SUMMER '09 SCOOP

Summer is officially here, as we have just rung in the Liberty bell with the 4th of July…and that’s no crack! This past weekend witnessed record crowds visit Market Street for the parade as it marched from Independence Hall to Front Street, right past the Franklin Fountain. We had a bird’s eye view for sure. We mingled with old friends (very old, in fact some dated to the Revolutionary and Civil Wars!), exchanged greetings with Mayor Nutter and his wife, who had just been customers earlier in the week and did the Mummers strut with the Ferko String Band.
There were veterans of war, glass blowers from Poland, Asian marching bands and even an 1840 fire pumper wheeled in from the Darby Fire Department. As the sounds of the parade faded, the lineup continued right out the door…all weekend long. Thanks very much to all who visited us on this festive, familial holiday.

So, let’s turn back the clock a few months and see what has happened…

In June, we entered our pastry chef Davina in a dessert competition at the Dock Street Brewery in West Philadelphia. The challenge was to utilize their house-made beer in a dessert (this was sounding too good to be true), so Davina relished the opportunity. A growler or two later she rolled out her “Beeramisu” with a mixed berry compote using their Summer Session and Espresso Porter. Competing against a dozen contemporaries, SHE WON! (or at least shared a 1st prize) Way to go, Davi.

We celebrated Flag Day in true form at the Betsy Ross House, who hosted their annual Flag Fest (Flag Day is June 14th for those who didn’t grow up in a family who decorated their Victorian porch with scores of antique flags, courtesy of Dad the collector). Mr. Jeffrey Heinbach manned the ice cream cart, posed as Charlie Chaplin, complete with worn-out shoes, walking stick and duck-like gait. In other news, Jeff previously had won an online competition for Philly’s Hottest Nerd, beating out national celebrity QuestLove of the Roots. Check Jeff out: http://www.shmittenkitten.com/2009/04/people-have-spoken.html

And speaking of celebrities, in the past week we have sighted a few others at the Fountain including Neil Patrick Harris and Amy Sedaris, who are in town shooting a film. We were hoping that Neil would don Dr. Doogie’s labcoat and get behind the fountain to mix phosphates, but he was out of character for the evening. And speaking of soda jerks, one of ours was recently featured in BON APPETIT magazine, a young lady by the name of Kiersten Wildermuth. She was shown sipping a soda at the Fountain but usually she can be found on the other side of the counter slinging cream with the best of ‘em. Isn’t she the perfect picture of a lady?

July is the month of blueberries and the Blueberry Ice Cream is truer than ever! FRESH – HEALTHFUL – BURSTING WITH FLAVOR. Get some before we go blue in the face telling you about it. And you might try it in our Fourth of July special sundae: “When in the Course of Human Events…” which features RED raspberries, WHITE marshmallow and BLUE-berry ice cream atop with strawberry stripes and whipped cream stars.

Finally, on the afternoon of Sunday July 12th, Adam Richman of the Travel Channel show "Man vs. Food" will film an episode at The Franklin Fountain (to air in September). Featured will be our famous Mt. Vesuvius sundae, among other homemade sweets. The film crew encourages lots of customer attendance and input, so visit the Fountain this Sunday for your chance at sundae stardom!

Stay tuned!

SPRING 1909 SCOOP

WHOOPEE!

The warm weather returns and we’re back, ready to serve you and your family. There’s Spring in Our Steps with 1909 additions to The Franklin Fountain…

We’ve added a number of NEW items to the Fountain. Davina Soondrum, pastry chef extraordinaire, has made many pastry additions to keep the Fountain interesting throughout the Winter. She’s made Whoopee Pies, Marshmallow Peeps and new Clear Toy bunnies and baskets for Easter. The Ice Cream Department has added a Red Raspberry Sorbet and our Lemon Ice to accompany our three Soy Flavors added this week.






Thanks to our milk supplier, Longacres Dairy, we now have a new store fixture to quicken milk delivery. Longacres procures their milk from dairy farmers in Berks and Lancaster counties, and it is grass-fed. The retro milk dispenser has a real milk can soldered to its front door for good looks. Check it out. We hope it speeds your milkshake orders.





The ice cream department has added a new flavor called “Orange Rose Blossom.” Jeff Heinbach, our most veteran soda jerk, invented an ice cream soda titled “The American Beauty” combining this floral ice cream with vanilla soda water…Try it TODAY!

Jeff’s gift of prose with confectionery combinations have helped keep the Fountain “a-float” and he is finally receiving recognition for his work. Local blogger the Shmitten Kitten has nominated Jeff as Philly’s Hottest Nerd in their online contest that ends Friday, so please vote to support our man at www.shmittenkitten.com Turns out that the Philadelphia Weekly has also endorsed Jeff in his pursuit of this monocled moniker, even as his faces stiff competition from national celebrity, Questlove of The Roots.

We’ve boosted the chocolate cocoa content in our chocolate ice cream - to make our chocolate shakes even more richly delicious and we’ll be making our own in house strawberry flavoring for the strawberry ice cream this Spring and Summer with Green Meadow Farm strawberries. Davina has double cooked them in sugar and will be perfect for making our strawberry ice cream have a robust, rounded all natural strawberry appeal.

John Hutchinson and his cabinetmakers of Rose Valley Restorations took a dry, old cigar cabinet (right) from an old pharmacy in Chester, PA and did a beautiful job of bringing back its quarter sawn oak lustre. It now serves as the Dry Goods counter and we’ve added more nostalgic candies including NECCO wafers, Wilbur’s Chocolate Buds as well as many additional bottled sodas like Dad’s Root Beer and Nesbitt’s Strawberry, all related to old time traditions. We’ve also added a section of books for sale related to soda fountains, ice cream history and Benjamin Franklin. Book reviews will blossom naturally in the future as we describe what we’ve learned from them here in the SCOOP!

Finally in the works, Ryan is working on a project downloading all our family’s old pre-war 78 records onto a digital device to play in store for customers. Please bear with us as we try to bring you the best from our home Victrola to the Fountain. Keep your old Philco tuned to this station...

Winter 2009 Scoop!

Winter Greetings from The Franklin Fountain!

We will be open Winter Weekends in the months of January & February and into early March: Friday & Saturday 12-12
Sunday 12-11
Full-time 7 day schedule will resume when the weather warms in mid-March.

Enjoy our December Scoop {below} if you did not receive and be sure to check out our Clear Toy episode on Don Polec's World. We still have a few Clear Toys left from our last production batches...

December SCOOP

Warm Winter Greetings from The Franklin Fountain!

LAST CHANCE FOR CLEAR TOY
The Clear Toy candy has arrived and IS IN. The glassy confections made their colorful appearance in our antique vitrines the day after Thanksgiving. We decided, after being swamped by mail orders last Christmas, that we wanted to simplify our production, cut out shipping and give priority to walk-in customers by stocking the store first. So…we have plenty of candies to offer this year, from large red sailing ships and golden lions to mint green reindeer. Customers are encouraged to visit The Franklin Fountain through December 23rd to pickup Clear Toys that are available in the shop for the holiday. We will be open after Christmas beginning on December 26th and plan to sell off the remaining candies by the New Year.

Last week, the king of quirk in Philadelphia, Don Polec met his match in the Berley Brothers, interviewing them about their candies for his TV show. Don toured the Fountain, learned how to tie a bowtie and put a Clear Toy candy boot in his mouth in a classic display of his tongue-in-cheek (or foot-in-mouth) humor. Check out a snippet online at:
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/don_polec&id=6387560


‘TIS THE SEASONAL ICE CREAMS
Homemade Peppermint glass candies are poured onto a marble slab and broken up for use in our Peppermint Stick Ice Cream, now being served up at the Fountain. Try some with a scoop of hot fudge or bathing in a Hot Chocolate Float. Also, seasonal Egg Nogg Ice Cream has been added to our cabinet, and is a wonderful compliment to our homemade Gingerbread cake…warmed up of course. Caramel Ice Cream rounds out the year for the ice cream dept., and is suggested ala mode apple or peach praline pies.

MARLEY & US
On Monday, December 8th, Marley, the famous Philadelphia pup of Marley & Me fame, made a special PR appearance at The Franklin Fountain. Just having been filmed on TV that morning, Marley was pawing about town promoting his new feature film, to be released in theatres on December 25th. Marley apparently had heard about us from other local canines who have sampled our ice creams, in particular one French poodle from Society Hill with a palate for Peanut Butter. Eric served him up some Vanilla Soy Ice Cream, along with some peanut butter sauce and whipped cream…to which Marley practically leaped over the counter to lick.
Heel, Marley, heel…that’s antique marble!

INSECTS & ICE CREAM
Eric made ice cream history on Saturday, December 13th at the Arden Theatre opening of James & the Giant Peach. He and soda jerk Jesse served our homemade Peach Ice Cream ala chocolate-covered-crickets (a nod to the arthropods in the play). Each child that ate a cricket received an “I ATE A BUG CLUB” button. Suffice it to say, there was plenty of chirping about the room after that…

Fall '08 Scoop

Welcome back!

GRAPES OF WRATH
The leaves are changing and that means The Franklin Fountain is changing too…shifting into “cold weather” mode. We finished out September with a Concord Grape Ice Cream that we branded as the “Grapes of Wrath” for the 75th Anniversary of the New Deal. At the related WPA Poster Festival held at City Hall, Farmer Eric and Laborer Ryan dressed in 1930s attire and gave a stump speech on “Organic Growth in Business” and compared their business to a cherry tree of values. More to come on The Franklin Fountain's values in future editions...

LOCAL APPLE PIES & CIDER
In early October, the Berley Brothers, Davina, Iryna & Tommy attended the National Apple Harvest Festival in Adams County, Pennsylvania. Shortly thereafter, Davina started making pies using local apples, which are scrumptious with a scoop of vanilla a la mode, or in an over-the-top Caramel Apple Pie Hot Milkshake! We’re also featuring Hot Apple Cider, using Lancaster County Cider mulled with spices and fruit.

CENTENNIAL ICE CREAM SODAS
One of the most anticipated events of the year was the opening of the Please Touch Museum. Now housed in a beautifully restored Memorial Hall, originally the Art Gallery for the Centennial Exposition in 1876, the new Please Touch is complete with bright shiny toys, an Alice in Wonderland maze, the old Dickens Village from defunct Strawbridge & Clothiers and the most gorgeous Dentzel carousel
we’ve ever seen. The Berleys, who grew up riding vintage carousels, were most excited about the gala when the Please Touch suggested they serve Root Beer floats. A purple-tie, black dress and tuxedo event drew over 1600 people and raised some much-needed funds for this emerging jewel of Philadelphia culture.

HALT FOR A PUMPKIN MALT!
And what would Fall be without a plenty of that large orange gourd? Pumpkin Ice Cream is certainly the most anticipated flavor of any season, and we traditionally begin making it the first week of fall or the last week of September. Some seasonal specialties are always popular
including a Pumpkin Malt and the “Great Pumpkin Sundae”
which is described on the menu:

“Pumpkin ice cream is entangled in a patch of pecans and covered in vines of Hot Caramel. A World War I flying ace crop-dusts with malt powder & cinnamon. Ghostly puffs of whipped cream appear, as true believers anticipate the coming of The Great Pumpkin each year.”

We will feature Pumpkin Ice Cream and Pumpkin Pies through Thanksgiving. Place your order in advance for fresh homemade pies and ice cream to go-with for the holiday!

HOT CHOCOLATE MENU
Friday October 31st will witness Hallow’een and the entrance of our “Hot Menu” for Winter, in addition to our regular Ice Cream offerings. European Drinking Chocolate accompanied by homemade marshmallows, Wilbur’s Hot Cocoa floating with whipped cream, Hot Milkshakes (a FF original) and a variety of Hot Sodas will warm your soul and make the chilly walk down Market Street all worthwhile. If you’re not in a drinking mood and looking instead for a healthy meal, try a piece of any of our house-made fruit pies, a la mode with a side of ice cream for dessert. Warm up to The Franklin Fountain in the Winter!

PRESS
The first ever "infomercial" was conducted of The Franklin Fountain, free-of-charge, by Comcast On-Demand. Check out the Get Local-Kids & Family section of On-Demand to view our 5 minute spot!

Following Saturday Night Live on NBC, November 15th, The Franklin Fountain will be featured on the TV program "1st Look" on Philadelphia and How to be a Kid Again. The program will also be available for viewing beginning the same day on www.lxtv.com/1stlookphiladelphia/

MISCELLANEA
Thanks to Mother Berley and her antique picture frames, The Franklin Fountain office has updated furnishings with inspiring soda fountain imagery lining our walls, old broadsides and rare ice cream truck photos.

And finally, now to the Phillies. Ryan, Eric and their parents attended Game No.4 and saw Philadelphia's finest wallop the Floridians 10-2 on a gorgeous October evening. HIP HURRAH FOR PHILADELPHIA!

August Scoop!

August Greetings from The Franklin Fountain!

As we head into the sweltering meaty center of the summer, we have a HOT topic to discuss:
Sweat! After enduring a battery of complaints about the heat, sidling up to scoop amongst the soda jerks on seven hour shifts and constantly running up and down four flights of our 19th century building to and from the office, something emerged from the hazy heat {and it wasn’t just perspiration}…The Virtues of Sweat:

I. Let us not forget that we homo sapiens are just another species of animals, which biologically must excrete all sorts of fluids, with transpiration (also termed ‘perspiration’ in some universities) being the most elementary example.

II. Transpiration is a signal to let others humans know that we are feeling a particular way, especially under warm conditions when the anti-arid action is accelerated.

III. Male sweat is thought to contain pheromones that trigger physiological activity in females, increase brain activity in women and peak arousal.

IV. Transpiration contains mainly water, so as the body drinks it up, it must release it in various ways.

V. Sweating shows that we are working. The harder we work, the harder we sweat. This is not to be underestimated or under-exaggerated.

VI. What is the term “sweat equity” without sweat? True equity requires physical output or work to create wealth; otherwise it is hollow materialism.

VII. When we are perspiring together, sweat lubricates the situation.

VIII. Benjamin Franklin penned “No Gains without Pains” and, in particular, promoted
athletics to keep the body trim. Whilst sweating is a sign of our efforts, Dr. Franklin
patented a unique “disposable Underarm Sweat Shields” to absorb the effects upon
others. Don’t believe us? Just check the searchable engine.


A COUPLE OF PRETTY PEACHES

On a more refreshing note, we now are featuring Fresh Peach Ice Cream at the Fountain! A marathon shift including Iryna and Davina, our product managers witnessed the pitting and blanching of over 300 pounds of plump yellow peaches from Green Meadow Farm in Gap, Pennsylvania (that’s Lancaster County for you city folk). The resulting ice cream show the fruits of their labor and sweat of their brow. There’s no purer embodiment of summer than the perfect peach ice cream!

MODERN IMPROVEMENTS

On the other side of the coin, to cut down on the slippery sweaty steps, we’ve installed some ‘improvements’ to make the office run smoother. Earlier in the spring, we bought a pair of early oak intercoms out of the back of a beat-up VW microbus from a local dumpster diver named Neil. After a trip to the antique telephone doctor in Wisconsin, Patrick ran the wiring and these polished beauties {manufactured from the Connecticut Telephone & Electric Co. circa 1915} now ring between the Fountain & the Office.

Picked out of a central New York antiques shop, another contraption was languishing in Ryan’s loft as an object d’art and finally found a use. What was probably once a fishing line winder now functions to lower down messages and checks from the office to the Letitia Street sidewalk. After some experimenting and design tweaks, we’ve found the system actually takes longer than walking the correspondence downstairs but exercises the lesser-used elbow area muscles instead. Not to mention the extreme delight of passersby who might be taking pictures of the 1940s fisherman sign painted on the side of the building. Fish on!

In the Fountain, be sure to turn around and check out the time on our unique Seth Thomas store clock circa 1910. We’ve had our good friends at Alexander Horn & Co. of Wynnewood coordinate the beautiful gold-leaf eglomise advertisement of Franklin to the glass door. Now we just need to remember to wind it every 8 days. As he sent us on our way, Alex told me a little-known historical fact of horology: move the pendulum UP to “speed up” the movement or move the pendulum DOWN to “slow down” the swing, hence the popular phraseology.


BOTTLED BEAUTIES

After some intensive searching and telephone persistence, Iryna was able to source some additional old-fashioned sodas for the Fountain. A Manhattan Special is 7 oz. of carbonated caffeinated coffee bliss, made in Brooklyn since 1895. Try it chilled with a scoop of Maple Walnut on top for an “Old Curmudgeon” ice cream soda. {www.manhattanspecial.com}

Coca-Cola can now be had in three forms at the Fountain: in syrup form drawn from the tap or in two take-home bottle varieties, one the cane sugar version hobble-skirt from Mexico, the other a special limited edition 1910 diamond bottle. All give a quaint and somehow tastier experience than that 64-ouncer in the plastic stein one obtains at the local convenience shop!

July '08 Scoop

R & R
We hope this letter finds you well.
In late June, Ryan and Eric traveled to The Ice Screamers, a collector group in Lancaster County that is interested in the history of ice cream and soda fountains. This is an annual personal vacation to chat with other passionate members from all over the world about ice cream objects. We supplied 3 old-fashioned ice cream flavors served up with accompanying stories, histories and regional interest. We also found a wonderful place to stay in downtown Lancaster, a 19th century tobacco barn converted to a boutique hotel (Lancaster Arts) that was a perfect stepping off ground for some exploring. And treasures abounded! Within a few brick blocks, we found Demuth’s Tobacco Shop, the OLDEST TOBACCO SHOP IN THE COUNTRY! since 1770, remodeled in mahogany in 1917. After a pouch of pipe mixture and a fistful of Pennsylvania leaf-wrapped stogies, we emerged in a cloud of hazy euphoria. Incidentally, if one visits Demuths, be sure to check out the home and studio of Charles Demuth next door, the Precisionist painter whose factory smokestack paintings of the 30s surely must have been influenced by his tobacconist background. And if you can’t make it to Lancaster, one can visit his work at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan in New York City.

Early the next morning, we awoke to visit Lancaster’s legendary Central Farmer’s Market for breakfast baked goods and local produce. For two bachelors, any chance to buy groceries is rare and valuable, and shop we did. Eric was wooed by mouth-watering green stalks being pruned by an elderly woman at Hodecker’s Celery stand while Ryan romanced a pint of organic black raspberries, freshly picked by farmer Tom, a young Mennonite man who has an enterprising gift of gab. At $7 a pint, he was sold and 12 hours later served them at a Rittenhouse Square dinner party, over Franklin ice cream and fudge, of course…

Progress
We hope this letter finds you well. Ryan and Eric have been learning many valuable lessons, from proper delegation and fine-tuning recipes to the systematic care of all aspects of daily store operations like the streamlining simple things such as spoon placement and fudge warmer rotations. As our mind wraps around the idea that we are actually in the restaurant business in the year 2008 and not 1908, we have about 100 years of catch up work. This looks very different from the outside as it does from the inside. While last summer, Ryan and Eric were almost completely tuckered out from 7-day-a-week operations, we’ve realized that it is best to serve our customers by working smarter in our 4th Floor Office, keeping ourselves slimmer & trimmer from the long flight up. We’ve invested into many grassroots efforts and have seen happy returns from those. In their proper place, The Grateful Dead station has been found on our radio for us to connect with the actual chaos most restaurants experience in the 21st Century (see The China Cat Sunflower @ right). It is hard for customers to imagine this world. For us, it has become a performance art. We’ve found this our natural method of meeting customers one cone at a time. While we grapple with compassion for the local homeless population which seem to lap up our cream from trash cans the city is disregarding, we can only feel helpless to solve problems beyond our control, but by meeting them one human being at a time.

With the assistance of our accountant, we have tackled and learned Quickbooks, a program of vital necessity for any small time business like ours. Our accounting system at best had been up until this point a cigar box method of cash accounting and money drops at our local bank up the street paying every bill immediately in cash or check. Quickbooks, however, is best found by losing oneself in the slowness of the past, namely thinking at 1908 speed to absorb as much information as we can along the way. While we’re puttering along in a hand-cranked Model T, most businesses operate in gas guzzling turbo-charged Hummers along The Indianapolis Speedway. The Art Deco mantra of speed has been implemented in our most critical areas. More light gives us a chance to see what we’re doing. Not only have we multiplied positions (summer driver, prep crew, 3 ice cream makers and 3 designated managers), we have also multiplied systems for keeping all of this well-cared for and managed, properly-ensuring the quality and consistency of customer experience at every level. While we have certainly sped along, we have so much further to comprehend as we live paradoxically into the 21st Century.


Around The Town
In addition to giving an ice cream demonstration at Foster’s Urban Homeware on Saturday June 28th, the Fountain was featured in a variety of Philadelphia news channels in the month of June and July. Two online press pieces of note: streetalkin.com and Channel 3’s feature on the shop, which will air online again this weekend Finally, CNN 8 featured the brothers cranking homemade blueberry ice cream early in the morning of July 9th live in their studios at the PSFS building.

Just this Monday, the demolition crew arrived early to start dismantling our neighbor’s building at 112 Market Street. Ryan jumped at the chance to salvage the Victorian tin ceiling and he and Patrick expended great energies over the next few days taking it apart, panel by panel. The building, only half remaining of a 19th century brick structure, once housed Feitig & Son Meats in 1918, and a massage parlor later in the century as evidenced by the cedar-paneled sauna that was torn out. If the real estate market holds its stomach, a 5-story condominium building will rise from the dust.


Nothing’s New That’s Not Old
We’re belting out the 7th Inning Stretch Sundae in ode to the popular 1908 song “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” FOX News will be featuring the Berley brothers serving up this sundae on their morning show Monday July 14th at 8:50am in anticipation of their station's All Star Game coverage.

We have also called up from the dug out: fresh locally sourced Blueberry and Black Raspberry ice creams for July.

Eric is moving into one of the apartments above the Fountain, with a whole new outlook on personal materialism. He’s literally lived out of milk crates and an aesthetic performance lifestyle for 4 hectic years and is looking forward to a shorter commute!