One of the highlights to studying on an agricultural campus is the ice cream that is made on-site. Cornell University, LSU and Wisconsin-Madison to name just a few. One of the more well known is the Creamery at Penn State University. This story highlights the career of Tom Palchak, an important key to the Creamery’s success.
In 1986, when Tom Palchak was hired to manage the historic Creamery, the tradition-bound ice cream industry was in upheaval. Two Vermont hippies named Ben and Jerry, who learned the art of ice-cream making through Penn State’s ice cream short course, were creating a sensation nationwide with far-out ice cream flavor combinations like chocolate chip cookie dough, Cherry Garcia and New York Super Fudge. For many, especially college students, good old vanilla and chocolate just didn’t sound that exciting anymore.
Enter Palchak, a Penn State dairy sciences grad who had just returned to his alma mater. He’d been working as a production supervisor for a Safeway dairy plant in Denver and witnessed firsthand the excitement new flavors generated. As someone who had spent his undergraduate years working in the Creamery, he was keenly aware of the place it held in the hearts of Penn Staters.
Still, he thought Creamery customers were ready for something new, even if the powers that be were hesitant. The first offering, cookies and cream, vanilla ice cream mixed with chocolate sandwich cookie bits, was a runaway hit, and a new era in Creamery history began. In 1989, a food sciences class tweaked an old recipe and another Creamery legend, Peachy Paterno, was created.
“The business absolutely exploded,” Palchak recalled. “We went from making 80,000 gallons a year to 200,000 gallons. In some cases it’s 24 hours from cow to cone. When you’re making ice cream out of milk that was pasture grass just a few days ago, it doesn’t get any better than that.”
Today, there are more than 150 flavors of ice cream, frozen yogurt, sherbet and no-sugar ice cream on file at the Creamery, but only 25 or so on the menu at any given time.