Traverse City’s Milk & Honey Café named Michigan’s best ice cream parlor

Downtown Traverse City gained a new summer bragging right when Milk & Honey Café and Ice Creamery was named the best ice cream parlor in Michigan. For a shop on busy Front Street, the recognition could mean more foot traffic, longer lines and more attention from visitors already heading downtown during the region’s peak tourism season.

The honor went to Milk & Honey through Foodie.com, with the business’s mix of locally sourced ingredients, specialty recipes and a distinctly Traverse City identity setting it apart. The shop serves handmade ice creams, cakes, coffee and food items, and says it uses local, natural, organic and GMO-free ingredients. It also offers vegan cream options, along with gelatos, vegan creams and sorbets for customers looking for different dietary choices.

One of the shop’s biggest distinctions is its frozen granite mix board, which lets staff build a wide range of custom flavor combinations. That kind of hands-on approach has helped Milk & Honey stand out in a summer market crowded with dessert stops, especially in a city where visitors come for the National Cherry Festival, beach traffic and the broader food scene that has made downtown Traverse City a destination in its own right.

Milk & Honey has been operating since 2014 at 240 E Front St. in Traverse City, and its About Us page says the business has 20 years of combined experience. The shop also says it won the grand prize in the 2014 Traverse City Ice Cream Walk for its orange creamsicle cake, an early sign that its dessert menu was already drawing attention locally before the statewide nod.

Traverse City Tourism describes Milk & Honey as a family ice cream shop and espresso bar serving products made with high quality ingredients from local sources. The same organization recommends it in its family-dining guide as a place with “an astonishing array of ice cream flavors.” Tripadvisor currently lists the shop with 129 reviews, a 4.5-out-of-5 rating and a ranking of No. 2 among dessert spots in Traverse City.

Milk & Honey’s regular hours run from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and Sunday, and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. With the city entering its busiest stretch of the year, the statewide recognition gives a downtown business already rooted in local sourcing and summer tourism an even bigger platform.