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Blue Bell Creameries is an American food company that manufactures ice cream. It was founded in 1907 in Brenham, Texas. For much of its early history, the company manufactured both ice cream and butter locally. In the mid-20th century, it abandoned butter production and expanded to the entire state of Texas and soon much of the Southern United States. The company's corporate headquarters are located at the "Little Creamery" in Brenham, Texas. Since 1919, it has been in the hands of the Kruse family. Despite being sold in a limited number of states, as of 2015 Blue Bell is the fourth highest-selling ice cream brand in the United States as a whole. ==History== The company has its roots in the Brenham Creamery Company, which opened in 1907 to purchase excess cream from local dairy farmers and sell butter to people in Brenham, Texas, a town situated approximately 70 miles northwest of Houston. In 1911, the creamery began to produce small quantities of ice cream. By 1919, the creamery was in financial trouble and considered closing its doors. The board of directors hired E.F. Kruse, a 23-year-old former schoolteacher, to take over the company on April 1, 1919. Kruse refused to accept a salary for his first few months in the position so that the company would not be placed in further debt. Under his leadership, the company expanded its production of ice cream to the surrounding Brenham area and soon became profitable. At his suggestion, the company was renamed Blue Bell Creameries in 1930 after the Texas Bluebell, a wildflower native to Texas, and which like ice cream thrives during the summer.〔〔 Until 1936, the creamery made ice cream by the batch. It could create a batch of ice cream every 20 minutes. That same year, in 1936, the company purchased its first continuous ice cream freezer, which could make of ice cream per hour. The ice cream would run through a spigot, allowing it to be poured into any size container.〔 Kruse was diagnosed with cancer in 1951 and died within 8 weeks. His sons Ed and Howard took over leadership of the company. By the 1960s, the company completely abandoned the production of butter and began focusing solely on ice cream. After many years of selling ice cream only in Brenham, the company began selling its ice cream in the Houston area, eventually expanding throughout most of Texas including the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex and the state capital of Austin. By the end of the 1970s, sales had quadrupled, and by 1980 the creamery was producing over 10 million gallons (37,850,000 liters) of ice cream per year, earning $30 million annually. In 1989, Blue Bell began selling its ice cream in Oklahoma, and throughout the 1990s expansion pushed throughout the South Central and Southern United States, eventually expanding out to New Orleans and Jackson, Mississippi. In 1992, Blue Bell built a new manufacturing facility in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.〔 Four years later, in 1996, Blue Bell opened a third manufacturing facility opened in Sylacauga, Alabama, east of Birmingham, and eventually expanded into Atlanta and Miami. Once Blue Bell establishes itself within a market, word-of-mouth usually ensures that consumers in adjacent areas become aware of the brand. Blue Bell has been slow to expand: company executives say they thoroughly research each new market and ensure that all employees in the new markets are fully trained in Blue Bell practices so that product quality can be upheld.〔 Blue Bell often tends to expand to markets during March each year, expanding to Colorado on March 14, 2011, followed by the Richmond and Hampton Roads areas of Virginia in 2013, and Las Vegas in 2014.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://Chron.com/news/Houston/Texas/article/Blue-Bell-expanding-into-Vegas-due-to-popular-5224877.php?cmpid=pts )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://LVRJ.com/business/Blue-Bell-ice-cream-expanding-North-Las-Vegas-area-distribution-center )〕 These expansions are accompanied with the purchase and/or construction of distribution centers in new markets that serve areas within a 75-mile radius. In 2015, Blue Bell issued a series of recalls that eventually shut down production and led to all of its products being recalled on April 20, culminating in job cuts and furloughs (as well as the reduction of its 23-state sales territory) resulting from the shutdown the following May. In conjunction with factory cleanup procedures and agreements with state and federal authorities, the company returned to production three months later on a limited basis, returning its products to the market on August 31 in portions of Texas and Alabama as part of a five-phase plan to return to much of its pre-recall distribution territory, which has been reduced to 15 states based on Blue Bell's limited distribution capabilities in the near term. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Blue Bell Creameries」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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