And Sold Fun Along With Ice Cream

Wall Street Journal:

While delivering one of his customary stem-winders in 1967, Fidel Castro announced that customers at Havana’s ice-cream parlors would soon be able to choose from among 42 flavors, up from 26. The smorgasbord would ‘put U.S. ice-cream producers to shame,’ the bearded dictator told a cheering group of steelworkers.

Possibly incensed but more likely grabbing some free publicity, Irvine Robbins called Cuba’s minister of industry and informed him that while Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream offered only 31 flavors at a time, it boasted a total arsenal of some 290 flavors. The revolution had a ways to go.

Mr. Robbins, who died May 5 at age 90, was half of the Baskin-Robbins ice-cream chain, which he co-founded with his brother-in-law, Burt Baskin, in 1948.

Declaring ‘We sell fun, not just ice cream,’ Mr. Robbins’s company offered offbeat choices such as Navy Grog Ice, Cocoa a Go-Go and Lunar Cheesecake, inspired by the moon shots.

Baskin-Robbins turned early to franchising and grew rapidly from its Southern California base, where it prospered as a dessert stop alongside such midcentury burger successes as McDonald’s and Carl’s Jr. The timing was ideal as the nation let out its waistline after the war. In 1946, the ice-cream industry had its first billion-gallon year. Read on.