Excerpted from The Ice Cream Trade Journal, September 1948.

A realization of the immense potentialities in ice cream not only from the industry’s standpoint but for overall dairy economy is well illustrated in the current program of ice cream promotion now being conducted by the Washington State Dairy Products Commission, a state-sponsored body — a program, which in effect, was set in motion by The Ice Cream Trade Journal.

Probably nowhere else is a state agency devoting so much attention to promoting the sale of ice cream in the conviction that ice cream is not a stepchild of the dairy products family and furthermore, represents an important element in the continued well-being of the dairy economy.

The program probably represents the first time in the history of the industry that any publication can be credited with being the direct inspiration of an ice cream selling campaign involving the support of dairy farmers, producers, ice cream manufacturers and, of course, the retailers in an entire state.

It all began, to quote Fred Olsen of the Washington State Com­mission, in the following fashion:

“Our whole program on ice cream originated from an address entitled ‘Food Store Opportunities for Ice Cream’ given by Vincent M. Rabuffo, editor of The Ice Cream Trade Journal, before the convention of the New England Association of Ice Cream Manufacturers.” (This address was one of a series of talks make by the Trade Journal editor before state and national associations of the industry beginning in 1944.)

“Then,” continued Mr. Olsen, “we read every article on merchandising ice cream published in the Trade Journal on which we could lay our hands.” (These articles were part of the material prepared by the Journal’s editorial staff as part of the guidance which has resulted in a tremendous increase in sales through dry stops such as supermarkets and grocery establishments.)

“We then reached the simple conclusion,” Mr. Olsen continued, “that we were doing a poor job of merchandising ice cream in Washington.”

The Washington Commission has set up a Merchandising Division to work with food retailers to help them do:

1. A better job of merchandising dairy products.

2. Take American Dairy Association national merchandising promotions down to the state level and arrange for tie-ins with related food industries and promotions by the retailers.

3. Enlist aid and support of the dairy distributors to merchandising events, making use of their advertising and sales divisions.

4. Preparation of stories and advertisements for food retailer publications.

5. Public relations, publicity, displays at conventions, showrooms, fairs, etc.

The Commission realized that while ice cream was being sold in a great many food stores, it was not being merchandised to the point where it could be a major profit item to the food store operator.

The big problem was to sell the latest methods of merchandising not only to the food dealer, but the ice cream manufacturer and distributor as well.

The opening gun in the campaign was fired at the Dairy Institute held at the College of Washington, which, in effect, is that state’s ice cream convention. Jack Macdonald of the Jiffy Bag Co. told the ice cream and dairy industry of some of the methods and campaigns in ice cream-food store merchandising in different parts of the country.

Since then, advertisements by the Commission promoting ice cream have appeared in publications circulated among grocery and meat retailers throughout Washington state and adjacent areas.

Feature articles on “Take Home Ice Cream” similarly appeared in many of the publications designed to impress the retailer with the merchandising possibilities of this type of ice cream.

During June Dairy Month, front covers and more feature articles on the “Ice cream and cake” promotion of ADA were presented to the dealers.

Ice cream manufacturers tying in with the drive distributed reams of point-of-purchase merchandising material. Recipe leaflets for distribution to the housewife were distributed in hundreds of stores to make dealers and consumers ice cream conscious.  m

The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the largest derivatives exchange in the world, will be sponsoring a series of free workshops around the country this fall to introduce the U.S. dairy industry to the latest price risk management tool for the butter market. The workshops are open to anyone interested in learning more about CME Cash-Settled Butter™, CME’s first dairy futures contract to trade exclusively on the CME® Globex® electronic trading platform. It is anticipated that these workshops will be of particular interest to butter buyers and sellers, as well as companies that buy or sell butterfat in any form, including raw milk and bulk cream as well as most traded dairy products. The new CME cash-settled butter futures contract is designed to meet the needs of food and dairy companies that have exposure to butterfat price risk but do not want to take physical delivery of the product. The new contract will also differ from the existing CME butter futures contract in that the trade unit will be 20,000 pounds of Grade AA butter versus 40,000 pounds. The contract will be cash settled based upon the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) monthly weighted average price in the United States for butter. The new contracts began trading September 19. For workshop dates and locations, visit www.idfa.org. m