You’d assume Dippin’ Dots came out of an ice cream company.
It came out of a Kentucky lab that was freezing bacteria for animal feed.
Curt Jones was a microbiologist at Alltech in 1987, working with yogurt cultures that got added to feed, when he found he could form tiny pellets by dipping them in liquid nitrogen at 320 degrees below zero. The faster freeze made smaller ice crystals.
A couple of months later, he was making homemade ice cream with a neighbor, and the two got to talking about ice crystals.
“That’s when the light bulb came on,” Jones said. “I thought, ‘I know a way to do that better. I work with liquid nitrogen.’”
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The First Dippin’ Dots Store Failed
In 1988, Jones and his wife, Kay, opened a shop in Lexington, Kentucky, with no restaurant experience. A four-ounce kiddie cup went for about 89 cents. The earliest test batches were so cold, Jones later said, that “they welded our tongues to our jaws.”
They spent most of their savings, sold a car, ran up six credit cards and put up their farm as collateral for a loan.
They closed the store in 1989.
So they took it to county and state fairs, making it in a converted garage on his father’s property in Grand Chain, Illinois. That same year, Opryland in Nashville became the first amusement park to sell it. By 1995, Dippin’ Dots had more than 150 outlets in 33 states. By 2002, sales were estimated at $34 million.
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How the ‘Ice Cream of the Future’ Went Bankrupt
Jones got his patent on June 30, 1992. In 1996, the company sued rival Mini Melts for infringement.
That backfired. After nine years in court, the company lost. A jury found Jones had sold a version of the product to more than 800 customers over a year before he applied, and his patent was thrown out.
The recession didn’t help. Sales dropped as park-goers had fewer extra dollars to spend.
On Nov. 3, 2011, the self-proclaimed “Ice Cream of the Future” filed for Chapter 11, trying to stave off foreclosure on more than $11 million in loans.
What Dippin’ Dots Sold For
The reported offer to buy it out of bankruptcy was $12.7 million. Scott Fischer took over in 2012.
Ten years later, Icee owner J&J Snack Foods paid $222 million for it. For comparison, the couple behind Häagen-Dazs sold for $70 million and the founders of Baskin-Robbins got $12 million.
This spring, the brand announced multi-packs for grocery stores, a first.
Jones was gone by then. He’d been forced to walk away by 2019.
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