House of Flavors

History

House of Flavors was founded in 1929 when Guy W. Hawley owned a dairy business west of downtown Ludington. The dairy at 402 West Ludington Avenue had no official name then as it was part of a farm operation. Sometime after 1930 Roland Benedict and Albert Bradshaw became partners with Hawley. Albert Miller bought out Benedict and Bradshaw in 1935 and the dairy business became known as "Miller's Dairy". In 1936 a new 60-by-100-foot (18 by 30 m) building was started for the expanded dairy business and it moved into the newly completed dairy building in 1937. The front was on Ludington Avenue and had a retail store that sold the dairy products plus coffee. The back part of the building was the dairy bottling and packaging plant facilities. Later in the year the dairy owned by Hawley and Miller bought out two local ice cream companies.

The dairy company in the 1940s processed homogenized milk, butter, buttermilk and cottage cheese. They also made ice cream of some 40,000 gallons per year that came in four flavors – vanilla, French vanilla, chocolate, and blue moon. The ice cream was put in five-gallon containers made of metal. Sometime between 1946 and 1948 Robert B. Neal ("Bob" Sr.) moved to Ludington from Grand Haven, Michigan. Neal, who already had a decade of dairy experience, bought a substantial part of the Miller Dairy business soon after he arrived and formed a partnership. The name of Miller's dairy was changed to Park Dairy, since it was close to the main city park, and Bob Sr. became its general manager.

Neal decided to retire the milk and butter business in 1959 and sold that part to a dairy in Muskegon. He then concentrated all the facilities efforts to making just ice cream. Park Dairy at the time made 36 different varieties of ice cream. Since the name of the dairy did not represent what they were actually producing, it was decided to select a new name from various ideas. The one chosen and selected was "House of Flavors" and came from a person not known. Neal's son (Bob Jr.) attended Michigan State University and graduated in 1961. He then joined Park Dairy and became a partner with his father. The original packaging plant in Ludington then remodeled and updated its equipment. They had three dozen varieties of ice cream and franchised to 40 retail stores throughout the state of Michigan by 1972. Going into the twenty-first century they produce over three thousand different ice cream flavors, including 400 kinds of vanilla, for customers worldwide.

Operations

Bob Sr. started playing a lesser role in the business in the early 1970s and semi-retired. His son took over those parts and opened twelve ice cream restaurant parlors with some friends forming a partnership with them. By 1980 this partnership with the friends broke up. Many of the parlors became privately owned restaurants and some continue to have the franchised "House of Flavors" name. Because of this partnership breakup the original company then focused on packaging ice cream for others under their labels. As of 2016 the plant in Ludington for manufacturing ice cream employs around 150 people.

The House of Flavors’ signature flavor is "Blue Moon" that has a bright blue color and a secret formula for its taste. This flavor is popular to the Upper Midwest of the United States and who originally came up with it is an enigma. House of Flavors claims to be the first to have created Blue Moon ice cream for sale. They made it available for their customers in 1935 when their name was Miller Dairy. It is House of Flavors' most popular ice cream and they sell it throughout the United States. It has inspired their ice cream cone mascot "Mr. Moonie" that they brought out in 1996.

The local children in the 1950s and 60s would blow their paper straw coverings that they dipped into their malted milks onto the ceiling where they stuck. They would order extra malted milks to get extra straws, so the owner just looked the other way of the mess they created. Life Magazine wrote up a complete story with pictures on this unusual event of the past history of the House of Flavors when it was known as Park Dairy. The shooting of the straw cover casings phenomenon was featured on the cover of the magazine.

Guinness Record attempt

In June 2016, House of Flavors broke a Guinness Record. The ice cream manufacturer constructed an ice cream dessert over a half mile long on June 11, 2016. The ice cream for the dessert event was distributed along eight city blocks for 2970 feet.

The ice cream consisted of not only their blue moon flavor, but also a mint flavor and a vanilla flavor. It took months of planning and preparation. The dessert consisted of nine hundred gallons of ice cream, eight hundred pounds of chocolate syrup, six hundred containers of whipped cream, and some two thousand Michigan maraschino cherries. It was on Ludington's main street of Ludington Avenue from Park Ave to Harrison St. The present world record length for an ice cream dessert is 1,957 feet (596.5 meters) set in 2015.

The Ludington event consisted of thousands people who consumed the ice cream from some 18,000 cups. It took fifteen-hundred volunteers to actually make the dessert and hand it out. Some event promoters were in period costumes with one being a professional pirate performer. The House of Flavors had to follow certain guidelines to qualify for the world record. The Guinness World Record authorities did not send an official to certify the event, but instead there was a group of engineers and officials that oversaw that the guidelines were followed. All the documentation of the event will be sent to Guinness for certification said Barry Neil, the present owner of the business. Neil hopes to get an official answer back from Guinness sometime in the next few weeks if they qualified to break the existing record.