Blue Bell Ice Cream

When you live up here, there just is no other ice cream. That's the rule. Or so we're told. (I'm a city girl, from Long Island. I don't usually follow all of the rules. That being said...

In the dark of night.... trucks from the Blue Bell ice cream factory were on the road after midnight, delivering this state's famous and favorite ice cream.  For the time being, just four varieties of Blue Bell are available: Dutch Chocolate, Homemade Vanilla, The Great Divide, and Cookies 'n Cream.  The Blue Bell company is still recovering (and most likely still reeling) from an outbreak of 'listeria' in their factories, which closed all three of their ice cream factories for the past eight months or so.

From what I hear in the Hills here, the local Blue Bell factory is not yet open and producing ice cream. They had to re-vamp, re-furbish, re-do and modernize everything in the Brenham factory, from floor to ceiling and everything in-between.  As a result of that, the factory in the Hill Country is still closed, and we have no idea yet when that facility will be opening.

The pints and half-gallons of Blue Bell chocolate and vanilla that swept into the local stores last night came from their factory in Alabama. But the residents up here, who were lined up along the dark roads last night, with balloons hovering in the air, whistles and applause greeting the Blue Bell drivers... they didn't care where the ice cream came from...... they were just happy as can be to see the trucks with the much-loved Blue Bell logo. ("We eat all we can, and sell the rest.")

When the Powers That Be at Blue Bell decided to pull all of their ice cream from the supermarket freezers and close their factories, there were signs up all over town saying "We Support Blue Bell." Those same signs were also posted on the empty ice cream freezers in the local supermarkets.  Those freezers stayed empty for weeks and weeks, in the hope that Blue Bell would make a quick recovery and commence making ice cream again.

When they took the "We Support Blue Bell" signs down, those were replaced with a very nice letter from the Blue Bell people, saying that they deeply regretted having to close down their factories, but they would do their best to make quick work of the re-outfitting of the factories and they hoped to be pumping out fresh and delicious Blue Bell as soon as possible.  Well, most of the Spring and then the entire Summer just went on by.... and those letters from Blue Bell had been taken down from the freezer doors and those empty shelves were filled with other brands of ice cream and frozen foods.

On any given day in the local supermarkets during these past months, you could expect a road-block in the ice cream aisle... customers were just standing in front of those freezers filled with every sort of ice cream imaginable, except Blue Bell, and no one seemed to know what to buy.  I don't think the Hill Country towns were selling much ice cream at all for these past months.

But now, Blue Bell is back...... and I've got a feeling that whoever went out last night to line up along the streets to watch those trucks make their first deliveries and then stood in the dark to cheer the drivers.... those people have probably already emptied out the freezers of the chocolate and vanilla Blue Bell.  The Blue Bell Company was requesting that stores have a limit of four containers of ice cream to each customer, so everyone would have a chance to once again enjoy the ice cream from their favorite company.

It will take a while for Blue Bell to make enough ice cream to fully stock all the freezers of the supermarkets around the south and southwestern parts of this country...  and in time, they'll once again be making everyone's favorite flavors.... and it seems to me that people here in the Hill Country are extremely loyal not only to Blue Bell, but loyal to their favorite flavor of Blue Bell ice cream.

I was not one of the crowd last night that turned out in the dark to welcome back the Blue Bell trucks. I did not plan to be at the supermarket today to buy ice cream.  I'm happy that Blue Bell is back in business.... I hope that everyone who lost their jobs has the opportunity to get them back.... and I hope the Blue Bell factories are never again plagued with any sort of outbreak other than a crowd of ice cream lovers trying to decide which flavor to buy.