“I think about making people happy and I think we do that well with the assortment of flavors that we have and in these trying times, we’re pretty popular right now.”
The President of Cedar Crest Ice Cream, Ken Kohlwey, talks about his manufacturing plant and ice cream parlor here in Manitowoc.
Kohlwey is proud of the fact that Cedar Crest is now the biggest producer of ice cream in the state. “We do about 4 million gallons of ice cream a year right now here in Manitowoc.”
The company president says when it comes to traditional flavors, “you always have to have vanilla or butter pecan”, but there are some interesting new flavors on the menu board at the Big Cow. “We’ve got Tropical Storm up here right now, Dump Truck that’s another one, Cherry Chipper, Unicorn. Those are all flavors that we try to rotate in and out but our customers are kind of fussy, they want to come in here and get the kind of flavor that they want.”
Kohlwey explains the ice cream parlor reopened early this week, but there won’t be inside seating because of social distancing concerns. “We’ve got almost a full menu now, all except for ice cream cones and that was phase 2. The reason we are not doing ice cream cones, is it comes a little bit too close to our customers.”
As for the effects of COVID-19 on their business, Kohlwey says they had to reduce their production from two shifts a day to one and sales of their 3-gallon tubs of ice cream were off by about 60%. Helping matters though, was the fact that grocery store sales of their 48-ounce containers have been ‘very steady.’
