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Ice cream icon and Seattle native passes away
May 20, 2008
Perhaps nobody in the history of Seattle made more people happy in a small way than Irvine Robbins. As co-founder of Baskin-Robbins he helped launch and manage the world's most famous and ubiquitous ice cream storefront.
When Robbins passed away in early May in Rancho Mirage, California, the company he co-founded, Baskin-Robbins, had more than 5,800 stores worldwide. Robbins attended Garfield High School and graduated from the University of Washington. His family moved from Winnipeg, Manitoba to Seattle after his uncle bought the Velvet Ice Cream Co. on Capitol Hill. Robbins' father purchased a dairy.
Irvine Robbins began working at his father's store in the alley behind what was Rhodes Brothers Department Store in Tacoma. He attended Stadium High School in Tacoma. After his discharge from the Army in 1945, Robbins used $2,000 he saved and cashed a $4,000 insurance policy his father had given him at his bar mitzvah at Seattle's Temple DeHirsch Sinai. His family said that while driving in California looking for used ice cream equipment, Robbins found a store to rent in Glendale. His first store, called Snowbird, opened December 7, 1945.
A year later, his brother-in-law, Burton Baskin, opened an ice cream store and the pair later merged. Robbins' daughter, Marsha Veit, said that in 1948, the men flipped a coin to see whose name would appear first. They had 31 flavors — one for each day of the month.
Robbins sold the company to United Fruit Co. in 1967 — the same year Baskin died of heart disease — but remained as president until 1978.
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