Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour-Fountain at 3610 Park Sierra Dr, 92503 Riverside, California

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The following article first appeared in The Honolulu Advertiser on April 3, 1975, and was subsequently included in the Farrell's Marketing manual: I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM, WE ALL SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM by Cobey Black First you take a scoop of ice cream Then you add a cherry and a generous helping of good old fashioned Gay Nineties atmosphere, sprinkled with Tiffany lampshades, flocked wallpaper and sideburned young waiters wearing straw boaters. And what have you got? A chain of Farrell's Ice Cream Parlours that dispenses four million gallons of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry a year. But the really basic ingredient of this sundae success story is enthusiasm and its source is a smiling, hazel-eyed, curly-haired Irishman named Robert E. Farrell. Bob's in town this week, to open the 99th Farrell's in the Ala Moana Center, so I dropped by for a scoop or two on the man whose praise of ice cream made him put his money where his mouth is: "I've been around food all my life, beginning as a busboy in Brooklyn, and including sales clerk with Heinz in Seattle, and sales manager of Libby, McNeil and Libby for the state of Oregon. I loved being a salesman. "This may sound strange, but I also love hot fudge sundaes adn one day asked my wife where I could find one in Seattle. She couldn't think of a single place. The ice cream parlour had disappeared as an American institution. "At the turn of the century, ice cream was a delicacy served only in fancy restaurants. When Prohibition came in, the saloons went out and ice cream parlours filled the vacuum. Then Prohibition was repealed and ice cream took a backseat to liquor as a fancy item. The soda fountain moved into the drug store. "From there ice cream was kicked out by cosmetics, among other higher markup items that require no labor, and ended up in the supermarket where it was used as a 'football', as we say in the trade, a cut-rate item whose quality is cut along with the price. "Finally, state by state, a standard of butterfat content was established, usually 10 percent as in Hawaii, and a low overrun. By that I mean the amount of air stirred in when the cream is mixed. All ice cream has to have some air or it would be like a block of cement. But if you take a gallon of rich cream and stir in enough air, you can double your gallon with 100 percent overrun, which cheaper ice cream does. We run about 75 percent, and our butterfat is also better than standard, at 12 to 14 percent. "And we use only real chocolate, real vanilla, real whipped cream and real toasted almonds. In other words, we strive to bring back fancy ice cream. "Which brings us back to my search for a sundae in Seattle. I knew a first-class hotel would have good ice cream, so I took my wife and three daughters to the Olympic Hotel, the best in town, sat down in the dining room and ordered five hot fudge sundaes. The waiter was not happy with the order. 'You mean you only want dessert?' he snarled. The sundaes were good but I resented the treatment. "Then I began my own little market study and found that a lot of people wanted a sundae, a soda or a banana split and had nowhere to go. "Then I studied the ice cream business, and besides learning that it had disappeared into supermarket bins, I also found out that 80 percent of all ice cream is eaten after 8 p.m., and that 83 percent of all ice cream sold is still chocolate, vanilla or strawberry, despite the 292 flavors in existence. "I concluded it's an evening business and that the variety of flavors was not so important as the way they were presented. I added to these facts my own theory that people don't go out in the evening just to eat but to enjoy themselves, have a good time, share a family treat. "About 1959, when I was still a salesman, I really began thinking about this, carrying my research all the way to the New York City Museum, where I learned some fascinating facts about ice cream. "In the Gay Nineties there were more ice cream parlours than taverns. "Marco Polo, who seems to have introduced everything else to the West, also brought a recipe for making flavored ices, which Asians had enjoyed for thousands of years. "George Washington, a man of discriminating taste, had ice cream making machines at Mount Vernon. "Early prohibitionists in Illinois declared soda water intoxicating and prohibited on Sunday, so it was omitted from the ice cream treat of the day and the sundae was invented. "As traditionally America's most popular dessert, ice cream is the first thing our soldiers ask for when they come home from war." In all this research, from Nero's slaves, who brought snow from the the Alps and flavored it with wine for their master, to the present popsicles invented by a man from New Jersey named Epsicle who put a glass of lemonade, with the spoon still in it, on his windowsill and found it frozen but delicious the next morning and patented the result "Popsicle", there emerged one obvious omission: "A real present need for a nice place to have a good time and enjoy quality ice cream," concluded Bob, "And since I was raised in New York with a fondness for delicatessen sandwiches and corner-store candy. We added those to our Gay Nineties atmosphere and it all came together as Farrell's." "My partner, Ken McCarthy, and I opened our first honest-to-goodness, old fashioned family ice cream parlour restaurant in Portland on Friday, the 13th of September, 1963. We had a huge stalk of bananas, which ripened from the bottom, to take care of a week's banana splits. We went through the whole stalk in five hours. There may have been a lot of green splits but no complaints. "Our accountant told us we'd have to gross $350 a day to break even. In the first six months we averaged $700 a day. After that, we couldn't keep people away. And with no advertising, no promotion. In licorice stick alone, we well enough a year to go around the world twice. We gross $50 million annually. And it all started with ice cream. It's every kid's dream come true. "My biggest worry, then and now, has been not 'Can we make it?' but 'Can we serve them all and serve them well?'. Profit is the consequence of success, not the cause of it. The minute you start looking at the cash register and not the customer, you lose sight of success. People are our business. "And I have a special fondness for kids. We hire over 6,000 youngsters between 16 and 22 and they do a fabulous job. There's been a lot of criticism of teenagers, but I think they're the hardest working, sharpest, and on-the-ball bunch of kids America has ever produced" said the company president who, on an inspection tour of one of his restaurants, was greeted by employees wearing campaign buttons they'd designed themselves: "It's Fun to Work at Farrell's". Bob Farrell thinks so too, and the sweet taste of success has not dimmed his enthusiasm for a business that has given him his just desserts. "The other day, a mother came up to me and said her four-year old daughter loved our ice cream parlour so much that she mentioned it in all her prayers: 'God bless daddy, mommy and Farrell's'. No wonder we're doing so well." http://www.happyitis.biz/pressroom/Advert_Article.htm

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Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour-Fountain

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Restaurant & Cafe category, Riverside