If you visit the Chudnow Museum, one of the first exhibits you will see is our ice cream shop and soda fountain at Wonderland Park. As you can see by the sign on the wall, our Wonderland Park exhibit showcases ice cream by Luick Dairy. The Luick Dairy was a local Milwaukee family owned business. They were especially famous for their ice cream.
Most ice cream companies at the time only produced ice cream in vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. Luick made these three standard flavors, but also had a “flavor of the day”, much like many of the custard shops in Milwaukee today. The Luick company developed new machinery that allowed them to mix ingredients like fruit and nuts throughout the ice cream without everything settling to the bottom, which tended to happen. This was what created the opportunity for new flavors. Soon, other companies began to look at the Luick equipment and copy it for their own.
Another thing that Luick did was sell ice cream in cardboard containers so that customers could take it home. Now that more homes were beginning to have electric refrigerators instead of ice boxes, ice cream could stay frozen at home, so Luick made it possible for people to buy ice cream to go. They were the first ice cream company in Milwaukee to do this, making them very popular.
Sometime in the late 1940s, Luick was bought out by Sealtest. Gradually the Luick name was dropped completely. We do still get visitors to the museum who remember Luick, though!
One other notable event in Luick’s history is that it was robbed by a number of gangsters in 1937. Unfortunately one detective and one of the robbers were killed in the trouble.
National Ice Cream Day is celebrated each year on the 3rd Sunday in July and is a part of National Ice Cream Month.
By Kayla Sutherland
Associate, Chudnow Museum of Yesteryear
By Kayla Sutherland
Associate, Chudnow Museum of Yesteryear
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