QCBJ Newsmakers: Whitey’s celebrates 90 years with ‘co-owners’

This story is part of the QCBJ’s Newsmakers edition. This year-end wrap-up from the staff of the Quad Cities Regional Business Journal includes some of the biggest stories we brought you in 2023. It's also a tradition by our parent company, Corridor Media Group, based in North Liberty, Iowa. This story was originally published in May 2023.

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As Whitey’s Ice Cream marks 90 years in business this week, the Tunberg family is inviting a large and still growing community of co-owners to join in the celebration. “We’ve always said, the Quad Cities community has always taken ownership of Whitey’s,” said Jon Tunberg, who along with brother Jeff Tunberg are the legal co-owners of the iconic ice cream store.  “It’s a family business, but the family has gotten bigger,” added Jeff Tunberg. That list of community “owners” is a long and well-traveled one. It has been growing for just short of a century and includes a number of prominent Quad Citians who once wore Whitey’s now signature Red and White.

Take Quad Cities Chamber CEO LaDrina Wilson, for example. “For many years, Whitey’s has been a staple in our community. Serving as many youths’ first job, myself included, Whitey’s set the standard for service and defined what it means to operate in excellence,” said Ms. Wilson.  “This local employer’s impact on this community goes beyond making sweet treats that are second to none,” the founder and CEO of Iman Consulting added. “Their legacy includes creating and building a framework on how to start and grow your business, developing a talent pipeline that develops the next generation of leaders and building your brand into its own culture. I’m proud that our community is on its third generation of family leadership of an establishment such as Whitey’s.” From the beginning, Whitey’s was a family business and fathers Jon and Jeff Tunberg are proud to say that their daughters Annika and Jenny are now the third generation of the Tunberg family to join the fold. It’s the fourth generation if you count founder Chester “Whitey” Lindgren as a member of the Tunberg "family," and the brothers clearly do. The story of Whitey’s beginnings is well known among its legion of fans. Still, the QCBJ was surprised to discover there were new things to learn from Jon and Jeff Tunberg and Jon’s daughter Annika Tunberg, who returned to the Quad Cities to serve as a Whitey’s vice president after a marketing career that took her to New York and Chicago.

A family affair from the first

Consider, for example, that the beginning of this happy company’s story isn’t as sweet as ice cream lovers might expect. “It started out of desperation and despair because 1933 was the Great Depression,” the brothers told the QCBJ. Mr. Lindgren had been making ice cream in Aurora, Illinois, for Borden’s. After the stock market crash in 1929, he lost his job and came home to the Quad Cities area where he used the skills he had learned at Borden’s to open the first Moline Whitey’s Ice Cream store. Two years later, Whitey and his wife Connie met Bob Tunberg, then 15, who lived just over a block from their shop. “He walked up and became Whitey’s best employee and our dad didn’t have a dad. We never had a grandfather so Whitey was the closet thing to a grandfather we had,” said Jon Tunberg.

How close were they? When Bob Tunberg and his wife Norma bought the business from Whitey in 1953, Ms. Lindgren worked for the new owners for a year for free. Whitey also co-signed for a loan that day for a car – perhaps the one in the photo that accompanies this story – because the Tunbergs had no money.  “Things like these don’t happen every day,” Jon Tunberg said. The Tunberg brothers credit Whitey and their parents for the way they run their business, how they invest in their community and the deep faith that guides their lives.  Their earliest memories include watching their mother do the payroll and pay bills in the small office attached to the ice cream store on a desk made from a piece of plywood atop some milk crates. The Tunbergs said they learned from their parents how best to serve their customers and their community. “‘Take care of those who take care of you,’ our dad used to say, and our employees take care of us, our customers take care of us, our community takes care of us and, of course, both of them had strong faith and they passed that along to us as well,” Jeff Tunberg said. In addition to working, raising children and cooking and cleaning at home, their mother was president of the Garfield School’s PTA and a member of “the Junior Board of Quad Cities back when it was probably new.”  “She was an amazing woman. She could do it all,” Jon Tunberg recalled. “Our dad loved the ice cream business. Our mother was probably a little more pragmatic and was probably a better business person than our dad and they were a heck of a team.” Jon Tunberg said that their father – who was always grateful for having been blessed with two healthy children – eagerly supported Easter Seals. The Tunberg brothers followed suit and continued when the charity became Children’s Therapy. That board is one of many Annika Tunberg has joined since coming home.

Whitey’s largess focuses on local charities, but not exclusively. The Tunbergs also support global charities, for example, the American Red Cross, because the money stays here.  “I think our customers support us so much. They all have charities that are important to them so we are reached out quite often for donation requests and we try to share the wealth so we can support a lot of different schools, charities,” Ms. Tunberg said. “I love the Quad Cities and I am very thankful to be back here,” she added. “I think there’s a lot of things you realize when you’re not in the Quad Cities that you miss about the Quad Cities.” That includes, she said, being able to get involved in the community and a company you really care about. It’s “something that you can’t put a price tag on,” she said. The Tunberg brothers also have invested deeply in the community through hospital boards and foundations, Augustana College, Salvation Army, parks departments, church boards and more. With the addition of a new generation of leaders, the men find themselves standing in their father Bob’s footsteps. The brothers said when they joined their dad at Whitey’s they began re-evaluating such things as vendor contracts. “Now Annika is changing all our vendors,” Jeff Tunberg teased.

COVID-19 brings changes

That kind of supply flexibility would prove critical during COVID-19, which shut down Whitey’s for weeks due to supply chain issues. “We have a great team in place and we were so fortunate because when everything happened there were so many things that were changed initially that we had to get our heads wrapped around everything,” Ms. Tunberg added. For example, finding available masks that would allow the stores and wholesale operation to open.  “Our employees were just amazing,” she added. “Running out to cars constantly (taking and delivering orders). They were still able to come to work and still enjoyed being here.” Jon Tunberg added, “It was a hair over five weeks and we kept all the employees employed based on the hours they had worked. And the grocery store business continued because packaged ice cream was being delivered.” It was a challenging time for Whitey’s, which at this writing had 286 employees, 40 of them working in Whitey’s office and wholesale and manufacturing operations. The remainder work in the company’s stores and those numbers have been swelling as college students return to work at Whitey’s during summer vacation.

Whitey’s recipe for success

What has been the secret of Whitey’s 90 years of success? “It’s not rocket science,” Jeff Tunberg said. “It’s just a quality product, clean environment and friendly and knowledgeable service.” Service and high standards are an important part of Whitey’s story, of course, but at the heart of its success is the product itself: the ice cream. The Tunbergs have always concentrated on using only the finest ingredients. That’s evident from a warehouse packed with high-quality gallon jugs of vanilla and other flavorings, pallets stacked with Oreo cookies and the area where Whitey’s busy baker and helpers cook up the flavorful additions that make up the evolving industry-leading inventions and innovations that have been the brand’s trademark. The most important, Jeff Tunberg told the QCBJ, came in 1979 when Jon Tunberg invented the Butterfinger milkshake. Whitey’s was the first to successfully combine the two. Other candy flavored concoctions soon followed. Then there are Whitey’s Oreo Cookie-flavored products. These days, the flavoring is so popular in a number of its products, Whitey’s uses nearly a million Oreos every year at the stores and in its manufacturing centers, Ms. Tunberg said. Whitey’s also featured pumpkin ice cream years before Starbucks made pumpkin flavoring a national craze. The Moline-based Whitey’s also is credited with creating chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream long before Ben & Jerry’s introduced the product to a national audience. The Quad Cities company also built its own malt machines to ensure that their signature shakes were as thick as possible. More recently, Whitey’s created the first no-sugar added ice cream. Said Jeff Tunberg, whose daughter is diabetic, “We worked with the Splenda people and we were the first ones to put Splenda in ice cream as a sweetener.” Whitey’s made sample cups for the sweetener’s parent company to send around the country. “These are things that we have done for ourselves, but in the long run we don’t want to say, ‘Oh, it’s changed the industry.’ But we have had an impact on the industry. Just ‘lil old Moline Whitey’s,” Jon Tunberg said. All of those things have combined to make Whitey’s a signature Quad Cities company and attraction. “Whitey’s brand and its importance to the QC experience is something that Visit Quad Cities is always proud to share,” said Dave Herrell, president and CEO of Visit Quad Cities. “Delivering decades of happiness to Quad Citizens and visitors is a huge part of our story and we are grateful for the Tunberg family and all they do for our regional destination. Congratulations on 90 and cheers to many more.” As its 100th birthday draws near, what else is in the cards for Whitey’s? “Who’s to say right now what the future holds,” Annika Tunberg said. “But we would love to have more of a presence and continue growing.”

Whitey’s – By the Numbers

• 90 – The number of years Whitey’s Ice Cream has been in business. 
• 90 cents – That’s the price of all cones during Whitey’s Birthday Week which begins today and will run through Sunday, May 21.
• 99 out of 100: That’s the score Whitey’s Graham Central Station ice cream received when it won flavor of the year at the World Dairy Expo in 2012. The Chipper also won best ice cream sandwich by the same score in 2018.
• 800,000+: The number of shakes Whitey’s sold in 2022.
• Nearly 1 million: The number of Oreos used in its stores and ice cream each year.
• 250,000 cookies: Baked each year for Whitey’s popular Chippers.
• 400,000 gallons: The average amount of ice cream mix used each year.
• $115,000: The money donated to military veterans groups through the sale of Sgt. Camo ice cream since 2009.
• 12,528: The number of pounds of graham revel used in 2022 for Whitey’s Graham Central Station, Key Lime Pie and Banana Graham.
• 50 licks: The average number needed to finish a scoop of ice cream. Fun fact: Vanilla is Whitey’s top-selling ice cream flavor.
• 8-10 degrees Fahrenheit: Ideal temp to scoop ice cream.
• Minus 25 degrees: The temperature of Whitey’s main freezer.
• 74,736: The amount of  Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Whitey's used in its shakes/malts last year.
• 12,000: The most popular treat of the month Whitey’s had ever had (outside of Pumpkin Shakes) was the Lemon Bar Shakes.  Whitey’s sold nearly 12,000 in one month alone. 

Source: Annika Tunberg, vice president, Whitey’s Ice Cream

NEWSMAKERS UPDATE

90-year-old iconic brand still focused on tech innovation

It would have been understandable if the leaders of Whitey’s Ice Cream took a little time to rest on their laurels after a 90th birthday celebration that attracted well wishes from across the U.S. and beyond. But planning and innovation continue to be key ingredients in Whitey’s recipe for success and the word from this iconic Quad Cities brand is that new technological advances are coming to Whitey’s Ice Cream Manufacturing, Inc., facility on 41st Street in Moline.  That doesn’t mean, of course, that the Tunbergs aren’t thrilled and grateful to all who joined their May 2023 birthday party.  “We had a great year following our historic 90th anniversary celebration in May,” Annika Tunberg, Whitey’s vice president, told the QCBJ in October as its employees worked to keep up with seasonal demand for its signature Pumpkin Ice Cream, shakes, malts and Harvest Chippers. “The celebration really kicked off the summer in a big way and it was so fantastic to see the excitement that the anniversary brought to our stores. We were so touched by how much the Quad City community came out to support us that week; it is something we will always remember,” Ms. Tunberg said. At the same time, however, Ms. Tunberg, Whitey’s owners Jon and Jeff Tunberg and their family of staff is preparing for more. “Looking towards the year ahead, we have some exciting new technology coming into our plant,” promised Ms. Tunberg, who is Jon Tunberg’s daughter. “Two new ice cream makers are being put into production at the end of the year that will be able to increase our output while still maintaining the quality our customers expect to find in our product.” In addition, she said, “We are looking forward to the future and can’t wait for our next big anniversary celebration.” — Kenda Burrows