MANITOWOC, Wis. — The enormous Guernsey cow that towers over the Cedar Crest Ice Cream plant and ice cream parlor makes the establishment nearly impossible to miss when driving through Manitowoc. The statue of Bernice has become a landmark in the community, welcoming visitors to the parlor that serves the creamy and flavorful treat that often has people lining up even before it opens.
A town staple since 1989, the Cedar Crest ice cream parlor serves customers from March through October. During peak season, it serves about 40 3-gallon tubs of ice cream per day. The parlor also makes sundaes, malts, floats and shakes.
Cedar Crest is proud to make ice cream the old-fashioned way, churning it today as it has for nearly 50 years. Made from scratch in small batches, the process begins with slow, low-temperature pasteurization, which enhances flavor.
Shannon Simon, marketing manager at Cedar Crest, said this is what sets the company apart from its competitors.
“Cedar Crest is one of the few ice cream companies that still slowly pasteurizes ice cream despite the fact there are high-temperature, fast-pasteurizing machines available to make this process quicker,” Simon said. “It takes a lot longer to make ice cream the way we do it, but we simply believe this method is what keeps a quality flavor. It works — why change it?”
Ken Kohlwey established Cedar Crest Specialties in 1976. Dairy was in his family’s blood as Kohlwey’s parents owned a milk bottling company called Cedarburg Dairy. However, ice cream drove the next generation.
Starting out as a distributor for Oak Brand Ice Cream in Freeport, Illinois, Kohlwey ran two ice cream routes in Southwest Wisconsin. When that supplier left ice cream behind in 1977, the Kohlwey family purchased Smith Ice Cream Company in Oshkosh and began making their own ice cream. In 1979, they moved the corporate office from Milwaukee to Cedarburg. When the business outgrew its production facility, the family purchased Lake to Lake Manufacturing in Manitowoc in 1987.
“Bernice came with the property, and since then, we’ve been expanding, expanding, expanding,” Simon said.
Today, Kohlwey and his brothers, Bill, Tim and Robert, and Robert’s son, Luke, run Cedar Crest Ice Cream with help from 100-150 employees. Ice cream is made at the 45,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Manitowoc. The milk used to make the ingredients in Cedar Crest’s ice cream base is sourced from local creameries. From cow to cone, Cedar Crest Ice Cream ensures quality at every step of the process.
Once it is packaged, ice cream is shipped to the Cedarburg location where it is stored in a freezer set at -20 degrees ensuring product freshness.
“The ice cream stays frozen solid until leaving our facility,” Simon said.
A large volume of dairy products travel through the doors of Cedar Crest Ice Cream. The company makes and sells 3 million gallons of ice cream, custard, sorbet, sherbet and frozen yogurt annually.
Cedar Crest Ice Cream can be found in ice cream parlors and retail outlets throughout Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois. Ice cream parlors carrying the Cedar Crest brand sell it exclusively as their scooped product but may carry soft serve ice cream in addition.
“As we grow, ideally we would love to sell nationally,” Simon said. “We are capable to expand to that size. It’s an interesting future we can have.”
Cedar Crest claims that its ice cream was made for parlors because it scoops better, stays fresher longer and is consistently more flavorful than other brands. Simon said scooping ease is a result of the ice cream containing 11% butterfat.
“That makes a significant difference,” she said. “Sweet flavors are even easier to scoop because of the sugars they contain, which make the ice cream super smooth and easy to scoop.”
Parlors can choose from 80 flavors of Cedar Crest ice cream. The best-selling flavors include Super Madness, blue raspberry, cherry and vanilla flavored ice cream; Pirate’s Bounty, a caramel-flavored ice cream with M&M’S and cookies; and Caramel Collision, a caramel ice cream with caramel swirls and chocolate-coated caramel mini cups.
More than 50 flavors of Cedar Crest ice cream are available for retail sales. Included in this lineup are limited edition and seasonal flavors like peppermint and pumpkin pie. Cedar Crest packages other flavors to meet geographic demands.
“A flavor might be more popular in Iowa than in Michigan, for example, so we have different flavors for different areas,” Simon said.
Cedar Crest has formulated over 200 flavor combinations. Each year, new feature flavors are released as the creamery brings back old favorites while also curating new flavors for parlors.
“We’re innovative and always try to come up with something new and fantastic,” Simon said. “We want to keep it refreshing and think about what we haven’t done yet, but we also have to ask if it’s possible to make. We need suppliers that can give us these ingredients while meeting our standards to ensure a premium and quality product.”
New exotic flavors on the Cedar Crest menu include Southern Bourbon Pecan and Firecracker. The first is a bourbon-flavored ice cream that has become popular among adults. Firecracker, a strawberry-flavored ice cream infused with POP ROCKS candy, is the company’s featured flavor for June.
“It provides a different ice cream-eating experience,” Simon said. “Pop rocks had their trend back in the day then faded away, and now they’re back again.”
Cedar Crest also enlists the help of Wisconsin 4-H clubs in coming up with new, fun flavors in their annual 4-H Flavor Creation Contest. The grand prize for winning is $500.
“It gets the Wisconsin community involved and emphasizes how important agriculture and the dairy industry is to us as a state and to Cedar Crest’s future,” Simon said. “The kids come up with quirky names and ingredients and are really good at creating those unique candy flavors.”
New flavors are tested in parlors before they are placed in retail outlets.
“We want to see how much of a rave they are before we invest in packaging,” Simon said. “We like to do our parlors a favor by offering flavors that will draw people in. We have parlor-exclusive flavors like bubble gum and licorice.”
Cedar Crest also began making ice cream sandwiches this year for retail sales. They are a novelty item for ice cream trucks and stands as well.
With a cow in their front yard, Cedar Crest’s connection to dairy is unmistakable.
“We’re very passionate about the dairy industry,” Simon said. “Without it, we wouldn’t be able to make our ice cream.”
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