Mandatory Milwaukee is all about the latter. Its three locations Greenfield, Brookfield, Glendale are gleaming summer beacons of goodness, simplicity, and big-ass burgers. Only in Milwaukee, a city stuffed to the gills with custard joints, can people choose sides in the friendly frozen war. Maybe Northpoint gets your love. On the road and far away from the metro Milwaukee area? Decades upon decades later, Milwaukee is the unofficial frozen custard capital of the world.
But why? Because the cows in California are too hot. Cows in the Midwest, in the winter, shake and shiver. You know, because they always kind of congregated. I can speak German. Let's go there. In Milwaukee. I can remember going to parties there; they had like little social events. Is that where your parents had settled, on that side of town? My mom had some places on the East Side of Downtown. The one I remember is on Burleigh, 24th and Burleigh. So fairly close to Jefferson Hall.
Right, so that's where they met and that's where they hung out together, but then what happened, they had a friend. He was a German guy, too. You know, they all hung with Germans, right? Because they could speak it. His name was Art Richter, and he had the Milky Way. And so she went to work for him, because they were always trying to make it better.
They had the opportunity now to go to America and so they didn't want to squelch that, you know? So they said, "Well, if we got to work a couple extra hours, we're going to do it. We're going to save some money and then we're going to buy our own house.
Then when we buy our own house, we're going to get a duplex, and then we're going to rent it out. That was on 63rd and Capitol. Your mom took over at some point and managed the place, right?
Right, she took it over, because he was expanding. He was an aggressive guy, and he had the one on Bluemound Road. And then he had the one on Port Washington Road where I am now. And you know, so he's expanding and she went to work for him, and then he said, "Do you want to go in on some sort of Some kind of deal.
So they did that. She was working at Militzer's, too, wasn't she? Was this concurrent? Off season. You know, the custard stands used to close up. So then she would go to work at Militzer and Mrs. Militzer was so good to her. She was a Dutch woman, but you know Dutch and German isn't that far apart.
And so she said, you know, that she's working there and she'd like to open her own place. He said, "Oh, I'll help you. Karl Kopp with his parents and sisters. Was he selling machines at that point?
I think he was. This is not to take anything away from Leon because he was clearly a good guy, he helped a lot of people out, but he also wanted people to open custard stands because he wanted to sell them machines. Oh, absolutely. He was a very good businessman. Smart man. So then your mom is really running this business because your dad who was working in a machine shop Tool and dye.
He took sick and it was such a sad thing, and I still remember it now. At the time, you think, "Well, he's sick. He'll be all right again," or something. You were fairly young at that point. Yeah, and he brought his tools home, so it had to be a terrible event for him to bring everything home on his last day , you know. He went to school in Germany, he was enrolled in one of the best and here, when he went to Globe Union, he worked there and they thought he was just great because he had very little waste, or whatever.
I can just imagine what that last day would be like, but at the time, I couldn't. So your mom is sort of a no-nonsense person, it sounds like, right?
She just forges forward and says, "It's on me. I don't know. For whatever reason she decides she wants her name on the front. So then she and my dad It's a progressive disease, as you well know, so in the beginning it wasn't good, but it wasn't as bad. He could feed himself and he could do things. He could shave, and he could do all his little things. They were concerned that, you know, he had the tremors and they thought that people might say, "Is that contagious?
There were no trash cans, so they would just throw all the paper cups on the ground. He would go out and clean up the parking lot and they didn't have any sort of garbage people who picked it up or did this or that. Right there was a field and a couple of oil cans and he would burn the trash. Did she build that stand? So that was just an empty lot when she got it? Did Leon help her with that? He kind of set it up for her a little bit, you know. It wasn't anything fancy or anything, but it worked.
He was very, very good to her, and then they would deliver a piece of equipment that was crated up. What's she going to do with a crate, right? So he was very, "So I'll get somebody to fix it for you, get it for you, open it up. We'll do it. So he was very, very good.
Let's jump ahead a little bit. When it opened in , at that point, how old were you? I don't know, 10, Were you working there already?
She'd say, "Well, come along with me. You've got to take over for dad, pick up the parking lot. Then later on we got busy and I can still remember that.
I was there and I guess I peeled onions. Beautiful job. Did you like it? Were you happy to go along with her and help, or did you feel like it was a chore? Oh, you know, you complain as a kid. You go, "My friends are doing this and that, and I'm over here peeling onions.
What's this? Did your sisters work there, too? Yeah, my older sister worked there, too. We had carhops there and my sister wanted to be a carhop, so she was. Anything she did, she was very, very good at, so she did that but after a while the custard business wasn't for her. She went to Marquette. She went on and became a nurse and nurse teachers, and all sorts of things, but the custard business wasn't in her blood. Lizzie, that's my sister Your little sister?
Yeah, she got to be a mom at a young age, and my mom helped her. They all worked together, right? And at that point, my dad was pretty sick where he couldn't do much for himself, so you had to be there with him.
My mom had to go to work at the drive-in and my sister was home feeding her young child, and she said, "I'm going to bring Papa over today because he can't stay alone.
Run custard stands and they take care of each other. Did she ever work at the custard stand? Oh, sure, I can remember sometimes. Then after a while I took it over. Did you want to do that, or did you feel obligated? I felt a little obligated, and I also thought, well I didn't go to college," so I kind of got involved in running it myself. Eventually, my mother said, she says, "Take it over now.
Run the place. You're going to run it. You got your ideas, I got mine. You do it your way. Yeah, she was pretty good, but she charged me rent, and when the rent was due, the rent was due. I can remember a lot of times at night, I'd be busy. I didn't have enough help or I didn't have enough My sister lived a block away. Without them, it would have been difficult. But will the joy factor remain?
It seems so. Succession plans are underway at the Big Three. And Tom Linscott says he is starting what he hopes is a long, slow transition for the newly remodeled Gilles to be owned and operated by his son, Willy. But one question remains: Which frozen custard tastes best? Every Milwaukeean has his or her own opinion, it seems, and many of the opinions seem based on which brand the person grew up eating.
All three use a mix as the basis of the product, and the results are similar. But focusing on differences might be beside the point. Linscott says frozen custard offers an opportunity to focus on similarities.
Seventy-year-old machines making a dairy dessert every day have to be pretty frightening inside. Mitch Teich. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Close Privacy Overview This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website.
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