Brewed Fresh Daily

Our Changing Gears team has been looking at how the Midwest is adapting to new economic realities. But that can mean sticking to what you know best. From Cleveland, David C. Barnett takes us to Pierre’s Ice Cream Company, where a mix of old family values and new technology has helped it stay in business for 80 years.

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America was ice-cream crazy in 1927. It was the Roaring ‘20s, and a high-calorie dessert fit in with the age of excess so well that band leader Fred Waring celebrated with a hit song with “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream” lyrics still familiar today.

Ray Kralik of Pierre's

Five years later, the music of Depression-era America was much more somber. But a Cleveland businessman named Alex Basset figured it was the perfect time to open a business that catered to the public’s need for an indulgence, albeit an affordable one. It would be something to help them forget hard times, an ice cream shop.

He called it “Pierre’s.”

“I am told it was a fabricated, dreamed-up name to go along with the reputation that the original founder wanted, which was for French ice cream and real high-quality, gourmet ice cream,” said Shelley Roth, whose father, Sol, bought the business from Basset in 1960.

Roth says Pierre’s stuck to that founding philosophy, selling a high-class product that didn’t put too much strain on working-class wallets. But Pierre’s hasn’t been afraid to be flexible and innovate.

“When you focus on what has helped us survive through good and bad times, I think, in many ways it’s because we keep up with technology,” she said.

The (fake) spilled sherbet that greets Pierre's visitors

Blobs of mint ice cream with the unlikely name “Moose Tracks” plop into a line of pint containers in Pierre’s new 35,000 square-foot facility, which allows the company to produce eight times its previous capacity. In the midst of computer-controlled machinery stands Ray Kralik, the company’s decidedly old-school supervisor.

He started working at Pierre’s when he was 16. That was 39 years ago. He’s kind of link that guy at the hardware store who mixes customized gallons of paint, adding gallons of flavors to stainless-steel tanks of churning cream while following long-established guidelines that he long ago committed to memory.

Last Christmas, Pierre’s named a flavor in honor of Ray Kralik – “Ray’s Rootbeer Float” – to celebrate his nearly forty years of institutional memory.

“Ever since I started, I was treated good by Sol Roth, Shelley Roth,” Kralik said. “It’s like a family.”

But some “family” members left last year. Eight full-time and three part-time workers were cut, trimming the company workforce to 85. Sometimes, as Pierre’s learned, job loss is the price of greater technological efficiency. That and a lousy economy.

Between population loss and the rising costs of ingredients, Shelley Roth said Pierre’s local profit

Shelley Roth, whose family owns Pierre's

margins have been battered in recent years. The company is counting on the new facility to expand capacity and reach outside the region, which means going up against the big boys.

“This past recession has been the most difficult,” she said. “Because we compete with many of the global conglomerates that now really own most of the brands in the supermarkets, it’s very competitive. But, we still persevere, because we stick to our values.”

Even in the modern era, when the competition is between companies that are featuring new concoctions with flavors such as “French Toast,” “Strawberry Basil” and “Riesling Poached Pear,” Pierre’s “bread and butter” is good old French Vanilla. Roth says the company is currently in discussions with food industry officials in other countries who are interested in importing American ice cream – American ice cream, with a French name.