Blue Bell Creameries

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Blue Bell Creameries in Washington County. Now settle in, because this is one of those stories that starts real modest and ends up somewhere you might not expect. It starts in August 1907, with a company called the Brenham Creamery Company.

No grand ambitions announced in the name, no promises of empire. Just a practical arrangement: buy up the excess dairy products that local farmers couldn't move on their own, turn it into butter, and sell it around town. That was the whole idea.

Butter. Local sales. Keep it simple.

And for a few years, that's exactly what it was. Then 1911 arrives, and somebody at that creamery gets an idea. Ice cream.

Now, they weren't going to flood the market. The operation could manage a maximum of two gallons each day. Two gallons.

You could fit that in a couple of buckets and carry it yourself. But you have to start somewhere. The next turn in this story comes in 1919, when a man named E.F.

Kruse took over managing the creamery. He'd run that operation all the way to 1951, and along the way he made a decision that would stick. In 1930, he changed the company's name to Blue Bell Creameries.

The marker tells us that during those early years, management set the tone for careful business practices and respect for tradition. Careful. That word does a lot of work in a story like this.

Under the Kruse family's leadership, the business expanded into markets outside of Brenham. Step by step, methodical, holding onto those country origins, those quality ingredients, that friendly service. And here's where the tall tale earns its ending.

The outfit that started out moving two gallons of ice cream a day has grown into one of the nation's most successful ice cream brands. From a butter company in a small Texas town, to a name people know clear across the country. Not bad for a creamery that once measured its ambition in gallons.

What the marker says

In August 1907, the Brenham Creamery Company formed to purchase excess dairy products from farmers and produce butter local sales. In 1911, the creamery began making ice cream, producing a maximum of two gallons each day. E.F. Kruse, who managed the creamery from 1919 to 1951, changed the company's name to Blue Bell Creameries in 1930. During the company's early years, management set the tone for careful business practices and respect for tradition. Under the Kruse family's leadership, business expanded into markets outside of Brenham. Blue Bell has become one of the nation's most successful ice cream brands with a focus on its "country" origins, quality ingredients and friendly service. (2007)