Articles by James Carper

Snoqualmie Ice Cream

Snoqualmie Ice Cream: Perfection in a pint

‘We make perfect ice cream,’ says the owner of Snoqualmie Ice Cream in Washington state. Organic milk and cream, innovative flavor combinations and homegrown herbs and fruits contribute to the products’ popularity.
jim carper
James Carper
March 10, 2013
Fans can like the Facebook page of their favorite ice cream brand and Tweet all day long about its flavors. But sometimes, to really understand a company’s mission, you have to meet face-to-face with the owners and watch how they make ice cream. That’s the approach Snoqualmie Ice Cream owner Barry Bettinger takes with his distributors. He invites them to tour the fully sustainable manufacturing plant in Maltby, Wash., and make ice cream. Once the visitors see the passion of the company’s 12 employees and the integrity in manufacturing a super-premium organic ice cream (19% butterfat and 15% overrun), they “get it,” Bettinger said.
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Neal Gottlieb

Three Twins Ice Cream aims for the top

Neal Gottlieb is taking aim at the top national brands of super-premium ice creams. He calls his organic products ‘inconceivably delicious.
jim carper
James Carper
March 9, 2013
Cornell University has a world-renown dairy science department. But alumnus Neal Gottlieb, the founder of Three Twins Ice Cream, graduated from the College of Human Ecology with a degree in consumer economics and housing. He did enroll in a milk quality course — for a day. He dropped the class because it conflicted with his rowing schedule. As for Cornell’s famed creamery, Gottlieb admits he was not a huge consumer of its dairy products, but he fondly remembers the 99-cent ice cream sandwiches.
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Land O'Lakes Saute Express Saute Starter
Innovations

New dairy products are re-shaping grocers' dairy aisles

New dairy products from Kraft and Land O'Lakes are more like ingredients than actual foods. So where do they belong?
jim carper
James Carper
February 28, 2013

New dairy products, like cooking creams and seasoned butters, are causing grocers to re-think the dairy aisles. These foods do not fit neatly into established categories like fluid dairy products, butter or cheese. 


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Rhino Ice cream cookies

Rhino Foods is rolling in cookie dough

Rhino Foods measures everything it does. Employees work to a goal and are rewarded when they meet the targets. Management’s reward is a smooth-running organization that fulfills customers’ needs.
jim carper
James Carper
February 15, 2013
A manufacturing facility is like a living organism. Think of production, purchasing, warehousing and quality assurance as cells. Each of these departments has a job to do that in some way touches the other functions. Each has to communicate with the others so that the whole enterprise runs smoothly.
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Rhino corp employees

Rhino Foods: Ice cream's trendsetter

Rhino Foods made a name for itself by developing cookie dough for Ben & Jerry’s. But that’s just part of what makes this Vermont dairy processor and baker noteworthy. The forward-thinking company is a trendsetter in employee relations, too.
jim carper
James Carper
February 14, 2013
Would you loan $1,000 to an employee who encounters an unexpected financial crisis and needs to buy a new water heater? Instead of laying off employees, would you hire them out temporarily to another employer? Do you share your financial statements with all of your employees, not just with senior management?
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Jim Carper

New uses for familiar dairy products, cheese and butter

Processors create new usage occasions for cheese and butter.
jim carper
James Carper
February 12, 2013
Rather than curse the younger generation who are in the dark about how to cook, it’s better to light a candle and show them how to “get ’er done.” That’s the approach taken by two dairy companies, Kraft Foods and Land O Lakes. Dairy Foods honored each with an Editors’ Choice award in our Best New Dairy Products of 2012 program.
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Raw milk is pasteurized and homogenized here

A look inside HP Hood's Sacramento plant

HP Hood fills 600 bottles a minute on its new aseptic line in its Sacramento, Calif., plant. The company processes dairy and nondairy beverages in aseptic and extended shelf life packages.
jim carper
James Carper
January 18, 2013

Mike Hardy is showing me an aseptic filler. “There are only two speeds to this — 0 and 600 bottles a minute,” he says. I watch a blur of bottles enter one end of the machine from an overhead conveyor, whirl from carousel to carousel and exit the other end. In a matter of seconds, the bottles have been sterilized, filled and capped.


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Bailey's creamer

While many processors specialize, HP Hood does it all

While many processors specialize, HP Hood does it all: milk, ice cream, cheese, yogurt, other cultured foods and nondairy beverages.
jim carper
James Carper
January 15, 2013
Hood is New England’s beloved dairy brand with roots that reach back to 1846 when Harvey Perley Hood founded the company in Derry, N.H. Today, HP Hood LLC, based in Lynnfield, Mass., near Boston, processes branded lines of milk, ice cream, cheese and other dairy products that rank among the best-sellers in the Northeast.
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