Eric G. Johnson admittedly has an enviable job: He must eat ice cream at least once a day. Sometimes more.
“I’ve always liked ice cream but now I might eat it twice a day-and that doesn’t include testing new flavors,” says Johnson. “However, I’ve had to add an extra mile a day to my run.”
Johnson, president and chief executive officer of Baldwin Ice Cream Co. since it was purchased by Tri-Star Industries in September, says more than one million gallons of Baldwin ice cream are consumed in the Chicago area each year. The premium ice cream also ranks No. 8 in the top 50 desserts in the Chicago market in a 1992 rating by A.C. Nielsen.
For good reason: The ice cream, currently available in nine varieties, is full of flavor. And, in the case of the fruit and nut flavors, full of those ingredients as well.
Johnson says 100 pounds of fruit are used in every 100 gallons of fruit-flavored ice cream. Nut flavors, including butter pecan and black walnut, use 60 pounds of nuts for every 100 gallons of ice cream.
Kit Baldwin, a postal worker, founded the company with six colleagues in 1921 as the Seven Links Ice Cream Co. The hand-packed ice cream was sold only at retail stores (including the first Seven Links store at 5314 S. State St.). The company was renamed Baldwin Ice Cream when Kit Baldwin bought out his partners in 1946. Jolyn Robichaux acquired the company in the 1950s and ran it until her retirement last September.
Today, Baldwin Ice Cream offices are in Homewood; the ice cream is produced at a plant in Des Moines and stored in a Wheaton warehouse. It is sold at Jewel, Dominick’s, Certified stores and some independent grocers. It is also sold in Memphis, Nashville, southern Indiana, Arkansas and Atlanta. The average retail price is $4 for a half-gallon.
Johnson says to look for new flavors later this year-after they pass his taste tests.
