Irvine Robbins

The ice cream maker who gave the world 31 flavors

Irvine Robbins

1917–2008

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Until 1945, there was no such thing as an ice cream store in America, or much in the way of variety beyond chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. That changed when Irvine Robbins, who died at 90 last week, opened the first of what became 5,800 franchised Baskin-Robbins outlets around the world, featuring such offerings as Pralines ’n Cream, Pink Bubblegum, and Daiquiri Ice. “I never met a flavor I didn’t like,” he once said.

“Robbins’ career started in the late 1920s, working at his dad’s dairy store” in Tacoma, Wash., said the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Standing on a chair and plunging a scoop into a 10-gallon barrel of ice cream “was the greatest thrill of my life,” he said. After graduating from the University of Washington and serving in World War II, he invested $6,000 in savings in his first ice cream store—“called Snowbird because he couldn’t think of anything else”—in Glendale, Calif. Around that time, Robbins’ brother-in-law, Burton Baskin, started his own store in nearby Pomona. After the two had opened several shops, they decided to merge and “flipped a coin to see whose name would appear first. They had 31 flavors—one for each day of the month.”

Thanks to the partners’ genius for marketing, Baskin-Robbins prospered in the ensuing decades, said the Los Angeles Times. “When the Dodgers came to Los Angeles in 1958, they were greeted with Baseball Nut, complete with raspberries for the umpires. Lunar Cheesecake was launched the day after man landed on the moon, in 1969.” At company headquarters near Burbank, researchers devised hundreds of new varieties annually, only eight or nine of which made their way into stores. “Among the flavors that never left the laboratory were Ketchup, Lox and Bagels, and Grape Britain.” Nonetheless, the Baskin-Robbins repertoire grew to include more than 1,000 flavors. “We sell fun, not just ice cream,” said Robbins.

Robbins lived his work. His car bore a “31 BR” license plate, he named his boat “The 32nd Flavor,” and his backyard sported a swimming pool shaped like an ice cream cone. His favorite flavor, he said, was Jamoca Almond Fudge, but he often started his day with a bowl of cereal topped with a scoop of Baskin-Robbins banana. Robbins’ namesake company last week asked that customers honor his memory with “31 seconds of silence.”