Ice cream maker intent on survival

GONE COLD: Jerry Bucci Jr., owner of Warwick Ice Cream, has run the family business for 35 years. A recent decision by corporate giant Unilever has put the company on shaky ground. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
GONE COLD: Jerry Bucci Jr., owner of Warwick Ice Cream, has run the family business for 35 years. A recent decision by corporate giant Unilever has put the company on shaky ground. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

Warwick Ice Cream owner Jerry Bucci Jr. is the third generation in a family business founded in 1930. He hopes one of his sons will one day run the company.
But that’s an idea that became a bit more distant recently due to what he describes as a sudden and unexpected cut-off of the supply of popular treats including Ben & Jerry’s, Good Humor ice-cream-on-a-stick and Choco Tacos from the global consumer-goods company Unilever.
Bucci says he’s had a working relationship with Unilever for 30 years, and Warwick Ice Cream has been the authorized distributor of Unilever ice cream products in Rhode Island.
“We built the reputation for Good Humor here in Rhode Island. We’ve had contracts with Unilever for freezers,” Bucci said last week. “About half my business is Unilever products.”
Unilever, however, in a Feb. 4 email to Providence Business News, says it has never had a formal agreement with Warwick Ice Cream.
“Warwick Ice Cream was not the sole distributor in Rhode Island,” company spokesman Jeffrey Graubard said. “Warwick Ice Cream has been a sub-distributor of another Unilever distributor in Southern New England for multiple years.” Graubard said Warwick Ice Cream was a sub-distributor for Dari Farms.
Bucci said he has been getting Ben & Jerry’s ice cream from Dari Farms, a Connecticut distributor.
“Warwick Ice Cream was notified in December and was given [more than] 30 days notice before any market changes took place,” Graubard said.
Bucci became president of the family ice cream business about 35 years ago, shortly after he finished college.
In those days, the company only sold its own brand of products. Bucci said he saw the need to expand and signed a contract with a company called Gold Bond Ice Cream for specialty products. In 1989, Gold Bond was acquired by Good Humor, which itself had been under the Unilever umbrella since the early 1960s, according to Unilever’s corporate website. “It was so long ago, I don’t exactly recall. We were told we were the authorized Rhode Island distributors. We just assumed we were carrying on from the previous company,” Bucci said. “We met with them, they gave us point-of-sale information for the products, and we had a contract with Unilever for freezers.”
Bucci said he has not heard anything official from Unilever regarding the change in distributor, an assertion disputed by Graubard. He said he did make a phone call to Unilever Southern New England representative Jeff McPhee when he heard customers were being told they weren’t going to be able to buy some products from Warwick Ice Cream.
Bucci said he wasn’t given details, but McPhee told him there would be changes.
Graubard said that Taunton-based New England Ice Cream is now Unilever’s master distributor for southern New England.
Steve Beck, chief operating officer for New England Ice Cream, said the company signed the deal with Unilever in mid-December.
“We began distribution in southern New England to the independent mom-and-pop stores in late December. We’re transitioning to distribute to the chain convenience stores and drug stores bit-by-bit,” Back said.
Bucci said as many as a half dozen of his 30 employees may be laid off.
Manufacturing and selling the Warwick Ice Cream brand is the other half of his business. It’s sold in half gallons, single-serving cups for schools, nursing homes and hospitals, and Warwick Ice Cream makes specialty products including “mud pies” for special events. Bucci doesn’t know if he has enough of a variety to keep mini-marts and gas stations buying from him, he said. They tend to rely on nationally known items such as Ben & Jerry’s and Klondike bars to get people to the ice cream freezer.
While national brands are tough competition, much of the family-owned, local competition has died out, and with it, a friendlier business climate for ice cream has also disappeared, Bucci said.
He remembers Delmonico’s Ice Cream and others, mostly in his father’s time, before Bucci became president of the company.
There have been lots of other changes in the ice cream business in Rhode Island since Bucci’s grandfather, Italian immigrant Charles Bucci, started the company, partly to employ three of his four sons who were deaf.
While there are other local ice cream businesses that claim to be “homemade,” Bucci believes he’s the only one still making it “from scratch.”
“We’re the last of a dying breed as a manufacturer of ice cream in Rhode Island,” said Bucci.
But now Unilever says it believes it can service customers best without using sub-distributors. And that leaves Warwick Ice Cream to focus on its manufacturing and trying to hold on to customers.
“We plan to keep going,” Bucci said. “We’ve been here for 80 years. We’re not going anywhere.”
Shop N’ Go on Plainfield Pike in Johnston is one business that’s going to stick with the Warwick Ice Cream brand, said manager Rabi Elay.
In addition to keeping a variety of Warwick Ice Cream in stock for his customers, Elay said he will continue to buy the Warwick brand for another reason.
“He’s a local business,” Elay said. “I think that’s important.” •

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