Robbins of Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream Fame Passes Away

90 year-old Irvine Robbins, co-founder of Baskin-Robbins, died last Monday, May 5, at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, California. Robbins was born in Winnipeg, Canada but then moved to Tacoma, Washington to become a dairyman.

Founded after World War II, Baskin-Robbins skated to success as a dessert stop amid the burgeoning burger chains of Southern California. Franchising emerged as a way of giving managers a stake in their store’s performance, and the chain grew to 400 outlets nationwide by 1960. - The New York Sun

Offering 31 flavors of ice cream, Baskin-Robbins presented three more tastes than rival Howard Johnson.

Navy vet Burton Baskin had married Robbins’ sister, Shirley. He had intended to open a haberdashery, but at Robbins’s urging opened his own ice cream shop, Burton’s, in Pasadena, Calif., in 1946. In 1948, the brothers-in-law merged their eight-shop operation, then hit on the idea of franchising the outlets. Growth was fast, but it was not until 1953 that an ad agency helped them settle on the iconic number of 31 flavors, one for each day of the month.

Robbins eventually sold the chain.

Robbins and his partner, Burton Baskin, sold their 476-outlet franchise operation to the United Fruit Co. Baskin suffered a fatal heart attack late in 1967, but Robbins continued on for another decade as chairman of the board. By the time he retired to take up traveling in his yacht, the 32nd Flavor, Baskin-Robbins had grown to 1,600 stores.

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