Help! The government stole my ice cream—sort of!

It seems as if every part of the world is infected with a politically correct attitude. Now, there is one more victim.
Responding to complaints that music from ice trucks is disturbing neighborhoods, officials in Bakersfield, Calif. are proposing an ordinance to restrict their operation. The ordinance would let the trucks operate for longer hours May through September and fewer during the academic year.
One word comes to mind: Please! Why does this bother residents now, but not in the 1950s and 60s when residents craved the time the trucks came rolling down their block?
Several reasons account for that, I think. As a society, we’re always looking for something to complain about. If it’s not the neighbor yelling at you, it’s the teacher who assigned too much homework.
Patience is the other reason. Now individuals don’t even have the patience to deal with the music once per day, for a few minutes. Seriously, how intolerant are you if you can’t deal with this, even when it means seeing kids happily stroll outside for a nice cool treat?
As a result, society has lost perspective, a frame of reference, and ability to prioritize issues. Society has more too lose than gain from passing this measure, and I don’t need to spell them out.

Brothers In Ice Cream

Irvin Robbins had a key understanding of the irresitable powers ice cream held over his employees. So, he let them eat all the free ice cream they wanted.
“I don’t want my employees stealing,” Robbins told CBS News.
Robbins, one half of theam that founded the Baskin-Robbins ice cream chain, died May 6, CBS News reported late last month. He left behind a legacy of the national chain, of which he sold his interests in 1967, that customers now see at Dunkin Donuts locations today.
Robbins, after his discharge from the Army, cashed in his insurance policy and built his first store in Glendale Calif. A year later, Robbins’ brother-in-law, Burton Baskin, started his own store in Pasedena, Calif. Soon after, the pair joined forces and created the chain and soon began selling them to managers as a franchise operation. Obviously, since then, the chain has grown, and the company was told to United Fruit in 1967, with Robbins working for the ice cream firm until he retired in the 1970s.
Death seems to be casting its somber shadow over so many aspects of life lately, but it should be kept in perspective. A short story is necessary to understand my point. Yesterday, I was driving in Leicester when my friend Kendrick called me and told me Tim Russert, the host of Meet the Press which airs on NBC, had died from a heart attack. I spent much of the next 24 hours reading about Russert’s death, his life and work, all the while wondering what to make of not only his death, but death in general. My conclusion — celebrate their life, don’t dwell on the fact you will never see them again because it will only make coping with the loss even more difficult.
In that case, when I die, my mourners should sit down crack open a case of my favorite flavor, peanut butter cup, and eat it until the feel bloated! My motto — ice cream is the cure for all woes!

Death of a leader

I have grown very weary of all the death I have witnessed lately, but some of those tears could be wiped away by the sweet taste of ice cream. I searched for ice cream news on Google and found a terrific article by a journalist friend of Benazir Bhutto, the recently murdered opposition leader of Pakistan. Let me reprint, with credit (Hindustan Times, 12/29/07) first segment of the story:

Sitting in my digs at Cambridge after dinner during the Easter vacation of 1976, Benazir, who had driven over from Oxford that morning with her friend Tricia, suddenly suggested we dash out for ice cream. So we bundled into her MGB sports car which was parked outside. But instead of driving towards the centre of town, she headed for the A40.

“Where are you going?” I asked perplexed.

“London! It’s the nearest Baskin Robbins I know.”
Benazir loved ice cream. She could eat vast quantities of it. In later years, her favourite became Ben & Jerry’s. Whenever I finished a particularly acrimonious interview, she would insist that we eat ice cream together. “It will cool you down!” she would laugh.

There were several interviews that annoyed her, a few that upset her and at least one that riled her. But she never held that against me. She accepted that a journalist had a job to do just as she insisted that a politician couldn’t answer every question. She always ensured that our professional relationship — as interviewer and Prime Minister or Opposition leader — remained separate from our friendship.

This story nearly brought me to tears, as many thing do. But the account shows the unique power ice cream can have. Eat it when your happy or eat it when your sad. Are you a world leader having a bad day? Have some ice cream. Are you a factory worker leaving the night shift? Grab a pint on your way home.
Some of the best times of my short life have been topped off by ice cream, coffee Oreo usually. The spoon was brought to mouth soon after sad occasions too.
Here’s to you Bhutto, and may ice cream fill your heavenly existence.

Out in the cold?

Massachusetts has been thrust into the low digit depths of mercury with recent snowfall and freezing temperatures, but I believe, ice cream is still on many people’s minds. Well, it’s on mine at least!
I frequently surf the Web in search of ice cream news and found a peculiar piece about Ben & Jerry’s in a recent issue of Newsweek magazine. The article chronicled the troubles of some company franchisees who claim the firm misled them into putting their life fortunes into a bad franchise. Some current and former franchisees accused the ice cream maker of distributing underweight ice cream shipments to its stores and putting them through long flavors restocking delays. They also claim stores like Wal-Mart and Costco bought many pints for bargain prices that were not offered to the scoop shops. The firm didn’t help the shop owners fix their problems, they say.
I read the piece with a careful eye, and making a judgment about the situation is hard. First glance tells me shop owners either came upon bad luck that many business owners experience, or have a bad relationship with Ben & Jerry’s, therefore making their dealings difficult.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp There could be other reasons for a shop’s sagging sales. In these economically tough times, the story mentions ice creams sales have tapered off in the past several years. Cold Stone Creamery and Ben & Jerry’s have closed some stores around the country. It’s a telling sign that ice cream may not be a good business for starts up right now. One paragraph stood out to me:

Alan Sherman and his wife, Shannon, are among the unsuccessful ones. The couple opened their shop in Blacksburg, Va., in 2004. They say they built their business plan based on information in a 2004 Ben & Jerry’s franchising circular, a disclosure document sent to prospective new owners. The circular stated that the average Ben & Jerry’s store would bring in $364,892 in gross sales. But the Shermans soon realized their shop wouldn’t ring up nearly that amount. They say they’ve already lost a half-million dollars, and will likely lose thousands more as they continue pumping cash into the business to avoid defaulting on loans. “We feel we’ve been abandoned,” he says. They say they plan to sue.

The Shermans seem to be citing the financial projection as a promise for profits. As a any aspiring business man should know, start up stores are never a sure bet. But the article doesn’t cite any possible reason for why the Shermans aren’t making money. They could be in a bad location, have bad employees, be in a poor area, or just have bad luck. More detail is needed for an honest assessment of the failed shop. In the defense of Ben & Jerry’s, it would be interesting to know how much the average shop owner makes in profit per year. I bet it’s a substantial sum. If it’s not, more should be done to help under performing stores.
In the meantime, Ben & Jerry’s should be running to the aid of their shops because doing so can only help the company and the store owner make money. A company’s profit partly depends on it’s reputation, which I’m sure the ice cream maker wants to maintain.

Warning: Ice cream containers may be more dangerous than they appear.

Imagine your eating ice cream, and suddenly you start having a seizure, or your skin swells up, your you start coughing uncontrollably. Careful, read that label on the side of ice cream container before consuming one of the seven deadly sins! The U.S. Food & Drug Administration has issued a voluntary recall for ice cream containers that may not state the presence of almonds, which some people are allergic to. Go here for more information. Remember kids, knowing is half the battle!

Make my day

Businesses are always looking for cool and hip ways to market their ice cream, and the latest effort by one ice cream company is fantastic.
Brigham’s Ice Cream is putting famous short phrases on their new line of pint size containers. The new line of pints utilize names like “Bada Bing,” that recalls the name of the wise-guy hangout on The Sopranos. The best name is, in my opinion, is “Boston You’re my Home,” imitating the lyrics of the famous Standells song about their love for Boston. Oddly enough, the band is not from Massachusetts.
According to their web site, they recently concluded a contest soliciting user suggestions to be anointed the best one-liner ever. The winning line came from the movie Sudden Impact starring the crusty Clint Eastwood. In the film he utters the infamous machismo line: “Go ahead, make my day.” He speaks this line during a robbery scene from the film, after killing most of the robbers. What a badass!
This is another stroke of genius by Brigham’s. Their ice cream is decent, but their marketing is terrific. Bravo for creativity.

Andy Rooney on ice cream

If you never had the pleasure of reading 60 Minutes writer Andy Rooney’s work, you are missing out. Earlier today, I came across a portion of his essay discussing ice cream. Directly quoting it is the best way to honor his work. The following excerpt comes from an essay titled Life, Long and Short in his book And More By Andy Rooney:

The one statistic I hate to think about is how many pounds of food I’ve consumed. Pounds would be an unmanageably large number. I’d have to estimate it in tons. I must have eaten ten tons of ice cream alone in my lifetime.
It makes life seem long and lovely just thinking about every bite of it.

That’s exactly how I feel about ice cream and I hope to have consumed many tons of it before I die.