The next time your taste buds meet with a soft-serve ice cream cone, you can thank Russell's Ice Cream for 50 years of good taste.
The four Russell brothers who own the company provide much of the creamy soft-serve treat consumed in Utah. They sell their own brands, but most of the company's sales come through private label packaging undertaken for some of the biggest food franchises around.Richard, 55, twin brothers Doug and Dave, 52, and Lynn, 46, take turns being president and say the family-owned company runs well despite the fact that they all have very different personalities.
"We really do run quite a bit by committee, although we have areas of expertise," said Lynn Russell. "We do get along. We have a common purpose. There are times when it comes to a vote - which is pretty hard with four people. Then the person over that area has a little more say."
Richard oversees the office and deliveries, Doug manages production, Dave supervises maintenance of vehicles and the South Salt Lake plant and Lynn handles sales.
"The business has been good to us," said Richard Russell. "It's grown a little bit every year."
It began when their father, H.J. Russell, started a company, R&W Dairy Products, shortly after World War II with a former partner, Bill Walkenhorst. The Russell sons were interested in the business and in 1965 they bought out Walkenhorst and gave the company the family name.
The company's specialty has always been soft-serve ice cream, although it makes some hard ice cream, frozen yogurt and a custard.
Russell's began by making liquid ice cream mix that was shipped to vendors who froze it and dispensed it as a soft-serve treat. But various clients over the years have asked for other products - especially more hard ice cream.
Last year, the company turned out 1.4 million gallons of liquid ice cream mix for soft-serve cones and desserts that it sold to vendors such as Arctic Circle, McDonald's, Hardee's and Dairy Queen.
The company also sold another 1.2 million gallons of hard ice cream under its own brand labels and to Fred Meyer, Dan's, TCBY, Walgreens and other firms.
Russell's Ice Cream sales were about $11 million last year.
"We probably have 75 percent of the soft-serve market in Utah," said Richard Russell. "We have about 12 percent of the hard ice cream market here."
Reduced fat products are gaining in popularity, but the public still has a taste for the creamy real thing. The company produces 57 flavors.
The Russell sons have built on the company's success by trying to be inventive in a highly competitive field and managing money well. These are lessons they learned from their father, who died last March, but whose influence still pervades the business.
For example, the Russells have avoided debt, paid cash whenever possible and when they did take out loans, paid those back faster than necessary. "It was a principle dad taught us, and it has served us well," Lynn Russell said.
Their innovations have helped, too. "We were the ones in this market to introduce the five-quart plastic family pack in 1970. Everyone has them now, but we were the first. We were the first ones to introduce the round half-gallon container," Richard Russell said.
Another marketing technique: make some or all of the product visible from the package to attract customers' attention. You have to make the product attractive because people rarely write ice cream on their grocery lists.
"It's an impulse buy," Richard Russell said. "It's not like vegetables."