Biden to honor his inauguration as president of the United States (via People). The Joe Biden ice cream, called White House Chocolate Chip, crams the president's regular ice cream cone order into a pint: vanilla ice cream with crunch chocolate flakes and chocolate-covered waffle cone pieces.

When The New York Times did a deep dive to get the inside story on new president Joe Biden, the newspaper left no stone unturned. It even reported on the foods you could always find In Biden's kitchen during his days as vice president. Biden had to have grapes and apples on hand, and his drink of choice was orange Gatorade (never alcohol).

It should be no surprise that Biden's list of must-have foods included ice cream — specifically, Häagen-Dazs vanilla chocolate chip. But that list of Biden foods is more than four years old now, dating back to the days he worked under Barack Obama. If The New York Times would have dug just a little deeper, it might have gotten the latest scoop. This hasn't been confirmed, but it's easy to picture the presidential freezer stocked with Jeni's White House Chocolate Chip instead of Häagen-Dazs. After all, Biden has left a paper trail showing that he buys Jeni's in quantity. Columbus Monthly looked at Biden's campaign finance records and found evidence that his campaign spent more than $12,000 on Jeni's pints in the year leading up to the 2020 election. Even Joe Biden can't eat that much ice cream in a year; these were purchased as gifts.

While Joe Biden clearly loves Jeni's ice cream, the president who said he wants to reunite a divided nation surely has enough room in the presidential freezer for a diversity of ice cream brands. In October 2020, when he was running for president, Biden gathered the leaders of small ice cream companies at an "Ice Cream for Joe" summit to discuss issues important to small businesses (via CNSNews). The event attracted Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's, along with the top brass from Salt & Straw, Ice Cream Jubilee, and Frio Mexican Treats.

Biden dropped by Salt & Straw, a boutique scoop shop in Portland, Oregon, during a visit to that city in 2014 (via The Oregonian). As expected, Biden took a pass on all of Salt & Straw's more bizarre ice cream flavors and ordered a double-scoop cone of chocolate and vanilla. As for Ice Cream Jubilee, the D.C.-based ice cream maker created a Joe Biden-inspired flavor for Inauguration Day (via CBS Philly). Ice Cream Jubilee's special Cuppa Joe flavor was a nice play on words, even if the president isn't likely to order coffee-flavored ice cream. We don't mean to suggest Ice Cream Jubilee committed some sort of giant, Biden-sized gaffe, though. The company did release a Vanilla Chocolate Chip in Biden's honor, too. And we bet you can find some of that next to the Jeni's in the White House fridge.