Lidl Recalls a Coffee Gelato for Listeria. Keeping It Frozen Won’t Make It Safe.

It is a clear plastic pint with a brown lid, coffee sauce swirled through vanilla, cookie pieces pressed against the sides. Turn it over and two lines are printed on the bottom: LOT:085261 and BEST BY: MAR/26/2028. If both match, that tub is part of a recall announced on Friday. We read the company’s notice line by line, looked at the product photos filed with it, and went to the lab studies on what freezing actually does to Listeria, because the obvious question about a frozen dessert is whether the freezer has already dealt with the problem. It has not.

Below: exactly which tub is covered and how to read the code, why a cold freezer pauses Listeria rather than killing it, and what the illness looks like if someone has already eaten some.

The recall: One flavor, one lot, nine states and D.C.

On October 16, 2026, Lidl US announced it is recalling one lot of its store-brand Gelatelli Coffee & Vanilla Gelato with Coffee Sauce & Cookie Pieces, the 16-fluid-ounce pint, UPC 4 0564897 22458. The FDA posted the notice on October 17. According to Lidl US, the gelato was distributed between July 19 and October 15, 2026 to all of its stores in Delaware, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia.

The reason is one line in the notice: the recall “was initiated after routine quality testing identified Listeria monocytogenes present on a lab sample.” Lidl US says no illnesses have been reported to date. Only Lot 085261 with the Best By date MAR/26/2028 is named; other Gelatelli flavors and other lots of this flavor are not part of this recall, by the notice’s own wording.

Our arithmetic: the sale window ran 88 days, roughly 13 weeks, from mid-July to mid-October. That is the whole stretch in which a shopper in those ten jurisdictions could have picked up this pint, which is why the code on the bottom matters more than when you remember buying it.

Check your freezer: The code is on the base of the tub, not the lid

The product photo Lidl US filed with the FDA notice shows the underside of the tub with the code printed in small black type through the clear plastic: LOT:085261 on the first line, BEST BY: MAR/26/2028 on the second. Both have to match. A tub with a different lot number or a different best-by date is not covered.

If yours matches, Lidl US says to throw it away or bring it back to any Lidl store for a full refund, and that a receipt is not required. The company’s customer care line for the recall is (844) 747-5435, Monday to Saturday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern. If you throw it out, the FDA’s Listeria guidance suggests washing shelves and surfaces it touched and sanitizing them with one tablespoon of chlorine bleach in a gallon of water.

The freezer question: Cold stops Listeria growing. It does not kill it

Most food germs slow to a crawl in the cold. Listeria is the awkward exception at the fridge end of the scale: the FDA says it “can survive and grow even under refrigeration,” and the CDC puts it plainly: “The germs even can grow in food kept in the refrigerator.” At freezer temperatures it stops multiplying. It does not die off in any useful way.

The clearest test of that comes from FDA scientists themselves. In a 2020 study in the Journal of Dairy Science (PMID 31704018), they took ice cream linked to a 2010 to 2015 U.S. listeriosis outbreak, stored it at -20°C (-4°F), and tested it every three months for three years. Their finding: Listeria monocytogenes “survived for at least 36 mo,” whether it got into the ice cream in the factory or was added in the lab. An older 1996 study in the Journal of Food Protection (PMID 31159057) found the same pattern over a shorter window: in ice cream without an added preservative, there was “no reduction in the cell population” through manufacture and three months of frozen storage at -18°C.

Put that next to the label. Our arithmetic: from the recall date to the printed best-by date of March 26, 2028 is 527 days, about 17 months. The FDA study ran more than twice that long and the bacteria were still there at the end. A pint that has sat in a home freezer since August is, by that evidence, exactly as it left the store. The FDA recommends keeping freezers at 0°F (-18°C) to slow or prevent growth, and that is the right setting for everything else in there. It is not a fix for a recalled product.

Ice cream is not a new place to find this bacterium. The FDA lists ice cream among the foods linked to past U.S. listeriosis outbreaks, and a multistate outbreak the CDC tied to ice cream ended in 2022 with 28 people sick in 11 states, 27 of them hospitalized. In this case the trigger was a company lab test, and no illnesses have been reported.

In the gut: What Listeria does, and how fast

Listeria takes two forms, and the gut is where both begin. The milder one stays in the intestine. According to the CDC, its symptoms, mainly diarrhea and vomiting, “usually start within 24 hours after eating food contaminated with Listeria,” and the FDA says they often last one to three days.

The other form happens when the bacteria cross the gut wall and spread into the body. The CDC says those symptoms usually start within two weeks of eating the food and can include fever, flu-like aches, headache and a stiff neck. It is uncommon: the CDC estimates about 1,250 people in the United States get a Listeria infection each year. It is also the reason this germ is taken seriously. The CDC says it is most likely to harm pregnant people, newborns, older adults and people with weakened immune systems, and the FDA notes that in pregnancy the symptoms may be mild or go unnoticed while still affecting the baby.

If someone in your home has already eaten some, the agencies’ advice is specific. The FDA says anyone who suspects symptoms that resemble listeriosis should talk to a healthcare provider, and that pregnant people, adults over 65 and people with weakened immune systems who develop symptoms should seek care and tell the provider what they ate. Knowing the product and the date you ate it is the useful detail to bring.

How we checked this: Sources and method

We read the Lidl US announcement dated October 16, 2026 as posted by the FDA on October 17, 2026, and the product photos filed with it, and copied the product name, UPC, lot code, best-by date, sale dates and states character by character from that notice. Background on Listeria comes from the FDA’s Listeria (Listeriosis) page and the CDC’s About Listeria, Symptoms and Causes pages, read October 17, 2026. The outbreak figures come from the CDC’s final update of November 2, 2022. The freezer findings come from two papers found on PubMed, each matched to its title before citing: PMID 31704018 (Salazar and colleagues, Journal of Dairy Science, 2020) and PMID 31159057 (Dean and Zottola, Journal of Food Protection, 1996). The day counts are our arithmetic. We will update this page if Lidl US or the FDA changes the notice. This article is educational, describes what the cited sources say, and is not medical advice.