Cold Stone Creamery

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Current official company logo.

Cold Stone Creamery is an American ice cream parlor chain based in Scottsdale, Arizona.^[1]

1 History
2 Corporate culture
3 Products
4 Notes
5 External links

[edit] History

A neon sign for the Cold Stone Creamery at Irvine Spectrum in Irvine, California.

The company was co-founded in 1988 by Susan and Donald Sutherland (unrelated to actor Donald Sutherland), who sought ice cream that was neither hard-packed nor soft-serve. Publicity materials describe it as "smooth and creamy super-premium ice cream." Cold Stone Creamery opened its first store that year in Tempe, Arizona. While the company was originally headquartered in Tempe, in 2005 headquarters were relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona.^[2]

Cold Stone's name comes from the frozen granite stone, used to mix candy, nuts, or other edibles into various flavors of ice creams. Cold Stone refers to these added ingredients as "mix-ins".

In 1995, Cold Stone Creamery opened its first franchise store in Tucson soon followed by a store in Camarillo, California, its first out of state. Almost 1400 franchises are now in operation. Cold Stone Creamery is now the 6th best-selling brand of ice cream in the U.S. and now operates stores in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Puerto Rico, Indonesia, Guam, China, and Mexico. The company was also named the 11th fastest-growing franchise by Entrepreneur Magazine in January 2006.

In May 2007, Cold Stone Creamery merged with Kahala to form the company Kahala–Cold Stone, which collectively owns 13 brands. Doug Ducey, former president and CEO of Cold Stone Creamery, was named CEO of the new company.^[3] Kevin Blackwell, the former CEO of Kahala, became chairman of the board and chief strategist. In September 2007, Ducey announced he was leaving the company.^[4] Blackwell was named CEO.^[5]

[edit] Corporate culture

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In the spirit of joviality, and to encourage customers to give tips, Cold Stone instructs employees to sing a Cold Stone song, usually to the tune of recognizable melodies such as "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" or "Bingo," when a customer places money in the tip jar. Lyrics include short, catchy phrases, such as, "This is our Coldstone song, it isnt very long."

Like other franchises, Cold Stone strives to provide similar service at every store by supplying instructional material and training videos to franchise owners.

Recently various Cold Stone franchisees of New York have partnered with The Original Soup Man to sell soup in their respective stores.

[edit] Products

All ice cream creations are offered in three sizes: "Like It" (5 oz), "Love It" (8 oz), and "Gotta Have It" (12 oz). There is also a kids' size (3 oz).

"Cold Stone Signature Creations" are recipes that include the ice cream and toppings of any given "Signature Creation."^[6] Customers may also choose to alter the Signature Creation if they prefer, by substituting the ice cream it is made with, or one or more of the toppings. If a customer does not want a Signature Creation, he or she may choose his or her own tailor-made ice cream creation by picking both the ice cream and "mix-ins". To top off the ice cream, customers have a selection of waffle bowls or cones, either plain, dipped in chocolate, or dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with shredded coconut, peanuts, almonds, or rainbow sprinkles.

Cold Stone offers a variety of smoothies, shakes and signature cakes. All of Cold Stone's ice creams (including milkshakes made from their ice cream) excluding the "sinless fat-free ice-cream" and sorbets contain significant amounts of transfat.^[7]