Cold Stone Creamery Ice Cream Parlors Locations Locator Map and Directory

From Wikipedia

Cold Stone Creamery is an American ice cream parlor chain based in Scottsdale, Arizona

History

The company was co-founded in 1988 by Susan and Donald Sutherland (unrelated to actor Donald Sutherland), who sought ice cream that was neither hard-packed nor soft-serve. Publicity materials describe it as "smooth and creamy super-premium ice cream." Cold Stone Creamery opened its first store that year in Tempe, Arizona. While the company was originally headquartered in Tempe, in 2005 headquarters were relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona.

Cold Stone's name comes from the frozen granite stone, used to mix "mix-ins": candy, nuts, or other edibles into various flavors of ice creams. However, the granite stone technique used to mix "mix-ins" was created by Maggie Moo's Ice Cream, and its sister chain Marble Slab.

In 1995, Cold Stone Creamery opened its first franchise store in Tucson, soon followed by a store in Camarillo, California, its first out of state. Almost 1,400 franchises are in operation, although over 300 are currently available for sale. Cold Stone Creamery is now the sixth-best-selling brand of ice cream in the U.S. and now operates stores in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Puerto Rico, Indonesia, Guam, China, Mexico and Bahrain. Cold Stone opened their first franchise in Europe in 2008 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Three more shops were later opened in other parts of the country. The company was also named the 11th fastest-growing franchise by Entrepreneur Magazine in January 2006.

In May 2007, Cold Stone Creamery merged with Kahala to form the company Kahala�Cold Stone, which collectively owns 13 brands. Doug Ducey, former president and CEO of Cold Stone Creamery, was named CEO of the new company. Kevin Blackwell, the former CEO of Kahala, became chairman of the board and chief strategist. In September 2007, Ducey announced he was leaving the company.[4] Blackwell was named CEO.

In June 2008, a Wall Street Journal article, by Richard Gibson, examined the unusually high number of Cold Stone Creamery franchises closed or put up for sale by their owners, many of whom had suffered significant financial losses due to their investment. The article included claims by franchisees that the company had misrepresented the average revenues of Cold Stone stores and acted in ways that reduced stores' profit margins. A company spokeswoman said that the high number of stores for sale was "at par with industry expectations" in light of "the economically challenging times."

In the spirit of joviality, and to encourage customers to give tips, Cold Stone instructs employees to sing a Cold Stone song, usually to the tune of recognizable melodies such as "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" or "Bingo," when a customer places money in the tip jar. Lyrics include short, catchy phrases, such as, "This is our Cold Stone song, it isn't very long."

Like other franchises, Cold Stone strives to provide similar service at every store by supplying instructional material and training videos to franchise owners.

Recently various Cold Stone franchisees of New York have partnered with The Original Soup Man to sell soup in their respective stores.