This popular ice cream shop wants to expand in Fresno, motor oil flavor included
A popular Central Coast ice cream shop wants to open 100 new shops in California – and it has set its sights on the Fresno area.
Doc Burnstein’s Ice Cream Lab, based in Arroyo Grande, has locations in that city, San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria.
The Doc Bernstein’s name may be familiar to Valley residents who vacation at the Central Coast. Its No. 1 flavor is motor oil, which is dark chocolate ice cream with fudge ribbons and Kahlua. The flavor was created for a car show and the name stuck.
You can find this brand of ice cream in the Fresno area already, at Chosen Frozen Yogurt at Chestnut and Shepherd avenues. Bravo Farms, the giant rest stop/gift shop/restaurant in Kettleman City, also sells it.
Doc Burnstein’s executives announced Wednesday that they hope to open the 100 shops by 2026. They plan to start with three in Sacramento this year and hopefully others in Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley in 2020.
The company is already looking for locations in Fresno, said CEO Michael Boyer.
“We are definitely scouting for locations in Fresno,” he said. “That’s something that is important to us. We have a great following in Fresno.
He added that the company likes “Main Street, USA types of opportunities, Old Town Clovis is interesting, so those types of scenarios.”
Sacramento will open first, but real estate and construction employees are also looking for locations throughout Fresno and Tulare counties.
The community-owned company has shareholders in Fresno.
Other connections to the area: The cream that is turned into ice cream comes from Fresno-based Producers Dairy and the eggnogg for its holiday flavors comes from Top O’ The Morn Farms in Tulare.
In addition to the motor oil flavor, Doc Burnstein’s also has more traditional flavors, like mint Oreo and chocolate. But there are also creative ones like merlot raspberry truffle and Jack & Coke, made with a hint of Jack Daniels and a Coca-Cola swirl.
The company has long had aspirations of transforming itself into a national name like Ben and Jerry’s. Now, it says it’s poised to take the next big first step.
New CEO Boyer and co-founder and Board Chair Greg Steinberger told The Tribune in San Luis Obispo that they hope the Central Coast business will start getting statewide and eventually national recognition in the coming years.
“Since its inception, the goal has been to be a nationwide brand,” Steinberger said in a phone interview with The Tribune Wednesday. “We’ve been a bit slow with that, but a lot of businesses are. But we are getting to that point in the business cycle now where it starts to ramp up and we can get started growing.”
Boyer said the company has laid the groundwork and is ready to push toward its target of opening 100 new shops.
The company will focus on Sacramento first and is currently in lease negotiations to open the first Doc Burnstein’s in the coming months, said Boyer and Steinberger, though they declined to share specific details until everything is finalized.
They are also looking at two other locations in Sacramento for other shops to open this year, Boyer said.
Next year, they plan to add five additional new stores: Steinberger said those could be in the San Joaquin Valley area (Fresno and its Valley counterparts have long been a target for him because of brand recognition among visitors to the Central Coast) or in the Bay Area and Northern California.
According to Steinberger, a big factor in the company’s latest push for expansion was the investment of Sacramento-based Aulon Arch Inc. in recent years.
The small business investment firm was integral in the hiring of Boyer and the decision to grow Doc Burnstein’s into Sacramento, Steinberger said.
“They are really a like-minded investment firm,” Steinberger said.
How much the company invested into Doc Burnstein’s was not immediately available Wednesday afternoon.
Ultimately, the company wants to expand what started as a Central Coast sweet shop into a national household name.
Doc Burnstein’s becoming a national chain?
The ice cream chain began in Arroyo Grande in 2003; roughly a decade later, Steinberger laid his eyes on a larger audience.
He first offered public shares in the company in 2013 and again in 2017 to help grow the business beyond San Luis Obispo County; he also later opened a production facility in Grover Beach in 2016 that allowed it to double its ice cream production.
The ice cream is also available in “scoop shops” (mini versions of the stand-alone parlors) around the Central Coast.
Steinberger previously told The Tribune that he hoped to transform the business into a household name, akin to Ben and Jerry’s. “We want Doc Burnstein’s to be No. 1 in the hearts and minds of America,” he told The Tribune in an interview in April 2017.
“When they think of ice cream, we want them to think Doc Burnstein’s.”
Even as it expands into a statewide and then national name, both Steinberger and Boyer said the company will continue to operate out of the Central Coast. Boyer said they plan to keep most or all of their production in San Luis Obispo County.
Currently the business produces 75,000 gallons (roughly 1.4 million scoops) of ice cream per year.
As the brand grows, Boyer said he anticipates the Central Coast, and their South County production facility in particular, becoming a destination for ice cream tourists — people who want to see a production facility and exactly how Doc Burnstein’s ice cream gets made, he said. Boyer said he anticipates the expanded company will be a large source of head-of-household jobs in the county, even helping to ease some of the loss of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant near Avila Beach in 2025.
Toward that end, the business is opening its first corporate office in downtown San Luis Obispo in April.
This story was originally published March 22, 2019 at 11:48 AM.
