Chocolate with Polar Bear Paws

Shipping ice cream is tricky business! Frozen shipments cannot be in transit over the weekend, so the destination, shipping method and day & time of checkout all impact when your order will arrive. 

We cannot schedule Saturday deliveries to commercial addresses. We cannot ship on Friday, Saturday or Sunday. We cannot ship to PO Boxes.

We offer the following shipping methods to the lower 48 states:

GROUND: $19.00 flat rate PER BOX OF 9 PINTS. Orders should arrive within 1-3 business days of shipment. 

STANDARD OVERNIGHT: $99.99 flat rate PER BOX OF 9 PINTS. Orders arrive within 1 business day of shipment.

If you have any questions about when your order will ship or be delivered, please reach out by emailing info@mcconnells.com or calling the office at 805.963.8813 and we will be happy to help you!

Please, do not attempt to send frozen items back to us. We do not accept returns, i.e., melted ice cream. That said, if we DO make a mistake on our end, we’ll be happy to correct it.

Our ice cream-making machinery at The New Dairy is constructed of stainless steel. It is cleaned frequently and thoroughly throughout the production day to eliminate the possibility of pathogen transmission and allergen residue. For this reason, there is an exceptionally small risk of residue “carry over.” For those customers who are extremely sensitive to allergens, including gluten, wheat, soy, milk, and/or tree nuts, please note that all of our ice creams, sorbets, variegates and inclusions are produced and/or processed using the same equipment.

While McConnell's is a working dairy (The Dairy), we are now exclusively a dairy processing facility. McC's exited the dairy farming business in the mid-1960's when land values on the Central Coast skyrocketed. It was simply no longer feasible at that point to manage our own cows. Since that time, McConnell's has sourced our raw milk & cream from dairy farms based in Central California.

Most of the purveyors we source from are members of leading fair trade and/or sustainable and environmental trade groups. Guittard Chocolate Company, as one example, is a member of the World Cocoa Foundation, The Rainforest Alliance, and Fair Trade. With regard to organics, at McConnell's, we have one goal: to make the world's finest ice creams. We achieve this is by having exceptionally high standards across the board. To maintain these standards, it’s critical that every ingredient in our ice creams be of the highest quality. The milk & cream we use comes from cows raised by local dairy co-ops on the Central Coast and California Central Valley. It is grass-grazed and hormone and antibiotic free. Our dairy is of exceptionally high quality. We are ardent supporters of organics in general. With that said, in our almost 70 years as a dairy, it’s been our experience that milk & cream can vary greatly in quality and consistency. Inconsistency in milk & cream can be traced to any number of factors, including feed, animal husbandry, and dairy processing. Organic is a term that defines a process, rather than objective quality. There is wonderful and not-so-wonderful organic milk in the market, just as there is wonderful and less wonderful organic fruit, nuts, chocolate, etc. While organic is certainly an important factor when it comes to selecting ingredients for McConnell’s Fine Ice Creams, committing wholly to organics, over objective quality, would suggest we, at McConnell’s valued process over quality. At McConnell's, achieving anything less than our stated goal is unacceptable.