Irvine Robbins, co-founder of Baskin-Robbins, has died at age 90. Have a big scoop of Baskin-Robbins ice cream to honor the life of this great man!
Jamoca Almond Fudge was said to be the favorite flavor of Irvine Robbins, the man who grew up in Seattle and was trained at his father’s Tacoma dairy. Though as co-founder of the world’s best-known ice cream empire, it was hard for Robbins to pick just one.
That’s because Robbins also created Pralines ‘n Cream, Daiquiri Ice and Pink Bubblegum among dozens of other flavors.
Robbins, who rode streetcars to Garfield High School and graduated from the University of Washington, moved from his native Winnipeg, Manitoba, to Seattle with his family after his uncle bought the Velvet Ice Cream Co. on Capitol Hill. The uncle persuaded Robbins’ father to buy a dairy.
Irvine Robbins’ career started in the late 1920s, working at his dad’s store in the alley behind what was Rhodes Brothers Department Store in Tacoma.
“Sticking a scoop into the ice cream was the greatest thrill of my life,” he once told USA Today, recalling how he stood on a dairy chair to dig into a 10-gallon bucket of ice cream.
After his discharge from the Army in 1945, Robbins used $2,000 he saved and cashed a $4,000 insurance policy his father had given him at his bar mitzvah at Seattle’s Temple DeHirsch Sinai. His family said that while driving in California looking for used ice cream equipment, Robbins found a store to rent in Glendale.
His first ice cream store — called Snowbird because he couldn’t think of anything else — was opened there the day after his birthday, Dec. 7, 1945. Family said Robbins had 21 flavors then, and his cousin bought $39 of the first day’s $53 total ice cream sales.
A year later, his brother-in-law, Burton Baskin, opened an ice cream store and the pair later merged. Robbins’ daughter, Marsha Veit, said that in 1948, the men flipped a coin to see whose name would appear first. They had 31 flavors — one for each day of the month.
Robbins, who was inducted into the International Franchise Association Hall of Fame, told his family that Ray Kroc sold many of his early milkshake machines.
“He saw I was starting to franchise and said, ‘Hey, that’s a good idea,” Robbins said in the 1996 family history project. Kroc, who took Robbins to see his early burger restaurants, used franchising to build McDonald’s into the world’s most successful fast-food operation.
Family members said Baskin-Robbins is the nation’s oldest food franchise. Part of Dunkin’ Brands Inc., it has more than 5,800 stores worldwide, according to The Associated Press. Robbins sold the company to United Fruit Co. in 1967 — the same year Baskin died of heart disease — but remained as president until 1978.
Robbins, whose survivors include his wife, Irma, son, John, and daughter, Erin Robbins, told family he and Baskin rarely took days off and never logged how many total hours they worked.