In the early s, when E. Fenton was just beginning to provide milk and cream for much of Oakland, a rocky road candy bar featuring nuts and marshmallow was gaining popularity. Bay Area-based Annabelle Candy first made its fortune selling a version of the confection out of a Mission Street candy shop, and other stores hurried to follow suit. Special, 59c lb. At the time, most ice cream came only in Neapolitan flavors—chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry—which made the birth of rocky road all the more remarkable.
It was also arguably the first time someone thought to combine candy and ice cream. The story Thomason learned when he worked at the company was as follows: On the eve of the stock market crash in , William Dreyer—struck by some creative dairy spark—got the materials together to mix chocolate ice cream with nuts and marshmallows, but immediately encountered a problem.
The marshmallows were too big. In the late s, Oakland was a medium-size port city—no backwater, but not exactly an obvious home for 25 dairies, cheesemakers, and ice-creameries. California dairy in the decades leading up to the Depression was still ruled by the milkman, who traveled from house to house in blue- and white-striped overalls, carrying a whalebone whip to discipline his horse.
The invention of the in-home refrigerator in precipitated an enormous change, making it possible for homeowners to buy more dairy further in advance.
In , the state of California produced 87 million pounds of butter, cottage cheese, and ice cream. Over the following decade, that number rose precipitously.
Amid all this, Oakland in hosted its first Pacific Slope Dairy Shows, including milking demonstrations, cream and cheese contests, and meetings of industry groups like the oddly named Yellow Dogs, of which both Edy and Dreyer were members.
Dreyer became famous at the Pacific Slope show for winning best vanilla ice cream the industry standard several years running. At the same time, ice cream was becoming an epicenter for socializing, especially as Prohibition took hold, leaving ice cream parlors to fill the void left by bars.
Fentons was also flourishing. Even after World War I started, Americans kept eating ice cream in increasingly enormous quantities, with an almost patriotic zeal. After individual refrigeration came industrial refrigeration, which further transformed the industry and paved the way for new kinds of growth—and growing pains. He knew where the cows were, he knew his suppliers.
This is not a man stuck in the office. Small businesses were a priority for Cook, who served as president of the local Chamber of Commerce and preferred to shop at mom-and-pop grocery stores. Cook went out of his way to give contracts to small-scale establishments and to find ways to support them. In , restaurateurs Gary Rogers and Rick Cronk made an offer to buy the company, and Cook accepted.
Cook had expected to play a bigger part in the buyout proceedings and became increasingly angry as he was forced to cede control. In the s, Bill Morison, husband of E.
Golden State was later absorbed by Foremost, a dairy company founded by JC Penney that itself merged with medical conglomerate McKesson in the s. In another industry, this might have been where the lawsuits started—a different kind of cold war. To qualify for a patent, for example, an invention must be novel and not obvious, two terms that are defined by statute and have been disputed in hundreds of cases over the years.
In , Edy and Dreyer parted ways , and the company was named after Dreyer. But as they started expanding across the country, they ran into difficulties with the east coast brand Breyers. After some legal wrangling, it was agreed that Dreyer's would enter these new markets under the Edy's name. They have the same flavors, packaging, and brand identity, but Dreyer's is mostly sold in the western United States while Edy's is sold in the midwest and east.
Another Oakland ice cream shop claims to be the inventor of Rocky Road. The name seems to refer to the lumps and bumps created by the nuts, although the later origin stories take place during the Great Depression and indicate that "Rocky Road" was meant to describe the hard times everyone was experiencing.
There are actually two ice cream makers who claim to have been the first to create and market Rocky Road as we know it today, both of them based out of Oakland, California. While Mashed did not speak with anyone at Fentons Creamery, we were able to get Dreyer's side of the story from associate brand manager Julianne Feder.
According to Quartz , the Fentons story goes that in the creamery employed a candymaker named George Farren. Farren blended a candy bar containing both nuts and marshmallows into a batch of ice cream, thus inventing not only a brand-new flavor but the whole concept of mix-ins to which Cold Stone Creamery would later owe its existence.
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