Irvine Robbins, who delighted ice cream afficionados by conjuring up ever more inventive flavours as co-founder of the Baskin-Robbins empire, has died aged 90, officials said on May 6.
Robbins, who started the Baskin-Robbins ice-cream chain with late brother-in-law Burt Baskin in 1945, died on May 5 at the Eisenhower Medical Centre in Rancho Mirage, California, company officials said.
A statement from Baskin-Robbins paid tribute to the company’s founding father, describing him as a ”pioneer” of the ice-cream industry.
”Irv’s passion and his vision — ‘we sell fun, not just ice cream’ — helped to create an iconic American brand that is now universally loved and respected around the world,” Baskin-Robbins chief brand officer Srinivas Kumar said.
”His dream and love of ice cream put smiles on millions of faces …”
Baskin and Robbins enjoyed a lifelong love affair with ice cream. As a teenager Robbins worked in his father’s ice-cream parlour while Baskin later made ice cream for fellow troops during World War II.
But it was in the postwar years that the two men came into their own, taking Americans beyond the confines of flavours like vanilla, strawberry and chocolate with taste-bud ticklers like pralines ‘n’ cream, almond fudge and jamoca.
Robbins opened his first store in Glendale, California in 1945, which featured 21 flavours before Baskin opened his Burton’s the following year.
”There was really no such thing any place as a pure ice cream store,” Robbins told the Los Angeles Times in a 1985 interview.
”I just had the crazy idea that somebody ought to open a store that sold … nothing but ice cream, and could do it in an outstanding way.”
The ice-cream entrepreneurs joined forces in 1948 and their chain became known as Baskin-Robbins in 1953, quickly setting itself apart as the place with 31 flavours — a new flavour for every day of the month.
The company boasts a library of more than 1 000 flavours and is currently sold in 5 800 stores in 34 countries. – AFP
