The Scoop on Blue Bell: Celebrating One Hundred Years 1907-2007
Texas Highways
July 2007 issue
By: Lori Moffatt
Here are five things you’ve got to do this summer to earn your Texas bragging rights:
Ride the Texas Giant rollercoaster at Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington. Have a
Texas-brewed bottle of Shiner and a bowl o’ red at the Texas Chili Parlor in Austin.
Watch the musical Texas at Palo Duro Canyon State Park’s spectacular outdoor
amphitheater. Practice your Texas two-step on the well-worn wooden floors of Gruene
Hall near New Braunfels. And finally, for dessert, crank up a hearty birthday congratulations
for Brenham’s Blue Bell Creameries, maker of the best ice cream in Texas- perhaps
the best ice cream in the world.
Blue Bell’s beginnings date to 1907, when some of Brenham’s businessmen opened a
creamery to churn excess milk from local farms into butter. Butter quickly gave
way to ice cream, and soon, Blue Bell’s prize-winning confection had inspired the
high level of devotion associated with such Texas culinary icons as barbecue and
pecan pie. Blue Bell now sells dozens of ice-cream products (Krunch Bars! Dream
Bars! Homemade Vanilla Cups! Pints and Half-Gallons and more!) in 17 states, and
has even sent shipments as far away as Japan. Now in the throes of a year-long centennial
celebration, Blue Bell turns up the heat this summer with a full plate (er, bowl)
of activities and special events to honor its first century in business. Blue Bell,
you see, works magic with milk.
Here’s the scoop: Since January, Blue Bell has put a specially outfitted 18-wheel
big rig, along with a caravan of other vehicles, on the road across the Southern
United States. The Blue Bell rolling birthday party stops in a different city each
weekend and offers ice cream, interactive games, and even a bounce house shaped
like an ice cream carton. On July 19, the “100 Years Tour” vehicle will roll into
Brenham’s Washington County Fairgrounds to kick off a free, three-day birthday blowout
dubbed “A Day in the Country” (July 19-21). Not only can you watch vintage TV commercials,
see a cow-milking demonstration, listen to live music, and take your photo with
Belle, Blue Bell’s original “singing” cow, but you can sample any (or all) of more
than 45 Blue Bell flavors, including such summer favorites as Strawberry Cheesecake
and Peaches and Homemade Vanilla. Mmmmmmm.
By July, too, Blue Bell will have announced its second top-secret Centennial Flavor
(the first was Century Sundae- Homemade Vanilla swirled with caramel, chocolate,
whipped topping, and cherries) and unveiled the winner of its Taste of the Country
Flavor Contest. Were it not for regional specialties, after all, the world would
be without such drool-worthy ice cream choices as Key Lime Pie, Georgia Peach Cobbler,
and Cantaloupe ”n Cream (the latter a late-summer hit in Texas). And that would
have been a pity.
Of course, not all Blue Bell flavors have been hits. Take such flavor flops as Dill
Pickles ’n Cream, which never found its target market, or Licorice, which turned
consumers’ mouths a troubling shade of black. For every Dill Pickles ’n Cream fiasco,
though, Blue Bell has had a hundred winners, such as perennially popular flavors
like Homemade Vanilla (introduced in 1969) and Cookies n’ Cream. Combining good
taste with marketing savvy (sending 100 Blue Bell fans to see the Beatles perform
in 1965, for example; or collaborating with Coca-Cola and Schlitterbahn to build
the world’s largest Coke float in 1986) has helped make Blue Bell’s success ever
so sweet.
Stories like these, along with hundreds of vintage ad materials, photographs, and
tales of entrepreneurship and innovation, meticulously document Blue Bell’s history
in Blue Bell Ice Cream: A Century at the Little Creamery in Brenham, 1907- 2007,
an engaging coffee-table book released as part of Blue Bell’s birthday festivities.
Read it, and I dare you not to crave a few scoops.
Consider this your invitation to join the party. Who wants ice cream?