Editor’s Note: This is the 25th chapter in Volume 3 of Publisher and Editor Donald H. Harrison’s 2022 trilogy, “Schlepping and Schmoozing Along the Interstate 5.” All three books as well as others written by Harrison may be purchased from Amazon.com
Schlepping and Schmoozing Along the Interstate 5, Volume 3, Exit 52 (Oceanside Boulevard): Baskin Robbins
From northbound Interstate 5, take the Oceanside Boulevard offramp, and follow signs to Oceanside Boulevard, then turn right. Proceed to S. Coast Highway and turn right again. Baskin Robbins is located at 1112 S. Coast Highway, Oceanside.
OCEANSIDE, California – Jewish brothers-in-law Irvine Robbins and Burton Baskin renamed their ice cream stores in 1953 as Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors. Robbins had started Snowbird Ice Cream Stores in Glendale in 1945, using the $6,000 proceeds from an insurance policy his father, Aaron, gave him for his bar mitvah. Baskin had started Burt’s Ice Cream in 1946 in Pasadena. Aaron Robbins, who had owned a dairy and a store in Tacoma, Washington, had recommended that the young men start off separately so each could give vent to his own creativity before combining their operations. When the merged name came about in 1953, a flip of the coin decided that Baskin’s name should go first.
That proved a fortuitous choice years later, Graphic artists found out that by coloring the curved part of the B, in the initials BR, and the straight line of the R, they would have a bright number 31 within the initials – 31 being Baskin Robbins’ initial concept of having a separate flavor for every day of the month. The 31st flavor brought online by the ice cream chain was chocolate mint. Eventually, from its dairy in Burbank, Baskin Robbins would develop over 1,400 flavors, although many of them never made it to market. Among flavors tried and rejected were lox and bagel, ketchup, and Grape Britain.
The ”Grape Britain” name reflected Baskin’s and Robbins’ penchant for coming up with clever monikers, sometimes topical, sometimes punning, for their ice cream creations. The Los Angeles Times noted that when baseball’s Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, Baskin Robbins began selling an ice cream called “Baseball Nut” and when the Beatles made their first American concert tour (including an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show), it brought out an ice cream called “Beatle Nut.” Soon after Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon, the company brought out “Lunar Cheesecake.” When a customer reportedly told Baskin whoever came up with the ice cream names was “plumb nuts,” he responded by creating “Plum Nuts” ice cream. “ChaChaCha” is the company’s name for the cherry chocolate chip ice cream. The New York Times reported that another memorable ice cream name was “Here Comes the Fudge.”
Having worked at his father’s dairy store in Tacoma, Washington, Robbins recalled “standing on a chair and plunging a scoop in a 10-gallon barrel of ice cream was the greatest thrill in my life.” His enthrallment with ice cream continued through graduation with a BA in political science from the University of Washington, where he was a member of the Jewish fraternity, Zeta Beta Tau, and stateside service in the U.S. Army during World War II. Meanwhile, Baskin was running a Navy PX in the South Pacific and obtained an ice cream freezer from an aircraft carrier supply officer, according to Legacy.com. He mixed up experimental batches of tropical fruit ice cream for his fellow service personnel according to a 2019 MediaNews group story.
Robbins flavored his breakfast cereal with a scoop of banana ice cream. He had his backyard swimming pool in Rancho Mirage shaped like an ice cream cone. He named his boat the “32nd Flavor.” Baskin similarly relished his connection to the ice cream business. The license plate on his car read 31BR.
Even before they created Baskin Robbins, the brothers-in-law decided that developing new flavors, marketing campaigns, and expanding the business left them little time to directly oversee either Snowbird Ice Cream or Burt’s Ice Cream, so they decided to invite their store managers to buy the businesses – in essence to become franchisees. “Without realizing it at the time, we were in the franchise business before the word ‘franchise’ was fashionable,” Robbins told the Los Angeles Times.
Truth be known, franchises had been available since medieval times. Governments allowed large landowners to create laws and levy the proceeds. In the 1800s, Singer Sewing Machines sold its name and machines to independent business owners in various parts of the United States, according to the Franchise Guardian. Looking back on the post World War II era, Baskin Robbins claimed to be the first fast food franchise, developing the concept even ahead of McDonald’s. Baskin–who was married to his partner’s sister, Shirley—and Robbins decided to sell the company to United Fruit for $12 million in 1967. At that date, the company had grown to more than 500 stores. As of June 2022m according to the company’s website, the company was operating in 7,900 locations in 52 countries, including this franchise in Oceanside and more than 2,400 other sites in the United States. Baskin Robbins estimated that its franchisees annually served 300 million visitors worldwide.
The various franchises provided many youngsters their first minimum-wage jobs, including my daughter Sandi Masori when she was a San Diego teenager in the 1980s. A franchise at 1633 King Street in Honolulu provided the first job in 1978 for future U.S. President Barack Obama. Remembering it in a 2016 Linked-In article in connection with a multi-agency Summer Opportunity Project to put more youngsters to work, Obama commented: “My first summer job wasn’t exactly glamorous, but it taught me some valuable lessons. Responsibility. Hard work. Balancing a job with friends, family, and school. And while I may have lost my taste for ice cream after one too many free scoops, I’ll never forget that job—or the people who gave me that opportunity—and how they helped me get to where I am today.”
His remembrance wasn’t all complimentary. “Scooping ice cream is tougher than it looks,” he wrote. “Rows and rows of rock-hard ice cream can be brutal on the wrists.” Two years earlier, at an event in Denver, according to CNBC, he also reflected that “a little raise would have really helped.” Trip Advisor, reviewing the site, reported that Obama was assigned employee number 16011 and that he was fired after calling in sick to go out on a date. In the same article, Trip Advisor said Obama subsequently acknowledged that Baskin Robbins was right in doing so.
Apparently, the future U.S. President had no hard feelings against Baskin Robbins because it was at another franchisee’s place of business at 53rd Street and Dorchester Avenue that Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson, the future First Lady, shared their first kiss. A plaque at the site, which has since been occupied by a Subway Restaurant, reprints a 2007 quote from Obama that appeared in O, the Oprah Magazine: “On our first date [in 1989], I treated her to the finest ice cream Baskin Robbins had to offer, our dinner table doubling as the curb. I kissed her, and it tasted like chocolate.”
Although Baskin Robbins bills itself as selling “fun, not just ice cream,” one of Irv and Irma (Gevurtz) Robbins’ three children, John, disassociated himself from the company. In his 1987 book, Diet for a New America, he inveighed against mistreatment of cows by the meat and dairy industries and said that dairy products, including ice cream, posed health risks. He founded the nonprofit organization EarthSave in 1988. A vegan, John wrote The Food Revolution in 2001, and the following year joined People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in an unsuccessful suit against the California Milk Advisory Board in protest against its “happy cows” advertising campaign. In 2006m he wrote Healthy at 100, which Wikipedia noted was published by Random House “on 100 percent post-consumer, non-chlorine bleached paper, a first for a book from a major U.S. publisher.” John and his wife Deo farm their own food organically in Soquel, California. Their son, Ocean, is the founder of the Food Revolution Network.
Born in Streator, Illinois, Burt Baskin had worked the clothing store of his father, Harry Baskin, a Russian immigrant. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1935 and, like Robbins, was a member of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity. Following hi father into the clothing business, Baskin owned a men’s clothing store in the Palmer House in Chicago. Baskin began dating Robbins’ sister in 1941, while he was assigned to a naval post in the State of Washington. They were married in Tacoma the following year, before Baskin, who had been a lieutenant commander in the Naval Reserve, shipped out to the South Pacific. After the war, they had two children. Their daughter, Edie, became a photographer for Saturday Night Live. Their son, Aaron Richard Baskin, became a director of music videos for an enviable client list including Barbra Streisand, Rod Stewart, and Elton John.
Just six month after Baskin Robbins was sold to United Fruit, co-founder Burton Baskin suffered a fatal heart attack in 1967 at the age of 54. He was entombed in the Main Mausoleum at Home of Peace Memorial Park in East Los Angeles. The inscription on his vault says, “Beloved husband and father,” with the dates 1913-1967. His widow, Shirley, subsequently married Isador Familian, CEO of Price Pfister Brass Manufacturing Company in Los Angeles. It was the second marriage for both.
After the sale to United Fruit, Robbins remained as chairman of Baskin Robbins for 11 years as the store count built up to more than 1,600 with franchises in Belgium, Canada, and Japan, in addition to the U.S. He and Irma were married in 1942. In addition to John, their children include Marsha Veit of Mount Kisco, New York, and Erin Robbins of Grass Valley, California. In 2008 at the age of 90, Robbins died of natural causes and was entombed at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California. The plaque on his crypt says, “He Made People Happy” and gave the dates December 6, 1917-May 5, 2008. Two years later, his widow Irma died. Her plaque says “She Was Quite a Gal.”
In 1973, Baskin Robbins was sold to J. Lyons and Company, a British concern which in 1978 merged into Allied-Lyons. In 1994 that company became known as Allied Domecq. Baskin Robbins and Dunkin Donuts, together known as Dunkin Brands thereafter were sold to a private equity group. Dunkin Brands became independent in 2012 and was purchased n 2020 by Inspire Brands.
*
Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via sdheritage@cox.net