A PhD in Ice Cream

Peering intently into a 21/2-gallon plastic tub, college professor Robert Small takes a spatula and dribbles several generous dollops of strawberries in syrup across the bottom.

“Generally, the bottom of the tub always gets shorted,” he says. “You really have to work at putting enough stuff down there for Mrs. McGillicuddy, so that there are strawberries at the bottom of the tub as well as the top.”

Small flips a lever on the 20-quart Emery Thompson ice cream machine and a pale pink column cascades lazily from the machine’s nozzle into the tub. Taking a spatula, he spoons fresh sour cream, brown sugar and more strawberries atop the soft-frozen ice cream, then carefully folds the mixture together until the flavorings are well distributed. “The key is not over-mixing,” Small says. “That’s how you get the veins of flavor.”

Clearly, Small knows his ice cream, but his is more than an academic interest; two years ago he began a company called Dr. Bob’s Hand Crafted Ice Creams. A 22-year veteran of Cal Poly Pomona, Small teaches wine, beer and spirits courses at the Collins School of Hospitality Management. He also heads up the annual Los Angeles County Fair Wine Competition. And he has always loved ice cream.

In particular, Small says, he loved the rich, intensely flavored ice creams he remembers from the East Coast, where he spent his post-college years. “You go through this phase as you get older when you ask yourself, ‘What are the things that you regret not doing in life?”’ says Small, who is 54 and holds an MBA and a doctorate in business. “I had always thought it would be the greatest thing to own an ice cream shop.”

Together with friend Bill Baldwin, a partner in the Claremont residential design-build firm Hartman-Baldwin, Small started with a 1,100-square-foot manufacturing facility and Dr. Bob’s dipping store in downtown Upland. Early on, Small hired George Morales as head ice cream maker, but Small himself handles recipe development and has created more than 60 ice cream, sorbet and frozen yogurt flavors, including Strawberries, Sour Cream and Brown Sugar ice cream, fashioned after the popular dessert combination and introduced this summer.

The “hand crafted” in the company name is no marketing slogan; all Dr. Bob’s frozen treats are produced in small batches by hand at every step. Morales uses a chef’s knife to chop the chocolate for chocolate chip ice cream, yielding bits that vary in size from grain to chunk. Flavor additions (“variegate,” in ice-cream-speak) are folded in by hand. The ice cream for retail sale is all hand-packed into pint containers, making for a denser, heavier product. (The minimum 16% butterfat content also contributes some of that richness.)

Obsessive about ingredient quality, Small uses expensive Tahitian vanilla for his vanilla ice creams. For his repertoire of chocolate flavors, he uses dark chocolate and cocoa made by Scharffen Berger, a super-premium chocolate company based in Berkeley that was founded by former vintner John Scharffenberger.

“We wanted to be the chocolate-lovers’ place to buy chocolate ice cream,” says Small, who produces nine flavors using Scharffen Berger products: Dark Chocolate, Really Dark Chocolate, Chocolate Chip, Bittersweet Chocolate Chip, Dark Chocolate Chocolate Chip, Dark Chocolate with Nibs (crunchy roasted cacao beans), Black Raspberry Chip, Cappuccino Crunch and “The Works,” which is Dark Chocolate ice cream with Nibs and bits of semisweet and bittersweet chocolate.

The intense flavor of Dr. Bob’s chocolate ice cream is partly due to the production method. Many ice-cream companies blend cocoa powder with hot water to make it easier to mix with cream, which dilutes the cocoa and lowers the butterfat content of the final product. Small mixes Scharffen Berger cocoa powder directly into cream using a hand-held commercial mixer that looks like something a house painter might use. He also uses more cocoa, and less sugar, than chocolate ice cream recipes typically call for. The result is deep, rich chocolate flavor with a hint of cocoa graininess in the mouth feel that has become a Dr. Bob’s hallmark.

“Our ice creams are for chocoholics,” says Small. “I find many ice creams to be cloyingly sweet, so it’s the sweetness that gets you more than the flavor. I really want the flavor to stand out and grab you.”

And it does. Indeed, the way people talk about Dr. Bob’s, you’d think he was putting something in the ice cream.

“Oh, my God, it’s amazing,” gushes Kimberly Cosgrove, a waitress at Angeli Caffe in Los Angeles, which serves several flavors of Dr. Bob’s on the dessert menu. “We love it. It’s the best we’ve ever had. It’s unbelievable. We’re going to start a generation of Dr. Bob’s junkies. People will be coming in here just for the ice cream.”

Wolfe’s Market, a specialty grocery store in Claremont, was one of Small’s first wholesale customers. “As far as quality of ice cream goes, there isn’t anything better,” says owner Tom Wolfe. “I don’t know all the ins and outs of making ice cream, but you can taste the difference. I think Bob is onto something that is going to be extremely successful.”

Notwithstanding the positive word-of-mouth, Dr. Bob’s remains a tiny ice cream company. Selling an expensive, hand-crafted ice cream is an uphill battle against the big guys, such as Hagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s, and sales have also been affected by the escalating cost of cream, which recently forced Small to raise his pint price at the store from $4.25 to $4.65.

Because business at the Upland store has been lackluster--”Upland is not exactly a Mecca,” Small says--he has been focusing on the wholesale market. Dr. Bob’s is available in more than 30 restaurants, clubs and stores, with wholesale business accounting for 80% of sales. Small recently secured a Dr. Bob’s booth for the L.A. County Fair in September, and he has plans to franchise.

Although his university career offers flexibility and summers off, Small is frustrated by the limited amount of time he can devote to marketing and sales for Dr. Bob’s. The constant demands of the fledgling company, particularly during the summer, mean little opportunity for vacation or R&R.;

On the other hand, Small has achieved his dream. And even in the hallowed halls of academe, the reputation of his ice cream sometimes precedes him.

“At the university, I’ve become Dr. Bob as opposed to Professor Small.” He pauses. “Which is OK.”

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Dr. Bob’s Hand Crafted Ice Cream is located at 155 E. C St., Upland, (909) 920-1966. Area restaurants selling Dr. Bob’s ice cream include Angeli Caffe in Los Angeles, Broadway Deli in Santa Monica, Hugo’s in Studio City and Chez Melange in Torrance. Retail stores include Jensen’s Markets in several Southland locations, Surfas in Culver City and Vicente Foods in Brentwood. For additional locations, visit the Web site at https://www.drbobsicecream.com. To order Dr. Bob’s ice cream for overnight delivery, call the company toll-free, (888) 264-2226. Dr. Bob’s is also available online at https://www.icecreamsource.com.

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Barrett is a Los Angeles-based writer on wine, food and travel.