Alabama's STEM explorers is made possible by the generous support of the Holle Family Foundation established to honor the legacy of Brigadier General Everett Holle and his parents, Evelyn and Fred.

Holle, Champions of servant leadership, science, technology, engineering, math, all coming up right now on Alabama STEM Explorers.

Hi.

Welcome to Alabama STEM Explorers.

I'm Mitch, and I'm here today at BlueBell Creamy when my new friend, So tell me about what it's like to work here.

It's a great place to work, Mitch.

I've been here for 30 years.

We.

And I really enjoy what I do.

It's a great place to work.

I mean, it's ice cream.

What else can you.

You know what else is bad about it?

So.

So what do you do here?

Well, I was in production for seven or eight years after I started, and now I'm in one of the warehouses.

So we receive all the cartons and lids, boxes and stuff.

We inventory that, and I just assist just here in the plant, wherever else is needed.

All right.

So tell me about the like, the line of like, making the ice cream.

So, like, tell me about, like, the process and the steps on how to do it.

Okay.

Well, you need to receive in your ingredients.

We need milk cream, sugar stabilizers, emulsifiers and flavors.

We receive all that here.

We make an ice cream mix, and then we send the mixed into it, tank to hold it for a little while, and then we're going to freeze it and we're going to make ice cream.

And we put in two different sized packages, a half gallon or three gallon container, the three ounce cup or whatever.

And then we're going to hard freeze it.

We're going to stick it on the pallet.

And then we set it into one of our storage facilities and then it goes out to the store to be sold.

All right.

That's that's that's awesome.

So when you were naming the ingredients, I didn't recognize a couple of them as stabilizer.

And then the ones that I was in that the emulsifier emulsifier.

So tell me about those.

So a stabilizer basically ties up water in the mix.

It makes it have some body.

It's kind of, I guess, the easy way to say it.

And emulsifier is something that helps incorporate the fat into the mix, into the cream.

Okay.

So when you're making the ice cream, do you put that all together at the same time to we have a room after we receive all the ingredients, all the sugars and the cream and the milk separately, we have a blender and the blender in ways where you add everything together to make the ice cream mix.

So all your stuff is added, right?

Okay, so like when but when you're taking different flavors, how do you put it into different flavors?

And then like even like the ones like cookie dough where you have like the little chunks of stuff too.

So we have a couple of different base mixes.

Okay.

Okay.

So if we're going to make like strawberry ice cream and we have a base white mix of ice cream, which is just a plain vanilla mix, and then we're going to add strawberry color to strawberry flavor.

Okay?

Okay.

If we're going to make cookies and cream, it's the same mix, but we add cookies into it.

Okay.

So at the flavor tanks, we add the colors and the flavors into the mix, and then we send it into a freezer.

And then after it comes out of the freezer, it's like a soft serve you get from Dairy Queen.

Okay, we have a machine at the next point and we add the cookies or the strawberries or pecans or whatever.

We're going to add in that machine there.

And then it goes into a filler.

So tell me about like the different types of jobs you have here and like how many employees there are.

We employ about 380 people here.

We have jobs that range from the person that is driving a forklift, unloading trucks into a person that works in the blend room, their ice cream mix.

We have people in production that run the ice cream freezers and all that.

And then we have the other side of people like in maintenance that would have the technical jobs of working on the machinery or doing some work and stuff with the computers here.

So we have a wide range of of our jobs here.

So here's kind of like a wider question, but like, how do you like, keep things sterile and like really clean and that kind of stuff.

So at the end of every production ship, we have a group that comes in and once the production folks leave and go home and they they will break down all the pipework, all the freezers will be broken down.

They have to wash it.

Okay.

So we wash certain things by hand and we wash other things with the machine.

And then once you wash everything and we sanitize it, we're going to put it back together.

So that's how we keep everything neat and clean and all that.

And then before we start production the next morning, we have a sanitizing solution that's a run through the freezers and the pipes and the tanks to sanitize everything one more time.

Okay?

But so that's and keeps it super duper clean and sterile.

So tell me about like, is there like a like a test you have to pass or like something that you have to do to make sure, like the ice cream is safe and ready to eat?

Well, we we test all the incoming ingredients, all the milk, sugar, everything that comes in here.

It's going to go into the ice cream is tested.

And we're looking for taste.

We're looking for acidity.

We're looking for any kind of bacteria as well.

And then once we make the ice cream mixture descended into a pasteurized system.

And what that does, it basically cooks the mix and it heats it up real high for a short amount of time.

It's not going to scorch the mix or burn it, but it's going to make sure that all the bacteria it's in that mix is going to kill.

And then once we make the ice cream and we harden it, we're going to send a bunch of samples from each run out to a lab and they're going to be tested.

Everything comes back clean.

We're good to go.

We can sell it.

Awesome.

Cool.

So like in like when you're testing the ingredients coming in and even at the end of the day, when you send it out to the lab to test how exactly do you test it to make sure it's clean?

How do we test like, the ingredients?

Yeah, like, well, if it's if it's a milk tanker, then the tanker would get into the bay and we're going to agitate the milk in there, the cream.

And then we have a long dipstick and we're going to go all the way to the bottom of that tank and we're going to pull out a sample.

Okay?

And you put the sample into a little bag and we send that to the in-house lab and we'll test it for all the stuff are too cool.

So tell me about like like what kind of jobs?

Like there are like, robots doing and like, how they are helping with production.

Now, we use some robots in the pilot housing to stack the ice cream on the pallets, and then we have some robotic cranes inside one of our warehouses that will get the ice cream out of the cold storage racks and send it out to the dock to go trucks.

Okay.

So that's I guess that's probably all the all the robotics stuff that we have here right now.

And is there any plan for using like more robots in the future or are you pretty good how you are?

No, I think those you'll you'll see a lot more of those coming up in the future.

Okay.

So tell me about like how far you ship this ice cream out and how you do that.

Well, we ship it as far west as Las Vegas, Nevada.

Okay.

South of the Florida Keys, West over to the Washington, DC area for East Im sorry.

And then we go as far north as north Indiana.

Okay.

Wow.

So that's 23 states, Pretty wide, wide scope.

And you use, like big trucks, too.

We use our own trucks to ship it.

Yes.

Okay, cool.

So when you do ship that stuff, do you ship it straight to stores or does it go to something like that?

We ship it into our own little sales branches and the sales branch is a small cold storage.

Okay.

That holds about 600 pallets of ice cream.

And then from each of those little pockets of all warehouses, we ship out to the individual stores and Blue Bell employees will take it all the way out to the stores, whether it be a Walmart or a Publix or whatever.

And we'll put the ice cream on the shelf.

So are you guys the only factory in America or in the world for Blue Bell?

We have one in Texas and one in Oklahoma.

So three for just three.

They're all in like Southern.

Yeah, and all in the South.

So what kind of flavors are being processed and made right now?

We're running Dutch chocolate today.

We're running some cookies and cream.

Half gallons.

We're running lemon, half gallons, I believe.

And we have a pipeline running today and three ounce cups.

And who decides what flavors to be made on certain days, that kind of stuff.

So our sales guys in Texas will come up with a projection of what they're going to sell for the whole year.

Okay.

And then we plan for certain amount of flavors in each line.

And we have a lady here and what she does is she writes a production schedule and she says, I need to produce this number of half gallons of homemade vanilla this month.

So she splits it up over certain production runs and that's how we do it.

And how many different flavors are made in Blue Bell overall, that's a good sales question.

I think there's around 60 different ice cream flavors that we only produce the top sellers here.

So we make a lot of homemade vanilla, Dutch chocolate cookies and cream, strawberry, Neapolitan.

So are the other locations.

Do they create or do they make the whole thing?

More or less they do more variety.

The Texas Plain is our corporate plan, so it's a lot bigger than here.

But the Texas plant will do all the specialty flavors and the diet products and low fat stuff alone.

And in this place, they run like all day and all night.

Or is it almost okay?

Production starts at 5:00 in the morning and it runs until early afternoon.

But we'll have people that will that will get here at midnight or so in the morning, and we'll start receiving milk and we'll do sanitizing and stuff in the morning.

The production lines will start up at five and run to two.

And then we have a group that comes in after them to do all the cleaning.

Okay.

And the cleanup crew will be here until eight or 9:00 at night.

Okay.

So that's that's crazy.

So with when the people come in here to do like field trips or that kind of stuff, what kind of stuff do you do with people like that?

Well, they get to look out the window and watch a production run and they can watch the video over there on the wall.

Gives a little bit more explanation of how we make ice cream.

And then, of course, they get ice cream at the end of the time, which is the best part.

Yeah.

So like, do people, like, do their jobs?

Kind of like do they do different things throughout the day or is it like the one person does the same thing all day?

Like when it just depends on the department production, people that are working on the lines or generally going to do the same thing all day.

The people out there in the warehouse, they might be unloading a truck, you know, first thing in the morning.

The next part of the day they're moving freight or doing some inventory stuff.

But we mostly would do the same job all day.

And is it just one shift that.

Yes, just one production shift.

Okay.

So in the like of the like in the transportation to come in is those like how do you like transport the milk and cream.

And so milk and cream will come in on a tanker truck which is an 18 wheeler that holds about 6000 gallons of milk or cream.

The sugar we get will come in by railcar.

So it's about 200,000 lbs per car and that'll last.

It's about a week where we do a lot of sugar here.

So how much ice cream like in a week do you produce overall?

Yeah.

So the half gallon lens will do probably 400,000 half gallons a week.

The pint lines are a little over 100,000 pints a week.

The three ounce cups will be 150,000 in a week.

So like to put them in perspective, like how much a day like wait like so you said 450,000 or 75,000 half gallons or so a day, 50,000 pints a day.

I think for a half gallon for this year, we're projected to do around 18 to 20 million, half gallons this year.

That's that's crazy.

So tell me more about like which flavors are the most mass produced overall, How maybe vanilla is your number one flavor.

Okay.

And then cookies and cream and Dutch chocolate.

All right.

Behind.

Okay.

So what's like the weirdest flavor that you remember?

Peanut butter and jelly was a flavor we did a long time ago.

I never had it, but I heard the people that did, they actually liked it.

So.

So that's weird.

It's like peanut butter flavored ice cream and jelly flavored ice creams.

Okay, that was.

That was before my time.

That's weird.

Okay, so tell me, like, do like, some flavors have to be, like, taken off the production line or completely taken out of, like, the company, or we will have rotational flavors that we only make in certain months of the year.

A good one would be Mardi Gras King cake.

We make that just a couple of months out of the year.

But then you had your standard flavors that you make year round your homemade your your cookies and cream strawberries.

So tell me a little bit more about like the actual like the STEM of the in like the factory and making that.

So for STEM jobs you would have in the processing side, you would have to know a lot of math.

You know, you got to make sure that you put the right amount of sugar, the right amount of cream in each mix, right?

Yeah.

And then in the lab, you've got stuff in the lab.

You got to understand biology and microbiology.

On the engineering side, we have to have the people that work on the machines, work on the PLC the computers, every freezer down there now has got a PLC system.

So it's not very mechanical anymore.

You know, a long time ago it was when you want to speed a freezer up, you just turned a handle.

Yeah.

And it changed some gears and pulleys on the inside.

But now you've got an HMI panel and you got to push an up or down arrow.

Well, there's a whole system behind that that runs it, so we need people to work on those.

Yeah, we have the ammonia refrigeration system here.

You have to have engineering people to work on that.

So tell me a little bit more about like the technology and like what kind of stuff do you do for the tech And like, what kind of stuff you're improving on and that kind of, Oh, well, we we're doing some automation stuff in Texas at our main plant.

So we'll have some, we'll have some automation lab that a lot of our wrappers and stuff and our stackers and our pilot inside our robotics.

So, you know, it takes a lot of the heavy lifting and that kind of work away from people.

Yeah, but you know, you've always got to have people to work on things and maintain machinery.

So so we touched on it for like a second, but like, tell me more about like the jobs in the lab and like, what kind of stuff do they do in the lab?

Well, they go out and get samples of the ice cream.

We have to go out and test this stuff.

It's being made right now.

So those people will go out into the production and they'll grab samples and they'll bring it back and they'll test for taste and they'll test for, you know, make sure it's got the right amount of inclusions and it makes sure it weighs right.

Yeah.

You know, a half gallon has got to weigh a certain a certain number of ounces.

So they're looking at that.

They're looking at overall quality and making sure it's filled up all the way.

So like in the production industry, are there ever like any variations like better, like, you know, a little bit of a difference or is it like since there's a lot of robotics, is it always like, exactly perfect.

The thing?

Well, I can't say it's perfect every time, but you want everything to be as consistent as possible.

You want a half gallon that you make that you made last year to taste the same as a half gallon you made today.

Yeah.

And the half gallon is going to be made next month and needs to taste the same as it is right now.

You've got a recipe for everything and you want to stick with the recipe.

Yeah.

You can have a product that will change on a person because a person goes to the store and buys it.

They want it to taste a certain way.

If you if, if you change something, then they go buy it.

It's going to be different.

So you got an unhappy customer.

So consistency is really, really important.

Have you ever actually, like, changed the recipe?

Like, like people have like changed the recipe over time because of a reason We've had some some people come back and say, hey, it's not a strong enough vanilla flavor or something, so we'll do some testing on it and we can alter.

So some recipes.

Yes.

No, we can't do it here.

It's all got to come from the main plant in Texas.

And because you got to be consistent amongst all your plants, you can't have a half gallon.

It's main car sylacauga be different from one.

It's mild.

Oklahoma.

Yeah, it's got to be just like.

So does anything, like, ever, like, go wrong?

Like, or like there's spills every day.

Every day.

Every day.

Really?

Okay, so, like, what are, like, some of the most common and most common thing would probably be just human error.

You know, a guy forgets to to cut a pump off and he runs a tank over and he's got makes it runs on the floor.

Somebody might turn a valve the wrong way and ice cream will go where it's not supposed to go.

Yeah.

Then just you just got a mechanical breakdown.

The chain would break, you know, a conveyor belt might wind up or break.

And so there's always something to fix and work on.

So more like the like the area of like, getting it out into the stores and stuff because they're like a whole team of people that are better, like trying to advertise and trying to like we have a whole sales side and you've got the sales guys that go out and they get new business and then you've got the room salesmen who go out and put the ice cream in the cases.

And yeah, we have a whole side of the company, usually a lot bigger than the operational side that handles sales force.

Yeah.

How do they get into other stores and stuff like that?

Well, you've got sales guys that will call on new accounts and they can be a cold call.

I mean, I'm not in sales, but that's what I heard.

The way it works, it will be a cold call.

I'll just go up in there and talk to the owner, the manager, whoever, and get it in there.

Now, if it's a chain account like a Wal Mart or or a Publix restore like That and you know, it would be included in their set.

So you're always trying to gain new business and new markets.

Okay, So what sets BlueBell apart from, like other competitors in the ice cream business?

Well, a bunch of things.

We have a consistent item.

It's just a product quality consistency.

We also would do a half gallon to, you know, a lot of companies.

We went to a smaller package, but we still do a half gallon of ice cream.

But really it's just the quality people, good quality ingredients and end up being consistent.

Okay.

Would you like to see you have a great ice cream it tasted and definitely yeah so when we get the people here, what we're going to look for is it tastes right.

Is it icy, is it gritty?

But you want to look and make sure that you're the flavor strong enough and then it taste the way that it's supposed to taste.

Okay, awesome.

Yeah.

So what kind of stuff are they going to be doing here?

Well, we're doing a taste panel right now.

So what we're doing is we're going to bring some samples out here in just a minute, and we're going to have these people look at the ice cream and taste it.

And they're going to look at the appearance.

They will look at the color, the flavor of the body of the ice cream.

They're going to taste it and see what it tastes like.

And we're looking for consistency.

We're looking for quality.

And then in any any kind of all flavors or of colors or anything like that.

So how often do they do this tasting?

But they do it like once for every batch.

We do it every week, every week.

So once a week and that's up once a week for every flavor.

No, not for every flavor.

We usually just pick one up and then we do it.

So like, what are some of the things that you would that's on the list to try?

Well, as far as flavor, we're looking for, if it has any kind of aftertaste, if it tastes artificial, if it taste citrusy or clean or cooked flavor, anything like that.

And then as far as your appearance and your color, you're looking for, you know, is it is it look artificial?

It looked more natural.

Is it contrasting?

Is it dirty looking?

Is it curdy looking?

And then we're looking at body as well that that kind of looks at, you know, what does it feel like when it's in your mouth?

Is it going to be chewy, Is it going to dissolve real quick in your mouth?

Is it going to be gummy or like tasting or, you know, and then as far as your texture, you're looking for it to be smooth and creamy is what you want.

Yeah.

So out of that, that that would be if it was chalky, if it was coarse, gritty, those are all defects.

So is it a positive or a negative thing for like the color to be artificial?

What you don't want it to be to look wrong?

If if you had strawberry, for example, if you had if the color was off, it might look fake or too bright or too dark.

Yeah.

And you don't want that either.

Again, you want to go back to being consistent.

You want a consistent product.

The color of the strawberry ice cream has got to be the same from run after run after run.

And like said, do you want the ice cream more creamy or do you want a little bit more like hard or what you want and you want it creamy but but not so buttery that it's it gives you a fat taste in your mouth, you know?

Yeah.

You got to have the right kind of balance of the of the of the sugar and the sweetness and the creaminess to make it a good product.

And what kind of things like in the production of the ice cream in the factory would change those characteristics.

Well if you if you go back to the blending process, if you if you have if you're got a little bit too much cream in it, then it's going to taste kind of fat.

It's going to be a little bit too creamy if you're in production, if you don't have your weight on your freezer set.

Right, it can be too light and too airy and foamy looking.

If it's if if you don't have enough air in the ice cream, it's going to be real, real heavy.

It's going to be hard.

Okay.

So like the people that do this type of job that that their complete job, that's not their complete job, but it's a large part of.

Okay.

And you have to have like a training to get that kind of job or it's kind of on the job training.

Yeah, we we want to pick a person that, you know, can taste something, but then explain what it tastes like.

And but there is some training involved.

It Yes, sir.

So like, I'm sorry.

So, like, what kind of training?

Like how do they, like, acquire their ice cream tastes or something.

I'm kind of you just a is, it's on the job, you know, it's kind of like you you, you get a person that has got a good taste and then you kind of coach them and say, well, this is what you're looking for.

And if they can recognize that, then they can go back and do it more.

All right.

So is this like a real ice cream?

This is a real ice cream parlor right?

Yes, sir.

Wow.

So, like, can people just come here?

They can come off the street and visit us.

And we love to have people come in to the parlor here and visit us and and try the ice cream that we have.

We do about 25,000 visitors a year.

Wow.

So it's every day.

Yeah.

So is it more just individual people coming in or is it mainly like field trips and schools?

You know, it's a good mixture of both.

We have a lot of school groups that come here.

We have our retirement groups that have come here to church groups, and then we have people off the street, too.

Yeah.

So do they get to like actually try the ice cream parlor to get to have anything they want?

Yeah.

Thank you for showing me all this today.

Yes.

So I guess I was very glad to have you here.

And now for the best part, would you like some ice cream?

Absolutely.

Also, I'll see you next week on Alabama.

STEM Explorers.

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Alabama STEM explorers is made possible by the generous support of the Holle Family Foundation established to honor the legacy of Brigadier General Everett Holle and his parents, Evelyn and Fred Holle, champions of servant leadership.