Brenham - What makes an exceptionally good thing good? Is it the ingredients? Is it the preparation, the recipe, how it's served? Or is it the people who put it all together?
After meeting Ed and Howard Kruse, my vote is for the latter. Blue Bell Ice Cream has
become arguably the best tasting and certainly the most successful ice cream in Texas (and that
means the best in the world). If you were looking for a reason why, there's a good chance you
wouldn't have to look any farther than the offices of two brothers who grew up wrapping ice
cream sandwiches by hand at the creamery their father ran in Brenham, Texas.
Let's talk about success. First, the facts. Blue Bell isn't just the number one ice cream in Texas. It dominates the market. We're talking a 62 percent market share! In fact, Blue Bell ice
cream is the number three best-selling brand in the nation, even though it is only distributed in eleven southern states, with only about 12 per cent of the population.
Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla, their best selling flavor, is also the best-selling single flavor of ice cream in the whole U.S. of A.!
Weíre talking big-time success here, real quantifiable, statistically provable, bustiní up the big boys success! And they did it all out of a little ice cream plant in Brenham, Texas.
How? Simple. Their ice cream tastes better than anyone elses in the super market. Blue Bell is an icon in Texas. In Round Top, Homemade Vanilla is the only ice cream that is known by its initials. On Bud Royer's menu it asks if you would like some BBHV on your pie. Most folks do.
But that's not all there is to it. Watch somebody who's about to dip into a big bowl of Blue Bell. Watch his eyes. There's something going on that's not about money, not about worldly success. It ís not even about the act of eating. I might be so bold as to say it is a spiritual thing or at least a deeply emotional experience that takes us back to the best times of our childhood. There's a magic in ice cream and Blue Bell is the most magic of all.
When I went out to Blue Bell Creameries, that was what I was looking for...the magic...where it came from. I think I found out.
I think it starts with how E. F. Kruse raised his two boys.
You see, E.F. was a pretty special guy. He went to college and got a degree in education. He had an offer to become the Superintendent of Burton Schools, but when the men who owned Blue Bell were looking for a manager back in 1919, they knew a good thing when they saw it and asked E.F. if he would take over the operation even though he had no experience in the dairy business at all. He was a highly moral man with an impeccable reputation. He believed in hard work and clean living, and those values he passed on to his sons.
Ed Kruse, the Chairman of the Board of Blue Bell Creameries started working at Blue Bell
when he was 13 years old. His younger brother Howard, who is currently the President and CEO,
started at 11. When E.F. died, the directors of the company had several good people to choose
from but the one they chose was E.F.ís son Ed. That was in 1951. It was 1993 before he stepped
down as CEO and his younger brother Howard took over the helm. That's 1919 until 1951 for
the dad. 1951 to 1993 for one brother, and Howard, who ran the plant through most of Ed's
tenure, has got a lot of life left in him so who knows how long heíll be in charge. As Ed says,
"...sort of one clone...a difference in personalities...," but still, the management of Blue Bell has
been in one family for seventy-eight years. I talked to the two men at different times but asked
many of the same questions. So for the sake of this interview, I combined their answers below.
Register - Tell me about what it was like when you first came to work here.
Ed-We bagged and made popsickles and fudgesickles and dreamsickles and ice cream sandwiches. If we were fortunate we got to make butter, which was a sit down job. We made .10 an hour. $4.80 a week..... Out of that 4.80 that we made, .05 went to Social Security. We gave 2.75 to mother for groceries, and we had 2.00 left for spending money. We worked all summer long and ended up with a total of $26.00 in disposable income, It...didn't last very long.
Howard - It surely did teach you the value of a dollar.
Register - Tell me exactly how you made an ice cream sandwich or a fudgesickle.
Howard- In that day, when we made an ice cream sandwich, what we would do is, you'd freeze blocks of ice cream, in this case, it was quart-size blocks... When you had that quart, you cut it into eight cubes, or rectangles, of four ounces of ice cream. So you physically took a quart of ice cream that was rectangular in shape, something like about three and a half inches by three and a half inches by, say, eight inches, something like that. It was frozen, and you would take that block of ice cream, and actually take a knife and whack it in half to where you'd have two pieces, then you'd whack that into quarters, and then you'd whack those back into one-eighths, and that was four ounces of product. So now you had a little bitty four-ounce slab of ice cream in rectangular form, and then you put two wafers on it, and then you physically wrap it by hand just like you wrap a package.., Well, you can imagine how many products you can make per hour or in one day. It was a very laborious, slow-type thing. But that was the procedures they used in that day.
The amazing thing was, you wouldn't believe this, you really wouldn't believe it how we filled it to make the ice cream product like the product we have today we call the Bell Bar. (The forerunner was the Eskimo Pie, which is vanilla ice cream with a
chocolate coating.) The way we made those, we had 24 pockets in this little mold. We'd take the ice cream from the freezer that was in ... a form like you get from... a Dairy Queen. It was pliable, and you could take it in that form and fill the mold. The way we did that is we had a funnel, and that funnel held about one gallon of ice cream, and the funnel came down to about a half-inch outlet at the bottom. Of all things, we had a little broom handle, if you can imagine that, that was about 18 inches long. The broom handle, you'd take in that 3-inch pocket, and you'd take that little broom handle and poke it three times, and that would give you about three ounces in that product. So you had to poke that thing 72 times just to be able to fill those pockets. Very laborious, but that's the way we made it. Again, you froze the product down. When it got the consistency where it would take the stick, and hold it upright, you'd put the sticks into the product, and it would freeze to it. Later, you'd defrost it, then you'd dip it in hot chocolate. And that, today, is known as our Bell Bar.
Register - ...and I've eaten a lot of those. In fact, I've eaten a whole lot of all this stuff.
I can still recall... when we got the first continuous ice cream freezer it was 1936. Prior to that we had a batch-type freezer.
Now the difference between a batch-type freezer and a continuous ice cream freezer is the fact that a batch-type freezer is one where you put a given gallonage of ice cream mix into a given size container, in this case a 10-gallon container, and you simply make a batch of ice cream just like you do at home. We made ice cream by the batches up until 1936. We could make a batch of ice cream of about 10 gallons of mix about every twenty minutes.
When we got our first continuous ice cream freezer in 1936, it made 80 gallons of ice cream per hour, and it continuously flowed out of a stainless steel pipe. You took the ice cream mix, and the ice cream freezer had the ability to whip it and freeze it, so to speak on the run, so it was a continuous flow of ice cream that came out of a 1-inch pipe, as if you just opened a spigot and just continuously had ice cream running out. I can recall Dad saying, in 1936, and I wasn't but six years of age, "Who will eat all this ice cream?" He couldn't dream that anyone could eat that much ice cream.
We made 80 gallons of ice cream with that machine. From there, we went up to 150-gallons per hour machines, from there to 500 gallons, Today, we can go into the thousands of gallons of ice cream per hour.
Your father had a great deal of impact on you both. Tell me what you remember about your life at home.
Ed- Our family was close-knit. It came about because of the leadership in the family...your mother and your father and how they thought...times were...a little tough.
My dad did believe that an idle mind is the devil's workshop so he saw that we stayed busy...and frankly, we stayed busy our whole lives.
We wore white uniforms when we went to work and those things...showed dirt and it took a lot of washing to get them clean...Every Monday morning Howard and I would get up and start washing with my mother and dad at 5 o'clock in the morning.
We were pretty fortunate. When we first started off, we had an old scrub board you had to scrub on and then we got a washer machine that actually washed. We ran the dirty clothes through the wringer and then put in the blueing water and then...squeezed it out again and hung it out on the clothes line and before 8 o'clock we were finished and had breakfast and were headed for work.
He set a tough example for us in many respects. He was at the Blue Bell office every morning six days a week before 7:30, and he worked until 6 o'clock. On Sundays he still received cream because they brought it in on Sunday just like other days.
Howard - My brother and I will both tell you that in our entire lives we never heard him (their father) use any words of any type that would ever indicate vulgarity or that type of thing. In fact, "hell" or "damn" would have been a horrible words for him.... He just believed in setting the example of being a person of character and integrity to the family. And of course that was a tremendous influence on us, because we would never think of using any word of vulgarity orever being a person that did not tell the truth or treat people fair. So that was the most outstanding, just his example. He was very, very firm, tremendously firm. You don't compromise certain things that are not right but he was also a very, very loving individual.
Ed - If he was ever walking through the plant and he heard someone using an expletive, he would just look at 'em and shame 'em. He'd say "Does that really help you do the job?" I had a good deal of respect for him.
Register - It's really been a family tradition in terms of your involvement with this company. I think itís interesting that two brothers, both highly respected in their community, both strong and independent people, could get along so well in the upper reaches of a good sized company. That's often not the case.
Ed - We grew up closely as kids. We played softball together, hunted together. There was an advantage in the whole thing for me. I was the older brother. I think that helped. I often talk about it. We slept in the same double bed all our lives. I often say that I never knew what it was like to sleep by myself until I got married.
Howard - Oh, we have definitely differences of opinion on many things. And throughout the management of this company...we never allowed this ever to get in our way... no way that in any way the individuals in our company would ever pit one of us against the other. If we had a concern... we would simply talk it out. We would vent our feelings, and when we left that meeting, we had a unified approach towards it. Ed realized the strengths that I had. I realized the strengths that he had, and we just built on those strengths.
Register - Blue Bell Creameries has a huge economic impact on this area, not just in Brenham and Washington County, but in neighboring counties. To most of the dairies in this area, you are their main customer. Talk about that.
Howard - ...we have over 800 people working in here, and the families that it supports... affects all the areas of the economy. I think the Chamber of Commerce says for every dollar you bring in, it turns over seven times. So if you apply that to Blue Bell, we're going into the billions of dollars that are being turned over from this industry in this community. And so it has just a tremendous affect.
It takes between forty and fifty thousand cows just to produce the milk that we use on a daily basis for the manufacture of product. Well, you can see the impact of that. Forty or fifty-thousand cows. The amount of feed that it takes. The feed companies and the support of that, the agriculture that it supports, the employment that it provides, because we provide a market for their product.
Register - Okay enough business stuff. Let's get to what's really important. What makes your ice cream so good?
Howard - You've already touched on it: Boy, you've got good people here. You don't find any better people than these Czechs, these Poles, these Germans...and when you have this type of people, with the character that they've got and the work ethic they've got, boy, you've just got a tremendous group of people here for your industry. And that's the whole heart of Blue Bell. The most precious asset that we've got in this whole company is people. My goodness, if you go to any ice cream factory in the United States or in the world; at any of them you'll see the same type of equipment that you see at Blue Bell. You'll see similar ice cream freezers, similar pasteurizers, similar homogenizers, similar compressors. You'll see similar type of equipment.
When people talk about Blue Bell, they say, "Oh, it'"that building over here on the east side of Brenham." It's not that brick and mortar and steel. It's the people that inhabit that facility that make Blue Bell what it is and give it its personality. And that's what gives it its real strength.
Ed - Very honestly, the key thing, primarily, has been a matter of assembling some very good people to help run the company and to work at the company.
Howard - But really, what makes it so good? It goes back to premium ingredients. You start out with the freshest dairy products to begin with. The milk that we receive this morning is milk that was produced by the cows at last evening's milking or else yesterday morning's milking or this morning's milking. So you have to start out with premium dairy ingredients to begin with and keep them, I say, "just like the good Lord made it for us; just that perfect."
Let me divert a little bit about milk. The product we work with is the most wonderful food product in the world. How the Lord made that thing...milk. Perfect. That's why babies can just live off milk. Whether it's mother's milk in the human aspect of living or whether it's cow's milk in the cattle industry, that kind of thing, or milk from any animal, it is so perfect the way it's made. Because it's made with just the proper proportion of the fats, carbohydrates, protein, minerals, vitamins; they're balanced so perfectly when it was made by nature, by the Lord. And a lot of people may not ever think of it
this way, but I've often thought, "Why didn't the Lord make it green like grass or brown like
hay?" He didn't make it that way. White. Pureness. Perfectness. Complete in every aspect.
That's the product we're working with. When we sell an ice cream product and we sell it to
schools and put it in kids' hands, they've got the ultimate of a product. Theyíve got all that milk
with all that perfect blend, sweetened up...and chock full of fruits or nuts or chocolates or
something like that. They have a total balanced product there, not a junk food. Boy, when
people talk about ice cream being a junk food, that enrages me...that ice cream should, in the
schools, be considered a sweet along with candy, that enrages me to no end. I wish it was on
the menu daily.
Register - You don't have to convince me.
Howard - I'll tell you what, it's the happiest food in the world. When do you eat ice cream? You eat ice cream when you're feeling good, when you're celebrating, having parties, watching TV, relaxing, leisure, walk in the park, summer Sunday afternoon, whatever it may be. You're feeling good, and that's when you eat ice cream. It is just the happiest product that you could ever eat... And we're just fortunate at Blue Bell that we're working with this product we call ice cream. It's fun, that's all.
I may sound a little fanatical when I talk...do I sound a little bit crazy? A little bit off base? I
don't look at it that way. I think this: regardless of what field you go into, you have to be
enthusiastic about it.
Register - Actually, I think people would not find it odd at all that there's a religious or mystical aspect to the man who created Homemade Vanilla. (Howard developed the number one vanilla in the nation back in 1969.) I think it says something about Blue Bell and what kind of company it is that the men who have been running it think that way.
Howard - It's no doubt that the example that Dad set for us affected our total philosophy of operation. I've often thought about this: If I were to tell any young college graduate or any young high school graduate...how to really enjoy what you're doing, be happy, and be successful... I'd have to go back and say just exactly the plan that our dad laid out to us. And you can call it a philosophy of life: "Be honest with people. Tell the truth. Walk any sidewalk in America and hold your head up high. When you work with people, be fair to them. Treat them fair. Don't mistreat anyone."
"Another thing is, go out there and have a good work ethic. But...make it fun while you're doing it, and make it a lot of fun. You can't wait to get to that job every day because there are so many challenges and opportunities to make things better for the people that you're serving and those all around you." And the last thing is this: "When you work with people, practice the Golden Rule," and that is this: "Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. If you take that simple little philosophy of life, you just simply cannot go wrong.
Ed - People will learn more by example than by just telling them. Whatever you do, build your credibility with your customers. Don't ever tell 'em a lie. Don't ever tell 'em something you can't live up to.
Howard - Let me say one more thing about ice cream. It is the most difficult of any frozen food to work with...bar none. The goal that we always have at Blue Bell is to do this: to produce the best ice cream in the country, and then to be able to get that best ice cream in the country to the consumer. Now we know this: We've got the best ice cream in the country coming from this factory when it's shipped from here. The nature of ice cream is that once itís frozen, you want to keep it in that frozen state. You don't want variation of temperature...we call that heat shock. When it gets to the store and we distribute it to the store, we don't have anybody else handling our ice cream. We don't want anybody else handling our ice cream because of the delicateness of it. We take it and actually put it in the store for them. And thatís called Direct Store Delivery. That's the only way ice cream
should be handled. It should not be handled in a warehouse delivery type system where people who are working with it do not know the delicateness of it, and treat it like a can of beans...
Another thing about ice cream is once the consumer buys that product, we have to have a good educational program for them of how to handle the ice cream once they buy it at the store. Ice cream doesn't like warm temperatures. It starts affecting the quality of that product. So we say put it in that bag and insulate it. When you go to that car, keep an insulated chest in your trunk, like a fishing box, or a styrofoam-type box, and just leave it in there. When you get there, take your ice cream, take your frozen goods, and put it in there.
Register - Of course, I like when it starts to melt because then you're forced to eat it...
Howard - ...but don't refreeze it...
Register -.No, you have to eat the whole thing (laughter). What part of your job is the most fun?
Ed - Any part that has to do with people. I couldn't live without people. I enjoy people.
Howard - I would say the most fun of my work is I like to have visions and dreams of new products... new flavors and new product lines. I just love to think about those. In fact, last evening, I was sitting in my lounge chair at home and thinking of new products for 1998. As I got up this morning and was shaving, I still had the thoughts on my mind. This past year, in the development of our 1997 program, we have just come out with a new product that we call a Mini Citrus Rainbow Stick. What it is... it's a little one-and-a-quarter-ounce product made of citrus flavors. There are five little stacked flavors on this one-and-a-quarter ounce apiece, and the way they're stacked on it is like a Lifesaver. The first bite is orange, and the next is lemon, and the next is lime, then lemon, and orange again. It's three flavors stacked in five ways. Now you see this rainbow-type effect of colors. They're not rainbow colors, but they're all citrus-type products. We had a meeting here the other day. We had coffee and doughnuts before, but a lot of us ate this little Mini Rainbow Citrus Stick, because if you ate it, it's like a pure orange-juice type product, a pure juice product, a lemon product, and a lime product. Recently we made a product that's a Mini Banana Fudge Bar. I mean, we take fresh bananas, peel those fresh bananas, use those fresh bananas right in that product, and I can assure you that when you eat that banana product, it tastes just like eating a fresh banana. It's that enjoyable.
Register - Okay now for the last question of the interview. We always save the most profound and important question for the end. What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?
Howard - Real easy to answer. All of them are my favorite flavor. But if you were to say the product I eat the most of, no doubt about it, Homemade Vanilla. Why? Because it just tastes like homemade ice cream, number one, and number two, it allows itself to be made into many different products. I can use it to make a float. I can use it to make a sundae. I can use it to make a malt. I can use it in so many ways. I can put pecans on it, chocolate syrup, strawberries on it, sliced bananas on it. I can just do so many...
Register - Stop! You're starving me to death! It's too close to lunch.
Howard - We're making right now a product we're proud of. It's just coming out on the market: Peach Amaretto Pecan. Delicious product. If you like peaches, you like amaretto, and if you like pecans, you'll just love this type product. But I won't eat Peach Amaretto Pecan every day. I'll eat Homemade Vanilla every day.
Ed - Homemade vanilla but I have some other favorites. I like Rocky Road. I like Chocolate Marshmallow Crunch. I'm a chocaholic. I like a lot of flavors. What I normally do is walk over to the shop every day and have a sample.
After that, Ed Kruse took me over to the ice cream parlor in Blue Bell's Visitors' center and let me pick three flavors of ice cream. (I told him I could be bribed.) I picked my three favorites and while I was eating my Lemon, he asked the nice lady behind the counter to give me a dip of Rocky Road. I had to admit it was great... but not quite as good as the Banana Split.
As I stood crunching my little pieces of banana I pondered what I had learned at Blue Bell. The ice cream I was eating was full of natural ingredients. I had discovered from interviewing the Kruse brothers that those ingredients include integrity, hard work and vision but the main ingredient was best described by Howard Kruse himself.
"...it's not complicated. 'Care' is a four-letter word that can almost be substituted for 'love'
Do you care about your people? If they know you care about them and they care about you, boy,
you'll have success."
I guess anybody can claim to have strong moral values. Politicians do it all the time.
Newspaper editors can talk a good game too. The difference with Ed and Howard Kruse is
that they have a lifetime of history behind them proving it. Nobody seems to be able to
match Blue Bell's flavor. Maybe it has something to do with those special ingredients.
With the last bite of Banana Split, an old line I had heard on the radio somewhere in the past came floating out of my subconscious... "Blue Bell Ice Cream tastes so good because the cows think Brenham is heaven."
As I dug into my Pecan Pralines n' Cream, I was pretty sure those cows were right.
