Cold comfort returning
Brenham still reeling as Blue Bell trickles back after listeria scare
BRENHAM — The chill blasting from the freezer at H-E-B was nothing next to the one that shot up Lorri Cales’ spine at the sight of Blue Bell ice cream back on the shelves.
Her husband, a Blue Bell truck driver, has been on reduced hours since May 15, when the company slashed its workforce after a listeria outbreak forced the first recall in 108 years and threatened to take down a Texas institution. The couple canceled their 20th anniversary celebration cruise and struggled to pay graduation expenses for the eldest of their four children.
They watched their hometown, an island of industry in the pastoral hills between Houston and Austin, sink into a depression, as other employers in the county of 34,000 also announced layoffs this summer.
So it was that at 6 a.m. Monday, ice cream became the breakfast of choice among Blue Bell devotees in the brand’s beleaguered birthplace. The initial stock of 1,100 half gallons sold out between 5:45 and 8:15 a.m., or one every eight seconds. The second delivery — 600 half
›› See photos from the day at HoustonChronicle.com/BlueBellBack
›› Memes celebrate Blue Bell’s return: Chron.com/BlueBellMemes
gallons — sold out by 9:45 a.m. At $5.99 a piece, the store had moved more than $10,000 in ice cream before midmorning, even with customers limited to four tubs each. A third delivery was expected.
Around the corner in the freezer aisle, the doors remained unfogged, proof that no one had reached for the Ben & Jerry’s.
Scarcely mentioned amid the frenzy Monday, at least in Brenham, was the reason Blue Bell had gone away: The ice cream sickened 10 people with listeria and hastened the deaths of three hospital patients, all across four states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The contamination dated at least to 2010, and FDA records showed Blue Bell knew it had listeria on non-food-contact surfaces in its plants but did not extend testing to the ice cream or to machines that would later be implicated. It eventually had to shut everything down to clean up and retool its plants.
Summer of despair
To take a bite of Homemade Vanilla, Dutch Chocolate or Cookies ’n Cream on Monday morning in Brenham was to rejoice at the end of a summer of despair, to hope that those first sweet tastes were merely a prelude. Blue Bell has a long way to go to recover its place in the national ice cream market.
And in Brenham, the flagship plant is still not running or fully employed, and it is no longer drawing 200,000 people a year for tours that help keep the broader Washington County economy humming. The company hasn’t said when production will resume, but Mayor Milton Tate said it could happen in October or November.
The Brenham hospitality sector is anxious to hear Blue Bell’s plans regarding tours. Some have feared that they would be discontinued given the extensive plant renovations and intense scrutiny of production processes following the outbreak.
“We hope to reopen for tours at some point, but no decision has been made as to when,” spokesman Joe Robertson said in an email.
Of three major Blue Bell Creameries plants, only one in Alabama is producing. That plant is shipping to Central and Southeast Texas in a slowly phased return to market and making Cales’ husband something of a celebrity on Interstate 10 when his truck pulls into rest areas, generating honks and pleas for free pints. He made eight trips to Sylacauga in the last month.
“You’re like a god on I-10,” she told him.
Offline since April 24, the plant here was part of a local industrial collapse. Husbands and wives lost jobs simultaneously. People nearing retirement who had known no other work since high school were suddenly adrift in their hometown.
It stung so much that Assistant U.S. Secretary of Commerce Jay Williams appeared in Brenham on Monday — a coincidence in timing — to announce a $1.35 million grant from the Economic Development Administration for an expansion of the Blinn College workforce and technical training center, which had run out of room.
Williams also held a private roundtable with community leaders about job creation strategies. Local officials praised the administration for responding rapidly to their application, making the largest grant of its kind in Texas this year, Williams said.
Unemployment increases
Washington County unemployment rose from 3.5 percent in April, the month before Blue Bell and other industries laid off workers, to 5.5 percent in July. The latter rate is artificially low because it represents only those who have sought unemployment benefits and doesn’t account for workers who have gone elsewhere, said Page Michel, president of the Brenham-Washington County Chamber of Commerce. In their grant application, officials said they expected a rate as high as 7 percent.
Blue Bell laid off 235 full-time and 109 part-time employees in Brenham. Another 300 were furloughed. Stanpac, which produces all of Blue Bell’s cartons, followed with 47 layoffs.
Valmont Industries, maker of engineered products for agriculture and infrastructure, laid off 170 in a realignment. And MIC Group, a producer of parts for the oil and gas industry, let go of 63 as crude prices plummeted.
“I think we see the light, even if our people are not back to work,” Tate said, saying the grant for the training center would double the community’s workforce development efforts. The college, local economic development groups and county are contributing $650,000.
Blue Bell was the top-selling ice cream brand and thirdranking ice cream company in the United States, even though it sold in only 23 states before the recall, netting $870 million in 2014 sales. New figures from the market analysis firm Euromonitor show Blue Bell managed $330 million in sales before the April recall, a possible sign of its recent expansions into new territories, such as Las Vegas. It has dropped to 10th among U.S. brands and could fall further with its limited production capacity.
It’s now testing every lot that comes off the line to ensure safety.
Ice cream a religion
That may be needed to lull back the broader constituency, but ice cream is religion here. At Must Be Heaven, a throwback diner and ice cream parlor in Brenham’s throwback town square, owner Charlie Pyle has not recognized another brand for 33 years.
Riffing off a verse in the biblical book of Joshua, a sign on his empty ice cream case Monday morning declared, “As for me and my household, we will serve Blue Bell.” He got a delivery that afternoon.
It’s an open secret that home freezers in Brenham held pints and half gallons long after the recall, against the advice of health experts.
That includes the freezer that feeds Kim Jones and her three children, ages 12, 7 and 7. Her family stopped at H-E-B on Monday on the way to school.
Asked about the deaths, she looked at her son, who clutched a tub of Cookies ’n Cream, festooned in an old-timey scoop shop hat and only a spoon short of bliss.
“We’ve grown up on it, so we ate it anyway,” she said. “It was very sad, but we still kept our faith in Blue Bell.”