1. The business is named after the guys who started it
We’re going to start off our list with a fun and interesting fact about Baskin Robbins. The name comes from Ivy Robbins who was raised with ice cream all around him, thanks to his dad’s involvement in the business. Burt Baskin is his brother in law who also had his own ice cream chain. Robbins had also opened an ice cream chain, following in his father’s footsteps. The two in-laws got together and combined their businesses and the resulting ice cream chain became Baskin Robbins.
2. The way they chose the name is really funny
Before the two guys made the name of their newly merged business official, they had to decide whether it would be called Robbins Baskin or Baskin Robbins. At first it seemed to be quite the dilemma until they came up with a fair and equitable solution to the problem. They decided that they’d flip a coin to figure out who’s name would go first. As it turned out, Baskin was the winner of the coin toss and as a result he earned the privilege of having his name placed first on the official title of the company.
3. Thirty one is close but there are actually more flavors
Baskin Robbins uses the number 31 to suggest that this is how many flavors of ice cream that they offer on their menus. We’ll have to counter this and say that they do offer a minimum of 31 flavors of ice cream at any one time, but it’s usually more than that. Throughout their history, Baskin Robbins has actually offered over 1,000 different flavors of ice cream, just not all at the same time.
4. They invented the first pralines and cream flavor
Pralines and Cream is a common ice cream flavor currently, but it hadn’t been done by another commercial ice cream chain until these guys came up with it. We discovered this fun fact about Baskin Robbins when were were doing our research. Here’s the story about how it happened. Irv and Irma Robbins thew some pralines that they had into a bowl of vanilla ice cream and they tried it out with a drizzle of caramel on the top. The flavor was so appealing that they knew that they had a winning combination that others were sure to love. This is how the first pralines and cream ice cream flavor was created.
5. They sued a rival over the pralines and cream flavor
We just learned that Baskin Robbins felt very protective over their pralines and cream recipe. When they learned that Haagen Dazs came up with their own version of the flavor, they sued them in 1985. They claimed that they had released their own version of the recipe that had been patented and Haagen Dazs was selling it for a profit. You don’t mess with a Baskin Robbins original recipe. Haagen Dazs learned about that the hard way.
6. Not all of their flavors were sold in stores
There are a lot of different flavors that Baskin Robbins created that you’ll probably never hear about. You’ve got to figure that with more than a thousand creations, not all of them were hits. We learned a few little known facts about their creative side. While they’ve come up with a lot of decidedly winning flavors, some of them were just plain odd and they didn’t even make it past the cutting room floor. A few examples of this include the Lox and Bagels ice cream, the Grape Britain ice cream and the ketchup ice cream.
7. They made a celebratory flavor in 1976
The year that marked the bicentennial of America was a very special year for all of the citizens of our nation. Baskin Robbins honored the occasion by creating a special flavor just to mark the occasion. The name of the ice cream flavor was Valley Forge Fudge. Here’s a fun fact about the major contributor to the design of the flavor. It was none other than President Gerald Ford.