31 Flavors And Then Some

Irvine Robbins, co-founder of Baskin-Robbins, is headed for the deep freeze. Robbins died at 90.

With his brother-in-law and partner, Burton Baskin, their creative marketing and flavorful creations helped turn their frozen treats into cultural touchstones and launch a confectionery empire. By the time he retired in 1978, the company was selling some 20 million gallons of ice cream a year in more than 2,000 stores worldwide.

The son of a dairyman, Robbins grew up scooping cones in his family's Washington ice cream store. After getting out of the Army in 1945, he opened the Snowbird Ice Cream store in Glendale. Cashing in an insurance policy that his father had given him for his bar mitzvah, he came up with $6,000 to start the business. Baskin, who was married to Robbins' sister Shirley, also had recently returned from serving in the military and opened Burton's Ice Cream in Pasadena in 1946.

Following the advice of Robbins' father, the pair purposely avoided starting out in business together. He had warned that partnering right away would cause them to squelch too many of their own ideas as they compromised in an effort to get along. By 1948, the five Snowbird and three Burton's shops had been combined into a single enterprise, and they had devised their 31st flavor -- Chocolate Mint. But the new partners realized they were too busy to give the stores the attention they needed to succeed.

"That's when we hit on selling our stores to our managers," Robbins said in the 1985 Times story. "Without realizing it at the time, we were in the franchise business before the word 'franchise' was fashionable. We opened another store and another and another..."

In 1953, they renamed the company Baskin-Robbins, deciding the order of their names with a coin toss. The "31 flavors" concept was introduced that same year to bring attention to a deep menu that featured a flavor for every day of the month. At a factory in Burbank, they made hundreds of new ice creams a year but only eight or nine of those would make it to market. Among the flavors that never left the laboratory: Ketchup, Lox and Bagels, and Grape Britain. Exotic flavors were rotated into stores to change the mix each month. Baskin-Robbins had 43 stores by the end of 1949, more than 100 by 1960 and about 500 when the ice-cream empire was sold to United Fruit Co. for an estimated $12 million in 1967. Six months later, Baskin died of a heart attack at 54.

By the way, these were Baskin-Robbins' 31 original flavors:

Banana Nut Fudge / Black Walnut / Burgundy Cherry / Butterscotch Ribbon
Cherry Macaroon / Chocolate / Chocolate Almond / Chocolate Chip
Chocolate Fudge / Chocolate Mint / Chocolate Ribbon / Coffee
Coffee Candy / Date Nut / Egg Nog / French Vanilla
Green Mint Stick / Lemon Crisp / Lemon Custard / Lemon Sherbet
Maple Nut / Orange Sherbet / Peach / Peppermint Fudge Ribbon
Peppermint Stick / Pineapple Sherbet / Raspberry Sherbet / Rocky Road
Strawberry / Vanilla / Vanilla Burnt Almond