IRWIN, Pa. — Three generations of Tom Kerber's family have been making some of Pennsylvania's best ice cream for more than six decades. Millions of scoops later, everything about the ice cream business still makes the 84-year-old smile.
"This is our little piece of heaven," he says, gesturing to the rolling fields beyond the 10,000-square-foot building in which his son, Tom Jr., churns out up to 1,000 cartons of ice cream a week.
Down the hill to the right of his eponymous dairy store on Guffey Road, a half-acre miniature golf course rings with laughter as kids and their parents take turns smacking golf balls. To its left is an all-season tubing track on which riders can whiz some 400 feet down the hill on a polymer carpet.
"It takes 17 seconds!" Kerber exclaims with a grin.
Alas, like so many other small businesses struggling to find staff amid this nationwide labor shortage, he can't find any teenagers to run it this year.
He knows what his millworker father, Edward, who purchased the 200-acre farm in 1941, would think: "Why the hell did you put that in a cornfield?"
"But back then, change was hard," Kerber says. "Today, it's easy."
And what goes better with their 164 flavors of ice cream than some family-fun activities?
Kerber's Dairy first earned national acclaim for its super-premium ice cream in Rick Sebak's 1996 PBS special "An Ice Cream Show." The longtime WQED producer isn't sure how, exactly, they connected — maybe during a Rotary Club speech? — but he liked the fact that the dairy is "suburban toward rural" and a small, family-owned business, "which I'm a sucker for."
He also liked their "wild and zany" flavors, so he included it in the show.
Today, many of its customers find their way to the North Huntingdon dairy store via VisitPA's Scooped: An Ice Cream Trail, which was launched in 2018 to support Pennsylvania's 5,200-plus dairy farmers and the small businesses that buy from them.
Overseen by the state Department of Agriculture, Department of Community & Economic Development and Center for Dairy Excellence, this year's self-guided trail boasts 42 creameries across the commonwealth that meet one cold, sweet criteria: Their ice creams must be processed on-site using Pennsylvania milk.
Most are in the central or eastern part of the state. Besides Kerber's, only four are within easy driving distance of Pittsburgh. They include Betsy's Ice Cream in Mt. Lebanon, Jackson Farms Dairy in New Salem, Lone Oak Farm in Marion Center and Windy Ridge Dairy in Fombell. Trail-goers accrue "points" on a digital passport to redeem various prizes, and some places also offer specials, such as two-for-one deals. The promotion runs through Sept. 9.
Kerber's, which has been a stop since the trail's beginning, has a traveling ice cream cart for events like North Huntingdon's "Movies in the Park" and offers hot lunches Monday-Friday from 11 a.m. until they sell out.
Value added
Kerber was just a toddler when his parents bought the farm in 1941 to raise and board horses, including ones used for pony rides at Kennywood Park. In 1952, when horse-drawn vehicles were no longer a thing, the family got into the dairy business instead and eventually built up a herd of 300 cows.
The oldest of eight children, he recalls many hours shoveling manure and bailing hay when he wasn't in school. "When you grow up on a farm, at age 10, you're doing men's work," he says.
They had been sending their raw milk to another dairy for processing, but in the early '60s, his father and mother, Alvina, decided to pasteurize and homogenize it themselves for sale at the Guffey Road store. That led to making a few flavors of ice cream, a popular value-added product they could sell mom-and-pop style by the pint or cone.
Kerber eventually left the farm for a few years to work for Sperry Rand in Illinois selling farm equipment. He also took a Dale Carnegie course on public speaking — a skill that to this day comes in handy as the farm's official PR person and cheerleader.
"I learned real quick how to deal with people," he says with a chuckle. "People love to talk to an owner."
After his father's death at age 63 in 1967 following a farm accident, the property was divided among Kerber and some of his siblings. He and his wife, Ellen, kept 66 acres, and in due course, started to phase out the dairy cattle.
"It's a treacherous job," he says. "There are no holidays and you're milking twice a day, every day."
By 1991, the cows were history and the Kerbers — who enjoy a bird's-eye view of the farm from their front porch — had replaced the dairy's original white brick store with a much larger structure that could accommodate more customers and more products in the self-serve coolers that line the walls.
Today, all of the milk sold in their store comes from Penn Hills-based Turner Dairy Farms, which sources its milk from 50 family dairy farms in Western Pennsylvania. Turner's also provides Kerber's with the ice cream mixes it uses to create the growing roster of flavors that have become its calling card.
Road to success
It was in 1970, when Americans went from drinking whole milk to skim and 2%, that Kerber decided to make ice cream in earnest.
"We had a massive amount of cream [left over], so I bought an ice cream maker," he says, noting he started experimenting with about 10 flavors.
When he screwed up, more often than not with a new recipe, he realized he needed to learn from the master. So he took the ice cream short course at Penn State University, the oldest, best-known and largest educational program dealing with the science and technology of ice cream.
"It was a process" he says, figuring out what combination of flavors and add-ins would prove popular with customers.
"You start with the basics, and then go from there," says Tom Kerber Jr., 55, who took the reins in 1990 after studying business at the University of Pittsburgh. Today, ice cream accounts for 70% of sales.
The 40 or so flavors he and his father started with have slowly expanded over the decades to 164, with more coming every year, especially during holidays. Think Eggnog and Candy Cane at Christmas and Pumpkin Spooky Vanilla in the weeks leading up to Halloween. Summer means bright-blue Dinosaur Crunch, studded with vanilla cookies. It's a flavor kids can't get enough of.
"If we put a creative name out there, people want it," Tom Jr. says. "They might not remember the ice cream, but they'll remember the name."
Chubby Elvis, a banana ice cream studded with miniature peanut butter cups, came out in June. Then there's Froot Loop, with Froot Loops cereal and mini marshmallows. June also marked the debut of Cow Patty, a decadent mix of chocolate ice cream, chocolate chip, peanut butter and brownie cookie doughs and pieces of chocolate-covered sugar cone that "blew out the door," says Tom Jr.
"They obviously have no qualms about unnatural colors or neon and wacky things," agrees Sebak, who on a recent visit sampled a scoop of lumpy, brown Cow Patty and found it "delicious."
While the farm's footprint has grown smaller over the years — the Kerbers sold off 52 acres in 2021 to a residential developer — their customer base keeps growing. A parking lot originally built for seven cars now holds 77, "and some nights that's not enough," says Tom Jr.
One recent evening, he says, there were more than 50 people snaking through the rope line.
"Who's coming out here? It's not near anything," Sebak asks. "It's so far out, but it's packed!"
Super-premium
The busiest months for ice cream, not surprisingly, are May through September, so some days Tom Jr. spends 12 hours in the plant behind the storefront building inventory. A good batch takes 10-12 minutes, though as the stainless-steel machine gets colder throughout the day, he can get it down to 8 minutes. Because of allergens, peanut butter is always the last flavor of the day.
The process is fairly simple: pour 5 gallons of mix into the hopper of the 20-quart Emery Thompson batch freezer they bought last year to replace the 50-year-old original, add whatever candy or sauce the flavor requires, push a button and voila — the computer-controlled freezing chamber automatically mixes, agitates and freezes it to a soft-serve consistency. The addition of air results in 9 gallons of ice cream with a luscious 15% butterfat, making it "super-premium."
A constant churn of 165 rpm guarantees the first and last ounce are the same. Tom Jr. can do five batches an hour.
The ice cream is packaged in containers and placed in a walk-in hardening freezer that's kept at a brisk minus 4 degrees, with a windchill of 25 below.
"You want to freeze it as soon as possible, so there's no ice crystals," he explains.
The ice cream is 19 degrees when it comes out 24 hours later before being placed in another freezer for storage. Depending on the day, anywhere from 200-1,000 square boxes are stacked up.
In summer, 80% of the ice cream sold is in cones. In winter, when Tom Jr. gets most creative with flavors and add-ins like ribbons of fruit or caramel, half-gallon containers rule.
The most popular flavor is and always has been vanilla, says his father, though some days it's outsold by one of the seasonal or new flavors advertised on the road sign or Kerber's Facebook page. But then, vanilla always catches up.
"If you can make good vanilla, you're a good ice cream maker because you can't fake it or cheat," Kerber says.
While Dad is the one everyone praises for making such a superior product, he readily admits it's his son who should get the credit.
"Now I just watch," Kerber says. "He's built it up. It's come such a long way, and it's nice to see that happen."
One redesign that's been especially satisfying is the new dipping cases the family put in last January. They allow their youngest customers — one danced in excitement on a recent Tuesday as she waited — to see their ice cream before it hits the cone.
"They can't read, but they sure can tell color," says Kerber with a laugh. A good scooper can scoop three or four cones a minute.
Sebak guesses those small details, along with the fact that the ice cream is delicious, are the main reasons the dairy has not just survived but thrived for more than a half-century.
"They obviously take joy in it and it's so kid-friendly," he says.
"It's a fun business to be in," agrees Tom Jr. "Customers are always happy because it's either a celebration or a treat."
