Rising thermometers have pushed ice cream sales up around most of the country this month, and Muscovites are eating about 250 tons of the frozen treat on particularly hot days, a news report said.
Russians have already eaten up the supplies of ice cream that producers had stocked up for the summer, prompting dairies to work overtime to meet the increased demand, Valery Yelkhov, director of the Ice Cream Producers Union, was cited by Izvestia as saying Thursday.
The most ice cream is devoured in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Russia's southern regions, though Siberia's Novosibirsk, Omsk, Irkutsk and Barnaul regions are also among top consumers, Yelkhov was quoted as saying.
Sales spike on days when temperatures rise to 25 to 30 degrees Celsius, prompting Muscovites to consume 250 tons of ice cream a day, followed by St. Petersburg with 150 tons, Izvestia reported.
Unusually high sales this summer have also contributed to an increase of total ice cream sales for the first six months of the year by 9 percent compared to the same period last year, Yelkhov was quoted as saying.
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