Mayor reaches out to local businesses

Monaco pays visit to Blue Bell to celebrate National Ice Cream Month

By Kenny Green, kgreen@starlocalnews.com

Mesquite’s mayor, John Monaco, recently took a trip to Blue Bell Creameries distribution plant in Mesquite to reach out to the business in an effort to maintain positive relations. Monaco timed his trip to coincide with July being named as National Ice Cream Month.

“About once a month the mayor tries to visit a different business to thank them for being here and show them that the city does care,” said Wayne Larson, city communications director. “We look to tie the visits into a special event or commemorative week or month so with July being National Ice Cream Month, Blue Bell was chosen.”

Monaco was given a tour of the plant by plant manager Jerry Ferguson. The tour included a look at plant operations and a trip inside the walk-in freezer, which is kept at 15 degrees below zero.

“The mayor was extremely impressed with operations at the plant. He is very appreciative of the company making Mesquite the home of one of its distribution plants for many years and for their community support,” Larson said.

Blue Bell Creameries opened in Mesquite in Sept. 1978 to distribute Blue Bell Ice Cream throughout the DFW area. There are currently 45 employees at the plant.

When the plant originally opened it handled distribution as far as Fort Worth. The company’s growth has necessitated the opening of five additional Blue Bell branches in various parts of the DFW area. The Mesquite location now delivers ice cream as far as Edgewood and Royse City to the east and northeast, Wylie to the north, downtown Dallas to the west, and the Cedar Creek area to the south and southeast. They receive Blue Bell ice cream from the Brenham manufacturing plant five days a week.

“Blue Bell has been a very good corporate citizen since they have been in Mesquite,” Larson said.

The company’s top selling flavor is homemade vanilla. To celebrate National Ice Cream month Blue Bell created its newest flavor, Summer Strawberry Pie, which is a blend of strawberry ice cream, sweetened strawberries, flakey pie crust pieces and a whipped topping swirl.

Blue Bell Creameries was founded in 1907 in Brenham as Brenham Creamery Company. The name was changed to Blue Bell Creameries in 1930. The first product was butter. Ice Cream was not produced until 1911. At that time a day’s production was just two gallons per day. Today 60,000 cows are required to provide enough milk for one day’s production of Blue Bell ice cream.

Ferguson originally started working for Blue Bell in 1971 in Houston. He came to Mesquite in 1982 and has been the manager of this location since 1984.

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan designated July as National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday of the month as National Ice Cream Day. Approximately nine percent of all the milk produced by U.S. dairy farmers is used to produce ice cream. In 2010, the U.S. ice cream industry generated $10 billion in total revenue with take-home ice cream sales representing $6.8 billion of the market’s overall value. In 2011, approximately 1.5 billion gallons of ice cream and related frozen desserts were produced in the U.S.

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