Many of Asbury Park’s ice cream shops offer a variety of vegan-friendly treats, ranging from soft serve cones to specialty items like s’mores sundaes. While most places are diligent about cross-contamination, it is always important to let the servers know when diners have a restricted diet or food allergy, as many of the ice cream places also sell non-vegan items with desserts and toppings made with dairy products, eggs, and honey. All of these ice cream spots are either walkable, bikeable, or very quickly driveable from downtown Asbury Park. Here’s a roundup of vegan ice cream spots in Asbury Park, Ocean Grove, Bradley Beach, and beyond for your vegan needs.
Asbury Park
Amici Gelato + Caffe | 630 Mattison Avenue
Amici Gelato + Caffe has the absolute best variety of Italian dessert classics in Asbury Park — with vegan options. The charming dessert and coffee cafe serves gelato, sorbet, pastries, coffee, and sandwiches. Amici makes its own dairy-free, vegan gelato on the premises without dyes. Some of the unique and delicious vegan gelato flavors include dirty mint chip, dark chocolate, tangerine, cinnamon, concord grape, and cinnamon, but expect the flavor options to change with the seasons.
Read More: A Guide to Top-Notch Seafood at the Jersey Shore
Betty’s Ice Box | 1300 Ocean Avenue (inside of Convention Hall on the boardwalk)
Betty’s Ice Box is a dream for those who follow a vegan, gluten-free, peanut-free, dairy-free, or dye-free diet. Betty’s colorful and whimsically detailed chalkboard walls display the extensive menu of Hawaiian-style shaved ices, vegan soft serves, ice cream sandwiches, edible cookie doughs, chocolate-covered bananas, and sometimes even themed specials, like the Barbie soft-serve — which is currently available on tap. Gourmet ice pops are made on-site and diners can even pick up Scandinavian sweets by the pound, authentic salt water taffy, and organic popcorn.
Coney Waffle | 800 Ocean Avenue
Known for the social media-famous, mega-milkshake creations, Coney Waffle has great vegan options — just don’t expect the vegan order to be the spectacle seen on Instagram. Coney Island’s vegan menu is limited to water ice and vegan ice cream flavors such as cookie dough, cookies and cream, mint chocolate chip, caramel fudge, vanilla fudge, coffee royal, chocolate, and strawberry. No crazy toppings or edible accessories, unfortunately, but still delicious options for dietary restrictions, nonetheless. Coney Waffle is part of a chain with stores in other local parts of New Jersey such as Belmar, Long Branch, and Red Bank. The Asbury Park Boardwalk location of Coney Waffle is certified Kosher by JSOR.
Cookman Creamery | 711 Cookman Avenue
Cookman Creamery is centrally located in Asbury Park with a vegan ice cream menu that is truly to die for. The family-owned dessert shop specializes in hand-crafted, small-batch ice creams and offers homemade traditional and vegan ice cream, cakes, and pies — all produced at the Asbury Park location. The diverse menu of plant-based vegan ice creams includes flavors such as blue lavender, London fog, key lime patty, and lion’s mane coffee — just to name a few. Cookman Creamery’s vegan bases are organic coconut cream, almond butter, cashew butter, peanut butter, oat milk, and tahini. Dairy-free oat milk is available if you’d like to have one of the vegan flavors as a milkshake — we highly recommend getting a vegan salted chocolate milkshake, yum!
Eddie Confetti’s Ice Cream + Cafe | 1100 Ocean Avenue (on the boardwalk)
The prime ice cream and coffee stand on the Asbury Park Boardwalk, located right next to Madam Marie’s, is Eddie Confetti’s Ice Cream + Cafe. Just steps from the sand, diners can run up to Eddie’s to grab a vegan mint chip ice cream cone to bring back to the beach chair or lemon sorbet to enjoy while listening to a Stone Pony Summerstage concert. Eddie Confetti also offers a variety of coffee drinks, smoothies, and slushies.
Ralph’s Italian Ice | 1000 Ocean Avenue (on the boardwalk)
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Was it really a trip to a boardwalk at the Jersey Shore without getting Ralph’s? The Staten Island-born chain comes in clutch at the beach in Asbury Park, especially after a full day of sunning and swimming. While water ice is typically made without dairy products, many of Ralph’s water ice flavors contain eggs. The water ice flavors on Ralph’s menu that are vegan friendly are blue raspberry, black raspberry, blood orange, bubble gum, cantaloupe, Caribbean splash, cherry cola, cola, grape, green apple, lime, malibu bay breeze, mango, margarita, passion fruit, peach, pineapple, red raspberry, rootbeer, sour punch, strawberry margarita, and strawberry. Read a full list of ingredients for all of the water ice flavors here.
Avon-by-the-Sea
Courtney’s Ice Cream Shoppe | 526 Main Street
Courtney’s Ice Cream Shoppe is located just a few miles south of Asbury in the tiny, downtown area of Avon-By-The-Sea. This female-owned ice cream shop is a dreamy, brightly-colored, boutique-style ice cream and sweet shop that features non-dairy, vegan ice cream options. Courtney’s vegan ice cream flavors include vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, mint cookie, blueberry, and banana. The shop also has a wide array of traditional and non-traditional dairy ice cream flavors, locally brewed coffee, custom ice cream cakes, handcrafted ice cream pies, signature milkshakes, homemade baked goods, and candies. Come for the vegan ice cream, stay for the neon signs and cute vibes, and leave with an aesthetically pleasing Instagram story.
Bradley Beach
Beach Plum | 420 Main Street
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Beach Plum is an old-school style ice cream shop in walking distance from the restaurants and shops in downtown Bradley Beach. The classic, hometown-style spot offers soft and hard vegan ice cream as well as vegan milkshakes, with the vegan mint chip milkshake being a fan favorite. Beach Plum is cash only but does have an ATM onsite.
Ocean Grove
Dale + Dollops | 69 Main Avenue
Dale + Dollops is a new, 100% vegan diner, with gluten-free options, on Main Street in Ocean Grove. It has an extensive vegan dessert menu that includes soft-serve ice cream, milkshakes, sundaes, and floats. Patrons dream about the Peanut Butter Cup milkshake and the s’mores sundae for days after indulging Dale + Dollops also has an impressive vegan food menu that includes vegan pork roll egg and cheese sandwiches (a New Jersey staple), wraps, and burgers.
See More: A Guide to the Coffee Shops in the Asbury Park Area
Day’s Ice Cream | 48 Pitman Avenue
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Just over the Asbury Park footbridges into Ocean Grove is the darling establishment known as Day’s Ice Cream. Right across from Auditorium Park, the old-fashioned ice cream shop offers specialty ice creams made from oat milk, soy milk & coconut milk for vegans. Patrons will also find dairy-free sorbets on the menu. It would be a sin to not mention the lovely atmosphere Day’s has, with cute open-air seating on the patio adjacent to a private garden. Anticipate long lines every night during the months of July and August — the ice cream is THAT good. Day’s closes for the season in October and opens back up in May for the summer months.
