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House of Flavors upgrades facilities, with help from a Food and Agriculture Investment Program grant.

August 7, 2019

4 Min Read
ice cream maker House of Flavors
HOUSE OF FLAVORS: Working at ice cream maker House of Flavors is described by the company as worthwhile because of the smiles and fun it creates. House of Flavors

Editor’s Note: This is part of a series of articles featuring recipients of the Food and Agriculture Investment Program.

By Stan Maddux

From its early beginning, which included home delivery on horse and buggy, House of Flavors in Ludington, Mich., has become the top private-label ice cream maker in the state with more than $100 million in annual sales, according to the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The success of the company, which is still operating a manufacturing and packaging line from its original downtown location, is evident by the smiles it generates from people with satisfied taste buds. But that’s not all. It also provides business for Michigan-based farms and processors who supply the ingredients — such as cream, nonfat dry milk powder and cherries — to make the creamy goodness.

That equates to close to $20 million in annual sales for suppliers in the state, MDARD says.

“One of the things that’s important to us and to our employees is bringing fun and joy to people,” says Tim Nieboer, vice president of human relations at House of Flavors. “Sometimes, that sounds kind of hokey, but for us it’s worthwhile work. We’re doing something that brings a smile to people’s faces.  It’s fun to be in that sort of business.”

The company, located next to Lake Michigan in the northwest part of the state, makes ice cream for up to 70 brands sold at nationally known stores, supermarket chains and distributors throughout the world.

House of Flavors started out as “Miller’s Dairy” in 1937

FLASHBACK: House of Flavors started out as Miller’s Dairy in 1937.

Its beginnings are humble, however.

In 1929, Guy Hawley was running a dairy farm. But by 1937, Hawley and partner Albert Miller had moved what was then called Miller’s Dairy into a bottling and packaging plant featuring a store offering dairy products and coffee.

A few months later, they bought two ice cream companies and, by the 1940s, were churning out some 40,000 gallons of vanilla, French vanilla, chocolate and blue moon ice cream — in addition to their other dairy products such as homogenized milk, buttermilk, butter and cottage cheese.

As is often the case, time brought additional changes, including a new owner, Robert Neal Sr. Neal, who bought the company in 1948, is considered the founder of what House of Flavors has become today.

The company also expanded into the ice cream parlor and restaurant business and other ventures such as frozen dessert distribution. Late in the 1980s, the company stopped distributing product.

The Ludington restaurant and House of Flavors also were separated from the corporate structure to apply more focus on making packaged frozen dessert products, generating sales through grocery store distributors and co-packing for other companies.

house of flavors semi-truck

VAST OFFERING: House of Flavors in Ludington, Mich., produces more than 3,000 ice cream flavors for up to 70 nationally known brands.

According to MDARD, the result has been nearly $30 million invested into a state-of-the-art facility capable of producing up to 30 million gallons of ice cream annually in more than 3,000 flavors. House of Flavors is a top 10-ranked producer of private-label frozen dessert in the nation. Its workforce has grown from 20 to 187 full-time employees.

Most recently, $3.8 million in facility upgrades, with help from a $100,000 MDARD Food and Agriculture Investment Program grant, were completed last year. That includes an assembly line producing more of the firm’s smaller containers of ice cream to reflect consumer demand away from large family-sized packages.

‘’Mom used to go to the grocery store and buy a big pail of Neapolitan, and everybody would share,” Nieboer says. “Now, everybody goes to the store and gets a pint of whatever they like, and they bring that home. That’s a change we had to adjust to in the market.”

The improvements, he says, likely would have happened without the grant, but “every little bit helps.”

House of Flavors is working with the city as a financial contributor toward future upgrades of the city’s wastewater treatment plant to help position the ice cream maker for future growth. The company also stores its product at several locations in Ludington until ready for shipment.

Protein Holdings Inc. is a majority owner of the manufacturing plant, while the Neal family continues to own and run the restaurants at Ludington and Manistee.

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