Here's how it works: When the frozen pints come out of the deep freeze of the Spiral Hardener, they aren't just frozen -- they're frozen as solid as a rock (and they need to stay that way, so we have to work fast). A conveyor belt carries the pints out to the main part of our storage freezer, where it's about 20 degrees below zero, and where our very bundled-up Freezer Workers work at The Bundler. Just before they reach The Bundler, every other pint is turned over by a special device called the Invertor. This process allows for the pints to fit more closely together (like shoes in a shoe box) in a nice, tight package -- the Sleeve, remember? As they move into The Bundler, 8 pints are selected automatically and held together while the machine wraps them in a clear plastic wrap that resembles Saran Wrap. The Sleeve is pushed into an oven with a temperature of 500 degrees Fahrenheit for about 3 seconds. That is just long enough to cause the plastic wrap to shrink and become very tough and yet not long enough to greatly affect the ice cream.
The Sleeves are stacked onto pallets, wrapped one more time with shrink-wrap, then shipped by tractor-trailer trucks to our huge freezer warehouse in Rockingham, Vermont. They are held in the warehouse awaiting shipment to every state in the U.S., as well as to international markets (in Canada, the United Kingdom, the Benelux countries, and France).
And that's it for this cyber-sneak-peek of our ice cream Factory Tour —
we hope you enjoyed it, but hey, let's face it: an ice cream tour on the
Internet just cannot be as interactive as the real live tour at our real live
factory, especially when it's time to eat the free samples.........
So, did you want to take another look at those directions to Waterbury?
Can't come to Vermont to take our Factory Tour, but still want to learn
about cows and farms and ice cream? Try wandering around in some of
the following Web-pastures: