September 1, 2021 • 37 mins
This brand uses cryogenic technology to create treats containing tiny, tingling-cold pellets of ice cream. Anney and Lauren connect the science and history of Dippin’ Dots.”
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Favor Production of iHeart Radio. I'm
Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And today we have
an episode for you about Dippin Dots. Yes, yes, it's
very interesting. A lot of paths we've got to explore
with this one. Oh yeah, I was. I was so
psyched to do this reading I Actually we've had We've
(00:29):
had a lot of really fun ones recently. Um. I
was more tickled by that Nutritional Label episode than than
I really thought I would be. And I knew that
I would be tickled by it. So yeah, and this
one's really really interesting. Um. And yeah, not a sponsor,
just by ipe, we were just interested in it. Um
(00:50):
I did. I loved dippin Dots as a kid. I
don't think I had it very often because it wasn't
when I was growing up. It was very relegated to
theme parks and in Mikey's, particularly water parks, which where
I got it, and my local theater did sell it
when I got older. Um, but yeah, I usually got
(01:12):
it at water parks and chocolate was my favorite flavor
and my best friend who are parents, got a season
passed to a local water park one so we went
like a yeah. And it's really funny because one time
they made us go after Harry Potter and the Order
of the Phoenix came out and we had finished the
book the night before and we were just so upset.
(01:34):
I couldn't figure out why we were like PiZZ But
she loved the rainbow flavor. She loved I would always
get chocolate, She would always get rainbow shubert Um. But
it's been on my mind recently because there have been
a couple of news stories about explosions at the Dippon
Dutt factory Dippon Dot's I guess the manufacturing center. Um.
(01:56):
No one was seriously injured, and I was just like,
what's going on, Yeah, yeah, yes, uh yeah yeah, there
have been a few news stories lately. Um. I. I
also enjoyed them when I was a kid. My first
experience with them was that they had a kiosk at
my local mall um in South Florida, and that's that
(02:16):
is where I encountered them, and I was like, this
is bizarre and wonderful and I want it all the time.
And uh yeah, I think I think Neapolitan was my
solid choice. I really liked the way they melted. I
liked the way that, like a spoonful, they would all
be these like separate beads and then you put them
(02:38):
in your mouth and the heat of your mouth would
melt them in a really interesting way. That was like,
That's what I really liked about it. But yeah, we're
going to get into all the science, interesting science around that.
But you can see our space Foods episode and our
freeze during episode for a bit more. Also, I guess
(02:58):
gelato and I maybe um, definitely frozen food. You know,
they're sure a bunch of avenues to explore. There's overlapping concepts. Yes, yes,
but I guess this brings us too hot. Question. Dippin
Dots What is it? Well? Uh, Dipping Dots is a
(03:23):
brand of ice cream treats consisting of of not a
continuous mass of churned frozen liquid, which is what ice
cream is, but but rather small, discrete beads of frozen liquid.
It's a it's like it's like eating a frozen ballpit
(03:44):
without the threat of pink. I well, that's awesome. Anytime
my food doesn't threaten me with pink, I'm pretty excited. Yeah,
me too, so so so what you do to you
create it is um. You create your ice cream mixture,
(04:04):
you know, milk, cream, sugar, texturizers and emulsifiers, flavorings, etcetera.
And then you take that that liquid and you drip
it into a chamber that you're holding at around negative
three hundred and twenty degrees fahrenheit UM. That's negative hundred
and nine celsius, although really at that point that means
(04:25):
cold quite cold, not warm UM. And you're cooling that
chamber using using liquid nitrogen UM. And as each drop
enters the chamber, it instantly freezes into a rough sphere
like a like a solid bead around a half a
centimeter maybe a quarter inch in a in diameter. And
(04:47):
then those solid beads are moved into freezers kept just
cold enough to UM to keep the bead stable, which
is around negative forty fahrenheit, which is also negative forty
celsius for science reasons that still confuse me to this day.
Me as well, me as well, great UM and yeah,
so the result is, uh, these round pellets of like
(05:09):
dense ice cream that have a little bit of a
crunch in your mouth and almost like a tingle of
cold like almost like a like a cold burn. UM.
I guess it is a cold burn. That's literally what
it is. Uh and uh and then they melt into
right like just a creamy liquid. Um. They don't have
the flufferru chew of most ice creams. It's a really
fun and novel texture. Yes that yeah, that, like I
(05:32):
was saying, that's what I really liked about it. Um. Also,
that process sounds really cool. And no, I'm mad I
didn't look up any videos of it. Oh it's really great.
Yes uh yeah, yeah, yeah there's I think I found one.
I'll try to remember to link it um to you
and to y'all listeners. Um. But yeah, So okay, once
you've got these little discrete ice cream pellets, you have
(05:55):
to keep them that cold throughout quality assurance and packaging
and shipping and sale and right. Although originally they were
a theme park and mall booth food that would be
hand scooped um, they can now be found in all
kinds of event spaces and in grocery stores as well,
in little individual serving containers and right. This involves a
lot of science um, because okay, the easiest way to
(06:18):
keep things this cold on the go is dry ice,
which is not water ice at all. It's carbon dioxide
gas that's been pressurized and super cooled into a liquid
state below the temperature at which it would normally be
a solid, and then carefully allowed to warm up and crystallize.
And it does this at negative a nine degrees fahrenheit UM,
(06:39):
which is negative seventy celsius. Yeah. Yeah, So to use it,
you've got to be careful, um, because it is cold
enough that it will burn you. It will give you
frost bite if you touch it with your bear skin. Um.
And as it warms up, because it's not made of water,
it doesn't melt into a mostly harmless puddle like water
(07:01):
ice does. Um, it turns back into carbon dioxide gas,
which we cannot breathe or I mean we can, but
we cannot live on it if we breathe it. So
like if you're not properly ventilating, it can displace the
normal air around you and you can suffocate. Um. Their
scoopers have special training. It's a whole thing. Wow. I
mean the special training is basically like, don't breathe the fumes.
(07:24):
But still but still yeah and yeah yeah. The company
Dip and Dots has a number of flavors. At any
given time. Right now, the ones that you can buy
online and have shipped to you our birthday cake, chocolate chip,
cookie dough, yes with bits of cookie dough in it,
Chocolate Annie's Favorite cookies, and cream which is co branded
(07:44):
with Oreos. It includes Little Oreo Bits, Cotton Candy, Ultimate
Brownie Batter, and rainbow ice which he has like a sherbet,
like a mix of fruit flavors, being strawberry, orange, lemon, lime,
and blue raspberry. I'm not totally sure what's in store
is right now. That's harder to track down, um, except
that they definitely have a banana split flavor and a
(08:06):
strawberry flavor. And also they're doing some co branding with
pot Patrol, and y'all, I don't have children. I don't,
I've never The only reason that I know what this
is because of the sheer number of companies doing co
branding with this media property, and it is all of them.
I feel like every single branded company that we research
(08:26):
is working with pot Patrol. Yes. Uh, same for me.
I have friends with kids have told me about it,
and then I just have seen like a bunch of
comedians making jokes about it who have kids. So I
understand that it is a big deal, uh for people
with kids and for kids, yes, okay, but what about
(08:51):
the nutrition. It's about average for ice cream. Um, so
you know it's a it's it's calorically dense with some
fats and sugars, but low on protein and five or so.
It will fill you up but won't really keep you going.
And it falls into the treat category. Treats are nice.
Treats are nice. Um, And it seems people like like
this specific treat because we have numbers for you. Um.
(09:13):
There are somewhere around twelve thousand Dippin Dots locations around
the US, and around one hundred million servings of dots
over nine countries are consumed each year. And yes, it
does trip me up every time they use dots, but
I mean it's accurate. I get what they're saying. Um.
At its peak in two thousand and six, Dippin Dots
is averaging forty seven million dollars in sales. However, just
(09:36):
six years later the company filed for bankruptcy, and then
they would bounce back a few years later. And we're
gonna talk more about all of that in history section.
As nearly one thousand grocery stores had specialty forty degrees
below fahrenheit freezers capable of preserving Dippen Dots goodness. Um,
(09:57):
yeah yeah. Meanwhile, they're They're first factory was just a
twenty four ft that's around seven point three square in
floor space. So so you've you've, you've, You've come a
long way Dippin Dots. You've come a long way, kid.
According to Thrillists, there are about two thousand dots of
ice cream and a five ounce serving. I know. The
(10:22):
company set the Guinness World Record for most ice cream
prepared by a team in three minutes. Again very specific,
but yes, the five person team churned out four and
seventy three cups of ice cream. This was somewhat of
a stunt for the thirtieth anniversary of National ice Cream Month,
not specifically Dipping Dots nasional ice cream cool uh. As
(10:45):
of um, the brand had thirty five flavors, with the
most popular being that cookies and cream with oreos in it. Yes,
and if you're at a loss for what flavor you want,
there is quite a silly Dipping Dots personality quiz to
find the perfect flavor for you, which, yes, I took.
Uh and I will say the quizmakers seem to think
(11:07):
we're all emotional jerks. What okay? Every question would be like,
I think the one that's off quoted is you see
your crush at the mall with someone else? What do
you think? One of them is like, you know, kind
of what I would assume the average person would think
is I'm going to leave them alone, not really assume anything.
(11:30):
The rest of them were like throw my drink in
their faces or until they leave. And I was like,
I hope this is not what our society is breaking
out into. Um. But anyway, I did take it, because
of course I did. I got Strawberry with this message tolerant, thoughtful, devoted. Ah,
(11:52):
sweet Strawberry, you are the bestest, best friend ever. Give
others the benefit of the doubt. No matter how things
might appear. Things might not always go your way, but
you know that it will all work out in the end.
And I was like, oh, I feel so good about myself.
But then I read it over people get strap because
(12:13):
I think we're all not actually emotional. Well, uh, well,
either um they need to retool their quiz for a
more accurate experience UM across the population, or you know,
maybe we can all just revel in being Strawberry's being strawberry,
(12:39):
even though I preferred chocolate. Uh well, the history behind
this one is really really fascinating. Yes, and we are
going to get into that history right after we get
back from a quick break for a word from our
sponsor and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you
(13:05):
so Yes. The history of frozen desserts goes way back. Um.
Humans have long enjoyed cool treats, and over time and
with the development of things like refrigeration, these treats went
from being expensive luxuries to widely available food items. Again,
you can go back to our episodes on ice and
gelato specifically to learn more about that. But okay, Dippin'
(13:27):
dots specifically were the invention of microbiologist Kurt Jones, and
uh he wanted to create something fun and new using
his knowledge of cryotechnology. Yeah yeah. At this time, things
like astronaut ice cream, which they are very clear is
different than what dippin dots is. But things like astronot
(13:51):
ice cream were really trendy and successful, so Jones wanted
to ride on that wave as well. And at the
time he was working with flash freezing yogurt bacteria as
an alternative antibiotic for animal feed, and he started wondering
what other products could he freeze this way? Okay, So
the thing, the thing with freezing things, which right, yeah,
(14:13):
we talked about in UM in a couple other episodes.
UM is that is that different molecules freeze at different temperatures. UM,
and water freezes it fairly warm temperatures compared with stuff
like fats and proteins. And furthermore, UM water is weird
in that it expands when it freezes, forming up into
(14:34):
these large sharp crystals of ice and UM. And this
is important like on the planet Earth, for a bunch
of reasons, UM, but it's a pain in a bunch
of specific applications. For example, UM, let's say you're trying
to freeze a food like a like a lovely juicy
you know, like crisp, but just ripe summer tomato because
(14:56):
you want to eat it later. You've got too many
because your tomato plant is doing so fabulous lee Um.
Freezing it is going to be difficult because as the
ice crystals form within it, they poke holes in the
membranes within the tomatoes. So when you thought instead of
like crisp and delightful, it's just a bag of mush.
Oh not as good, not as not as yeah um.
(15:20):
And the same goes for like bacteria and other stuff
that you don't want to lose the cellular integrity of
okay so um. So this this concept of figuring out
how to prevent that is the basis of cryogenics, um,
and also why some interestingly mistaken people have been really
interested in cryonics a k a. Freezing people at or
(15:41):
before death for reviving later. Right, yeah, which I was
thinking of, Oh sure, yeah, important separation between cryogenics in
general and cryonics which is specific yes, okay, so um.
The idea here is that if you can freeze something
really fast to really cold temperatures, you don't give water
(16:05):
ice the time to form up into these big pokey crystals.
And right, you can do this using liquid nitrogen because
it is so dang cold. Mm hmm. The special thing
that Jones was doing here is that he had developed
a process to peleticize the liquids that he was freezing. Um.
You know. He he would grow colonies of the bacterial
(16:26):
cultures that he was working with in a liquid medium
and then freeze drive them into a powder. But discovered
um that instead of doing that, but by dripping the
liquid into the freezing chamber, it would form these pellets
that a maintained the structural integrity of the bacteria and
b didn't melt as quickly as a frozen powder would. Um.
And thus we're c really easy to work with. Um.
(16:50):
It's like a a freeze dried liquid that you can
scoop as easily as kibble or coffee beans. Yes. Um.
So the story goes that when Jones was explaining how
this whole process worked to his family or possibly making
ice cream with a neighbor, um, it suddenly occurred to
him that he could use the same process to make
a beaded ice cream. He had grown up on a
(17:12):
far making his own, but he never liked the icy
texture and wished that they could freeze it more quickly
to eliminate that. Which I think we all know what
he's talking about there, especially older ice cream. Oh yeah,
especially right right when you take a carton out of
the freezer and then put it back in or um
during you know, and any any home freezer is going
to go through slight temperature cycles. UM. And so so yeah,
(17:36):
as that happens, you start to develop these larger, pokey
ice crystals that aren't aren't his fun mm hmm, and yes,
the idea was to use liquid nitrogen to instantly and
quickly freeze the ice cream, which resulted in dense, small
beads of ice cream that had less air incorporated into
them than traditional ice cream and took longer to melt. Yeah,
(17:59):
and that you know, if you can keep them cold enough,
would stay fresher longer. Yes. So Jones did a few
tests out of his parents basement at first UM and
surveyed a few friends to really nail down the process,
to taste the texture um, and also to come up
with the name before he and his wife Kay opened
the first Dippin Dots store and Lexington, Kentucky, and they
(18:21):
offered chocolate, vanilla, Neapolitan, strawberry, peanut butter, and strawberry cheesecake
yogurt varieties. Their very first machine could create some four
gallons of Dippin' dots per hour yep. But however, the
shop didn't get a lot of customers and it ended
up closing in less than a year. There are a
lot of really cool archival photos though that you can go. Yeah. Um.
(18:45):
They didn't completely give up on the idea though, and
in another family member suggested that they take Dippin Dots
to a theme park and Nashville, Tennessee Operyville, which I
believe is still closed, um, and that they do this
on a ven ding bike where they had some success
but they barely broke even Yeah, opper Land, Yeah, op
(19:07):
your Land was like, okay, like you can you can
come try and sell this if you can come with
a hundred gallons a day. Oh they were They were
convinced that this was the way. But but but but right, Yeah,
sales were still rough. Yeah. Things really turned around when
(19:28):
the Joneses came up with their new slogan ice Cream
of the Future, which would later become also a running joke,
easy joke to make. Um, And they have been using
some similar versions of that slogan before that, because I
think even in their first those pictures I was talking about,
you can see like I think it said ice cream
(19:50):
and yogurt of the future. Okay, sure, but I guess
they really went in on it and kind of honed it. Um.
And just a year later, Dippin' Dots set up a
shop in the Kennedy Space Center, and people were waiting
in lines to try it. The product grew in popularity
from there, opening franchises and amusement parks, malls and stadiums,
(20:12):
and gaining an extremely passionate fan base. The flavor options
grew too, with up to thirty to choose from, with
favorites being rainbow ice cookies and cream, banana split, and
chocolate chip cookie dough. Dippin Dots expanded in the late
eighties and early nineties, often setting up at places like
these Like these amusement parks are similar festival like spaces.
(20:34):
The company went international when it opened a shop in Japan.
In n they filed a lawsuit against a competitor called
Many Melts over patent infringement um and Many Melts was
actually started by two brothers who used to work as
distributors for Dippin' Dots. But anyway, the judge in the
(20:54):
case ended up ruling that not only was there no
patent infringement, they had and even gotten the pattern correctly
and it was invalid. Off Yeah, I would I understand.
The judge is basically like, you can't patent how to
make ice cream and you didn't so y snap, all right. Um. Nonetheless,
(21:24):
they were still expanding around two and we're offering some
new confections that year, like a like dots and Cream,
which I'm pretty sure is a type of churned ice
cream that contains dipping dots mixed into it. I'm not
entirely sure how that works from a serving perspective, but
I like the idea, and uh and Fridgets, which were
(21:45):
dots individually covered in hard chocolate shell. My brain got
caught up on a lot of things in that sentence.
Fridge its fridge, its hard shell. Okay yeah. Um. However,
despite these spinoffs, things weren't going so so great. Um so.
(22:08):
After filing for bankruptcy in two thousand eleven with an
estimated twelve million dollars in liabilities that was reported on
with headlines like the future is Dead, Dippin' Dots was
purchased for twelve point seven million dollars by Fisher Enterprises
in two thousand twelve, and they expanded into even more venues,
(22:29):
including in malls, often alongside their sister franchise, Doc Popcorn.
The president of the company at the time, Scott Fisher,
said of the purchase, we are committed to ensuring that Dippin'
Dots or claims its status not as a novelty of
the past, but as an ice cream of the future,
the ice cream in the future. Yes, definite article. Yeah,
(22:51):
excuse me. However, due to the pandemic, many Dippin' Dots
locations have closed and the company has laid off employees.
The company does ship directly to customers using dry eyes
to keep the product cold enough. I believe the small
size you can get is thirty servings worth. Um, so
(23:11):
a lot. And also most freezers aren't gold enough to
preserve dipping dots, so you have to eat them pretty
much immediately, so it's like a dippin Dots party, I guess, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Your your home freezer probably doesn't go much below freezing,
like like just just the freezing point of water. That's
more or less where they stop. So, um, that is
a solid forty degrees fahrenheit above what a dipping dot
(23:34):
needs to to stay a dot. Yes, yes, let the
dippin dot stay dots. Um tones left dippin dots in
form forty below Joe, which is I mean, simple simple terms,
but it's essentially like dipping dots with coffee and creamer. Yeah.
(23:54):
That same year, for April Fool's Day, the company announced
the Jumbo Dot, complete with a commercial. But yes, it
was a joke. Alass m hmm in Dippin Dots commissioned
pop artist Dowin to remix his hit Dessert into a
(24:14):
promo for the band Um, and then they collaborated again
in to produce the song I Want My Dipping Dots um,
featuring teen band L two, m Um and I. I'm
old and I don't know who any of those people are,
but um, but I listened to I listened to Dessert
(24:35):
as part of my reading for this episode. Oh it's
been a minute since we've had a song that I
needed to go listen to, but I want to uh In.
The company reached out to then Press Secretary Shawn Spicer,
offering a sort of olive branch, since he'd been railing
about his dislike of dipping dots on Twitter since it
(24:58):
was it was a one time rand now like a
prolonged campaign. Um and so yeah, back in when he
was merely a PR dude out and about d c um,
he he went on this Twitter rant that was I
think it was at least three tweets these This only
accounts for two of them, but I couldn't find the
(25:19):
rest of them, um easily. To be honest, I didn't
try very hard. But yeah, for sure, he said, and
I quote Dipping Dots is not the ice cream of
the future. If Dipping Dots was truly the ice cream
of the future, they would not have run out of vanilla. Okay, okay, yeah,
(25:41):
so yeah, so yeah. In seventeen, when he was uh
the White House Press secretary. Um, they reached out and
offered to host an ice cream social at the White House.
Um and uh he he made a counter suggestion, um,
and what they wound up in instead was giving veterans
(26:01):
and first responders five hundred douchers to uh to six
Flags Maryland. Huh Okay. I think they made a twitter.
They posted a tweet about it, and they used connect
the dots, which I really like us make those funds,
I know. Um and yeah, and the company was making
(26:21):
three thirty million dollars in annual revenue that same year.
Fisher created a subsidiary called Dip in Dots Cryogenics to
license out there quote dot forming i P and cryogenic
technology to be used outside of ice cream, including pharmaceutical
companies and plant based meat alternatives. Yeah. They offer everything
(26:44):
from peloticizing equipment to mini fridge sized freezers to a
dang storage container like forty foot storage container that contains
the equipment to keep stuff frozen as low as forty
grease fahrenheit. Um, you can also contract them to manufacture
pelotized stuff for you. And yeah, they make more money
from things like Impossible burger our plant based meat alternatives
(27:07):
in general than they do from their ice cream wild
yeah yeah, yeah. And speaking of but when covid vaccines
started to roll out in the US, there was a problem.
The fiser vaccine had to be stored at negative ninety
four degrees fahrenheit about negative seventy degrees celsius. The specialty
freezers operated by Dippin' Dots located across the country were
(27:29):
offered as a potential storage solution. Um, these are the
same freezers where the ice cream is stored. But it
is a part of the Dippin' Dots Cryogenics subsidiary. Yes,
it's the same technology, Um, different branch of the company.
You're you're not going to find covid vaccines in with
the dipping dots at your at your grocery store. No no, no, no,
(27:51):
but yeah, Maderna's vaccine also has to be stored cold
at negative four fahrenheit. That's negative twenty and uh yeah yeah,
UM the okay, So so this is a this is
a whole issue, UM. And it's it's an issue that
that dipping dots is perhaps uniquely placed to to be
knowledgeable about and helpful with because all right, UM, the
(28:14):
capacity to ship and store things cold as on like
an industrial infrastructure scale, UM is called the cold chain.
And the logistical difficulties of the cold chain, and also
the cost in solving those those difficulties is part of
what is making vaccine distribution tricky outside of the areas
(28:35):
that do have infrastructure for it, um, like most of
the US. UM. And it's an interesting problem. It's not new. Um.
The ebola vaccine had to be kept even colder than these,
uh than any of these COVID vaccines though, UM with
COVID nineteen. Yeah. Part of the issue is UM that
you're dealing with both max vaccination sites, which are relatively
(28:57):
easy to deal with, and UM individual clinic and doctor's
offices that are distributing much smaller numbers of the vaccines UM,
because once you thaw the vaccine to a usable temperature,
you've got to use them pretty much right away. It's
like your thirty person dipping dots party, Like you're not
just going to be able to like put it back
in a freezer. Refreezing them would create those ice crystals
(29:17):
that would ruin them. Um. This is how I got
my Johnson and Johnson shot uh incidentally, because the I
happened to see an email from my local doctor's office
that was like, Hey, we have this vaccine, come and
get it, like like we need arms to put this in.
Is it yours coming on? Um? And I was like yes,
(29:39):
m hm. Furthermore, about about the whole vaccine thing, you're
still dealing with dry ice for shipping and storage um.
And like you you you can store the big trays
of fiser that they distribute for up to thirty days,
but you've got to refresh the dry ice keeping them
cold every five days. Um. And they are only so
(30:00):
many companies that make dry ice. UM. And like everything,
the cold chain has been disrupted by the very pandemic
that we need it to help vaccinate against. Um. Also,
transit delays, which are a very pandemic problem. UM are
a big deal because during shipping, if you run into
transit delays, all the dry ice can sublimate um, which
(30:22):
is just the chemistry word for for melting straight from
a solid into a gas. All the drys can sublimate
before you reach your destination. Um. When this happens with
Dippin Dots, they've then got to send like a third
party dry ice person to to intercept the shipment before
it's ruined. Um. And apparently a small amount of ways
to do to this is built into the Dippin Dots
(30:44):
business plan. UM. But it's a much bigger and or
sadder deal when it's vaccines. Yeah. Yeah, UM, we should
definitely come back and do an episode on that because
that was really interesting. I was not expecting this to episode.
It makes sense that it did. I just wasn't expecting it. Yeah. Yeah,
(31:05):
you never know, you never know where the researchers can't
take you really don't. Um. And yes, the whole thing
that started this for me, at least this interest. In July,
ten employees were injured definite explosion at a Dippin Dots
facility located in Kentucky. For we're injured in a similar
incident at the same place in Um. From what I
(31:26):
could gather, no one was seriously injured uh in any
of these, but you know, still not good. Uh. And
they're they're investigating the most current one as to why
it happened. It happened when they were unloading the nitrogen. Yeah. Yeah,
if you're if you're not careful with stuff like that.
I'm I'm speaking off the top of my head. I
(31:47):
did not look into it. But um, but but you're
dealing with things that are under a lot of pressure. Um.
And uh. And that pressure is partially um uh kept
by the temperature that it's being held at. And so
if you if you lose pressure um a k A,
if you have too much variation and temperature, yeah, it can,
(32:09):
it can expand very quickly, right and yeah, so yeah, um.
And then there have been a lot of news stories
recently on the nostalgia around dipping dots, which I thought
was really interesting in like places opening dipping dots in
New York or you know these big marketing places that
(32:30):
aren't in like amusement parks but is an actual dedicated store,
which I do think. I mean, the power of nostalgia
is oh yeah, oh yeah, well, I mean you know,
kids who were um growing up with this at amusement
parks and malls and whatever, um in the early nineties
(32:51):
are having kids now. So so that's you know, if
you're out with your kid and you see a Dipping
Dots and you're like, oh man, I remember loving this
when I was a child. I want to share that
with you then of course of course, yeah, so I
mean that in poptrol I, the old and the news
coming together. Um. But yes, that's what we have to
(33:14):
say about Dipping DUTs for now. It is. We have
some listener mail for you, we do, but first we
have one more cup break for word from our sponsor.
And we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you, and
(33:35):
we're back with this. Man. We didn't make any Mr
Freeze punks. Oh man, I'm ashamed. I'm as opportunity. There's
so many good ones too. Oh this is gonna hot
my dreams. Oh oh Annie, chill out. Yes, it's like
(34:04):
a battery is getting charged within me. If that would
be my movie of like any you can't die now
and then you make a pun and it's like, I'm
pretty sure, all right, I'll keep that in mind if
an emergency situation ever arises we need like an emergency
(34:27):
pun box that we break ballerie rope. In the zucchini episode,
and you mentioned that you make a lasagnia with thin
slice zucchini as the noodles, I'd like to suggest that
you can also use a mix of thin slices of
zucchini and eggplant. Eggplant is a polarizing food, so this
is definitely not something that everybody would enjoy. But if
(34:48):
you like it as much as I do, then a
quote lasagna made with zucchini and eggplants and noodles is amazing.
I've also added thin sliced potatoes into the mix, and
that is good too. I haven't ever salted a drain
the noodles for this, but I do big this zigni
for a really long time to make sure that the
veggies end up fully cooked. Yeah, that sounds so good.
I do like eggplant, and I've been on a big
(35:11):
during this pandemic. I don't know why, but well you
know why. It's because I had that was the last
meal I had out and about before we shut down
was fried eggplant. Uh, so I've been on a really
big eggplant kick. Okay, but that does sound good to me. Yeah, yeah,
(35:31):
that sounds amazing. I love everything that you just mentioned there,
that is. Yes. Oh and we're kind of in like
prime egg plants season right now. Okay, alright, I'm like
making a gross realist in my head. Yes, okay, Jared wrote,
I am an Idaho native and grew up completely entrenched
in the Idaho spud lover stereotype. However, only last year
(35:55):
did I learned that one of my mom's first cousins
was one of the engineers that designed the prototype tater
top machine for or Ida. I love tater tots and
was just busting my buttons to know that I was
related to one of the pioneers who made these gastronomical
miracles possible. Also, as for corn dogs, growing up, the
only corn dogs I had were in school lunches. I
(36:17):
was not a fan of the soggy corn batter and
typically peeled it off and ate the hot dog alone.
As I grew up, I was exposed to better ones
and my palette matured. I now really enjoy an occasional
corn dog when I feel the craving, but We'll still
favor a good hot dog in a bun, not a sandwich. Well,
that's really cool one that you have a relative that
(36:40):
was and tater tots. Ah, that's always so fun. I know,
oh I know, Um yeah, I totally forgot about school
lunch corn dogs and I knew a lot of people
that would do that. You peel off the back, eat
the hot dog. Um. And I have to say a
lot of you have written in about corn dogs, which
(37:03):
is excellent and wonderful and we're so excited to share.
It inspires a lot of feelings in people, as we suspected. Yeah,
and and we we we enjoy. We enjoy a strong
opinion here on we do. Um. So thanks to both
of those listeners who writing in. If you would like
(37:24):
to write to us, that you can. Our email is
hello at savor pod dot com. We're also on social media.
You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
savor pod and we do hope to hear from you.
Savor is production of my Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, you can visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks, as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagin
(37:46):
and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we
hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Favor Production of iHeart Radio. I'm
Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And today we have
an episode for you about Dippin Dots. Yes, yes, it's
very interesting. A lot of paths we've got to explore
with this one. Oh yeah, I was. I was so
psyched to do this reading I Actually we've had We've
(00:29):
had a lot of really fun ones recently. Um. I
was more tickled by that Nutritional Label episode than than
I really thought I would be. And I knew that
I would be tickled by it. So yeah, and this
one's really really interesting. Um. And yeah, not a sponsor,
just by ipe, we were just interested in it. Um
(00:50):
I did. I loved dippin Dots as a kid. I
don't think I had it very often because it wasn't
when I was growing up. It was very relegated to
theme parks and in Mikey's, particularly water parks, which where
I got it, and my local theater did sell it
when I got older. Um, but yeah, I usually got
(01:12):
it at water parks and chocolate was my favorite flavor
and my best friend who are parents, got a season
passed to a local water park one so we went
like a yeah. And it's really funny because one time
they made us go after Harry Potter and the Order
of the Phoenix came out and we had finished the
book the night before and we were just so upset.
(01:34):
I couldn't figure out why we were like PiZZ But
she loved the rainbow flavor. She loved I would always
get chocolate, She would always get rainbow shubert Um. But
it's been on my mind recently because there have been
a couple of news stories about explosions at the Dippon
Dutt factory Dippon Dot's I guess the manufacturing center. Um.
(01:56):
No one was seriously injured, and I was just like,
what's going on, Yeah, yeah, yes, uh yeah yeah, there
have been a few news stories lately. Um. I. I
also enjoyed them when I was a kid. My first
experience with them was that they had a kiosk at
my local mall um in South Florida, and that's that
(02:16):
is where I encountered them, and I was like, this
is bizarre and wonderful and I want it all the time.
And uh yeah, I think I think Neapolitan was my
solid choice. I really liked the way they melted. I
liked the way that, like a spoonful, they would all
be these like separate beads and then you put them
(02:38):
in your mouth and the heat of your mouth would
melt them in a really interesting way. That was like,
That's what I really liked about it. But yeah, we're
going to get into all the science, interesting science around that.
But you can see our space Foods episode and our
freeze during episode for a bit more. Also, I guess
(02:58):
gelato and I maybe um, definitely frozen food. You know,
they're sure a bunch of avenues to explore. There's overlapping concepts. Yes, yes,
but I guess this brings us too hot. Question. Dippin
Dots What is it? Well? Uh, Dipping Dots is a
(03:23):
brand of ice cream treats consisting of of not a
continuous mass of churned frozen liquid, which is what ice
cream is, but but rather small, discrete beads of frozen liquid.
It's a it's like it's like eating a frozen ballpit
(03:44):
without the threat of pink. I well, that's awesome. Anytime
my food doesn't threaten me with pink, I'm pretty excited. Yeah,
me too, so so so what you do to you
create it is um. You create your ice cream mixture,
(04:04):
you know, milk, cream, sugar, texturizers and emulsifiers, flavorings, etcetera.
And then you take that that liquid and you drip
it into a chamber that you're holding at around negative
three hundred and twenty degrees fahrenheit UM. That's negative hundred
and nine celsius, although really at that point that means
(04:25):
cold quite cold, not warm UM. And you're cooling that
chamber using using liquid nitrogen UM. And as each drop
enters the chamber, it instantly freezes into a rough sphere
like a like a solid bead around a half a
centimeter maybe a quarter inch in a in diameter. And
(04:47):
then those solid beads are moved into freezers kept just
cold enough to UM to keep the bead stable, which
is around negative forty fahrenheit, which is also negative forty
celsius for science reasons that still confuse me to this day.
Me as well, me as well, great UM and yeah,
so the result is, uh, these round pellets of like
(05:09):
dense ice cream that have a little bit of a
crunch in your mouth and almost like a tingle of
cold like almost like a like a cold burn. UM.
I guess it is a cold burn. That's literally what
it is. Uh and uh and then they melt into
right like just a creamy liquid. Um. They don't have
the flufferru chew of most ice creams. It's a really
fun and novel texture. Yes that yeah, that, like I
(05:32):
was saying, that's what I really liked about it. Um. Also,
that process sounds really cool. And no, I'm mad I
didn't look up any videos of it. Oh it's really great.
Yes uh yeah, yeah, yeah there's I think I found one.
I'll try to remember to link it um to you
and to y'all listeners. Um. But yeah, So okay, once
you've got these little discrete ice cream pellets, you have
(05:55):
to keep them that cold throughout quality assurance and packaging
and shipping and sale and right. Although originally they were
a theme park and mall booth food that would be
hand scooped um, they can now be found in all
kinds of event spaces and in grocery stores as well,
in little individual serving containers and right. This involves a
lot of science um, because okay, the easiest way to
(06:18):
keep things this cold on the go is dry ice,
which is not water ice at all. It's carbon dioxide
gas that's been pressurized and super cooled into a liquid
state below the temperature at which it would normally be
a solid, and then carefully allowed to warm up and crystallize.
And it does this at negative a nine degrees fahrenheit UM,
(06:39):
which is negative seventy celsius. Yeah. Yeah, So to use it,
you've got to be careful, um, because it is cold
enough that it will burn you. It will give you
frost bite if you touch it with your bear skin. Um.
And as it warms up, because it's not made of water,
it doesn't melt into a mostly harmless puddle like water
(07:01):
ice does. Um, it turns back into carbon dioxide gas,
which we cannot breathe or I mean we can, but
we cannot live on it if we breathe it. So
like if you're not properly ventilating, it can displace the
normal air around you and you can suffocate. Um. Their
scoopers have special training. It's a whole thing. Wow. I
mean the special training is basically like, don't breathe the fumes.
(07:24):
But still but still yeah and yeah yeah. The company
Dip and Dots has a number of flavors. At any
given time. Right now, the ones that you can buy
online and have shipped to you our birthday cake, chocolate chip,
cookie dough, yes with bits of cookie dough in it,
Chocolate Annie's Favorite cookies, and cream which is co branded
(07:44):
with Oreos. It includes Little Oreo Bits, Cotton Candy, Ultimate
Brownie Batter, and rainbow ice which he has like a sherbet,
like a mix of fruit flavors, being strawberry, orange, lemon, lime,
and blue raspberry. I'm not totally sure what's in store
is right now. That's harder to track down, um, except
that they definitely have a banana split flavor and a
(08:06):
strawberry flavor. And also they're doing some co branding with
pot Patrol, and y'all, I don't have children. I don't,
I've never The only reason that I know what this
is because of the sheer number of companies doing co
branding with this media property, and it is all of them.
I feel like every single branded company that we research
(08:26):
is working with pot Patrol. Yes. Uh, same for me.
I have friends with kids have told me about it,
and then I just have seen like a bunch of
comedians making jokes about it who have kids. So I
understand that it is a big deal, uh for people
with kids and for kids, yes, okay, but what about
(08:51):
the nutrition. It's about average for ice cream. Um, so
you know it's a it's it's calorically dense with some
fats and sugars, but low on protein and five or so.
It will fill you up but won't really keep you going.
And it falls into the treat category. Treats are nice.
Treats are nice. Um, And it seems people like like
this specific treat because we have numbers for you. Um.
(09:13):
There are somewhere around twelve thousand Dippin Dots locations around
the US, and around one hundred million servings of dots
over nine countries are consumed each year. And yes, it
does trip me up every time they use dots, but
I mean it's accurate. I get what they're saying. Um.
At its peak in two thousand and six, Dippin Dots
is averaging forty seven million dollars in sales. However, just
(09:36):
six years later the company filed for bankruptcy, and then
they would bounce back a few years later. And we're
gonna talk more about all of that in history section.
As nearly one thousand grocery stores had specialty forty degrees
below fahrenheit freezers capable of preserving Dippen Dots goodness. Um,
(09:57):
yeah yeah. Meanwhile, they're They're first factory was just a
twenty four ft that's around seven point three square in
floor space. So so you've you've, you've, You've come a
long way Dippin Dots. You've come a long way, kid.
According to Thrillists, there are about two thousand dots of
ice cream and a five ounce serving. I know. The
(10:22):
company set the Guinness World Record for most ice cream
prepared by a team in three minutes. Again very specific,
but yes, the five person team churned out four and
seventy three cups of ice cream. This was somewhat of
a stunt for the thirtieth anniversary of National ice Cream Month,
not specifically Dipping Dots nasional ice cream cool uh. As
(10:45):
of um, the brand had thirty five flavors, with the
most popular being that cookies and cream with oreos in it. Yes,
and if you're at a loss for what flavor you want,
there is quite a silly Dipping Dots personality quiz to
find the perfect flavor for you, which, yes, I took.
Uh and I will say the quizmakers seem to think
(11:07):
we're all emotional jerks. What okay? Every question would be like,
I think the one that's off quoted is you see
your crush at the mall with someone else? What do
you think? One of them is like, you know, kind
of what I would assume the average person would think
is I'm going to leave them alone, not really assume anything.
(11:30):
The rest of them were like throw my drink in
their faces or until they leave. And I was like,
I hope this is not what our society is breaking
out into. Um. But anyway, I did take it, because
of course I did. I got Strawberry with this message tolerant, thoughtful, devoted. Ah,
(11:52):
sweet Strawberry, you are the bestest, best friend ever. Give
others the benefit of the doubt. No matter how things
might appear. Things might not always go your way, but
you know that it will all work out in the end.
And I was like, oh, I feel so good about myself.
But then I read it over people get strap because
(12:13):
I think we're all not actually emotional. Well, uh, well,
either um they need to retool their quiz for a
more accurate experience UM across the population, or you know,
maybe we can all just revel in being Strawberry's being strawberry,
(12:39):
even though I preferred chocolate. Uh well, the history behind
this one is really really fascinating. Yes, and we are
going to get into that history right after we get
back from a quick break for a word from our
sponsor and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you
(13:05):
so Yes. The history of frozen desserts goes way back. Um.
Humans have long enjoyed cool treats, and over time and
with the development of things like refrigeration, these treats went
from being expensive luxuries to widely available food items. Again,
you can go back to our episodes on ice and
gelato specifically to learn more about that. But okay, Dippin'
(13:27):
dots specifically were the invention of microbiologist Kurt Jones, and
uh he wanted to create something fun and new using
his knowledge of cryotechnology. Yeah yeah. At this time, things
like astronaut ice cream, which they are very clear is
different than what dippin dots is. But things like astronot
(13:51):
ice cream were really trendy and successful, so Jones wanted
to ride on that wave as well. And at the
time he was working with flash freezing yogurt bacteria as
an alternative antibiotic for animal feed, and he started wondering
what other products could he freeze this way? Okay, So
the thing, the thing with freezing things, which right, yeah,
(14:13):
we talked about in UM in a couple other episodes.
UM is that is that different molecules freeze at different temperatures. UM,
and water freezes it fairly warm temperatures compared with stuff
like fats and proteins. And furthermore, UM water is weird
in that it expands when it freezes, forming up into
(14:34):
these large sharp crystals of ice and UM. And this
is important like on the planet Earth, for a bunch
of reasons, UM, but it's a pain in a bunch
of specific applications. For example, UM, let's say you're trying
to freeze a food like a like a lovely juicy
you know, like crisp, but just ripe summer tomato because
(14:56):
you want to eat it later. You've got too many
because your tomato plant is doing so fabulous lee Um.
Freezing it is going to be difficult because as the
ice crystals form within it, they poke holes in the
membranes within the tomatoes. So when you thought instead of
like crisp and delightful, it's just a bag of mush.
Oh not as good, not as not as yeah um.
(15:20):
And the same goes for like bacteria and other stuff
that you don't want to lose the cellular integrity of
okay so um. So this this concept of figuring out
how to prevent that is the basis of cryogenics, um,
and also why some interestingly mistaken people have been really
interested in cryonics a k a. Freezing people at or
(15:41):
before death for reviving later. Right, yeah, which I was
thinking of, Oh sure, yeah, important separation between cryogenics in
general and cryonics which is specific yes, okay, so um.
The idea here is that if you can freeze something
really fast to really cold temperatures, you don't give water
(16:05):
ice the time to form up into these big pokey crystals.
And right, you can do this using liquid nitrogen because
it is so dang cold. Mm hmm. The special thing
that Jones was doing here is that he had developed
a process to peleticize the liquids that he was freezing. Um.
You know. He he would grow colonies of the bacterial
(16:26):
cultures that he was working with in a liquid medium
and then freeze drive them into a powder. But discovered
um that instead of doing that, but by dripping the
liquid into the freezing chamber, it would form these pellets
that a maintained the structural integrity of the bacteria and
b didn't melt as quickly as a frozen powder would. Um.
And thus we're c really easy to work with. Um.
(16:50):
It's like a a freeze dried liquid that you can
scoop as easily as kibble or coffee beans. Yes. Um.
So the story goes that when Jones was explaining how
this whole process worked to his family or possibly making
ice cream with a neighbor, um, it suddenly occurred to
him that he could use the same process to make
a beaded ice cream. He had grown up on a
(17:12):
far making his own, but he never liked the icy
texture and wished that they could freeze it more quickly
to eliminate that. Which I think we all know what
he's talking about there, especially older ice cream. Oh yeah,
especially right right when you take a carton out of
the freezer and then put it back in or um
during you know, and any any home freezer is going
to go through slight temperature cycles. UM. And so so yeah,
(17:36):
as that happens, you start to develop these larger, pokey
ice crystals that aren't aren't his fun mm hmm, and yes,
the idea was to use liquid nitrogen to instantly and
quickly freeze the ice cream, which resulted in dense, small
beads of ice cream that had less air incorporated into
them than traditional ice cream and took longer to melt. Yeah,
(17:59):
and that you know, if you can keep them cold enough,
would stay fresher longer. Yes. So Jones did a few
tests out of his parents basement at first UM and
surveyed a few friends to really nail down the process,
to taste the texture um, and also to come up
with the name before he and his wife Kay opened
the first Dippin Dots store and Lexington, Kentucky, and they
(18:21):
offered chocolate, vanilla, Neapolitan, strawberry, peanut butter, and strawberry cheesecake
yogurt varieties. Their very first machine could create some four
gallons of Dippin' dots per hour yep. But however, the
shop didn't get a lot of customers and it ended
up closing in less than a year. There are a
lot of really cool archival photos though that you can go. Yeah. Um.
(18:45):
They didn't completely give up on the idea though, and
in another family member suggested that they take Dippin Dots
to a theme park and Nashville, Tennessee Operyville, which I
believe is still closed, um, and that they do this
on a ven ding bike where they had some success
but they barely broke even Yeah, opper Land, Yeah, op
(19:07):
your Land was like, okay, like you can you can
come try and sell this if you can come with
a hundred gallons a day. Oh they were They were
convinced that this was the way. But but but but right, Yeah,
sales were still rough. Yeah. Things really turned around when
(19:28):
the Joneses came up with their new slogan ice Cream
of the Future, which would later become also a running joke,
easy joke to make. Um, And they have been using
some similar versions of that slogan before that, because I
think even in their first those pictures I was talking about,
you can see like I think it said ice cream
(19:50):
and yogurt of the future. Okay, sure, but I guess
they really went in on it and kind of honed it. Um.
And just a year later, Dippin' Dots set up a
shop in the Kennedy Space Center, and people were waiting
in lines to try it. The product grew in popularity
from there, opening franchises and amusement parks, malls and stadiums,
(20:12):
and gaining an extremely passionate fan base. The flavor options
grew too, with up to thirty to choose from, with
favorites being rainbow ice cookies and cream, banana split, and
chocolate chip cookie dough. Dippin Dots expanded in the late
eighties and early nineties, often setting up at places like
these Like these amusement parks are similar festival like spaces.
(20:34):
The company went international when it opened a shop in Japan.
In n they filed a lawsuit against a competitor called
Many Melts over patent infringement um and Many Melts was
actually started by two brothers who used to work as
distributors for Dippin' Dots. But anyway, the judge in the
(20:54):
case ended up ruling that not only was there no
patent infringement, they had and even gotten the pattern correctly
and it was invalid. Off Yeah, I would I understand.
The judge is basically like, you can't patent how to
make ice cream and you didn't so y snap, all right. Um. Nonetheless,
(21:24):
they were still expanding around two and we're offering some
new confections that year, like a like dots and Cream,
which I'm pretty sure is a type of churned ice
cream that contains dipping dots mixed into it. I'm not
entirely sure how that works from a serving perspective, but
I like the idea, and uh and Fridgets, which were
(21:45):
dots individually covered in hard chocolate shell. My brain got
caught up on a lot of things in that sentence.
Fridge its fridge, its hard shell. Okay yeah. Um. However,
despite these spinoffs, things weren't going so so great. Um so.
(22:08):
After filing for bankruptcy in two thousand eleven with an
estimated twelve million dollars in liabilities that was reported on
with headlines like the future is Dead, Dippin' Dots was
purchased for twelve point seven million dollars by Fisher Enterprises
in two thousand twelve, and they expanded into even more venues,
(22:29):
including in malls, often alongside their sister franchise, Doc Popcorn.
The president of the company at the time, Scott Fisher,
said of the purchase, we are committed to ensuring that Dippin'
Dots or claims its status not as a novelty of
the past, but as an ice cream of the future,
the ice cream in the future. Yes, definite article. Yeah,
(22:51):
excuse me. However, due to the pandemic, many Dippin' Dots
locations have closed and the company has laid off employees.
The company does ship directly to customers using dry eyes
to keep the product cold enough. I believe the small
size you can get is thirty servings worth. Um, so
(23:11):
a lot. And also most freezers aren't gold enough to
preserve dipping dots, so you have to eat them pretty
much immediately, so it's like a dippin Dots party, I guess, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Your your home freezer probably doesn't go much below freezing,
like like just just the freezing point of water. That's
more or less where they stop. So, um, that is
a solid forty degrees fahrenheit above what a dipping dot
(23:34):
needs to to stay a dot. Yes, yes, let the
dippin dot stay dots. Um tones left dippin dots in
form forty below Joe, which is I mean, simple simple terms,
but it's essentially like dipping dots with coffee and creamer. Yeah.
(23:54):
That same year, for April Fool's Day, the company announced
the Jumbo Dot, complete with a commercial. But yes, it
was a joke. Alass m hmm in Dippin Dots commissioned
pop artist Dowin to remix his hit Dessert into a
(24:14):
promo for the band Um, and then they collaborated again
in to produce the song I Want My Dipping Dots um,
featuring teen band L two, m Um and I. I'm
old and I don't know who any of those people are,
but um, but I listened to I listened to Dessert
(24:35):
as part of my reading for this episode. Oh it's
been a minute since we've had a song that I
needed to go listen to, but I want to uh In.
The company reached out to then Press Secretary Shawn Spicer,
offering a sort of olive branch, since he'd been railing
about his dislike of dipping dots on Twitter since it
(24:58):
was it was a one time rand now like a
prolonged campaign. Um and so yeah, back in when he
was merely a PR dude out and about d c um,
he he went on this Twitter rant that was I
think it was at least three tweets these This only
accounts for two of them, but I couldn't find the
(25:19):
rest of them, um easily. To be honest, I didn't
try very hard. But yeah, for sure, he said, and
I quote Dipping Dots is not the ice cream of
the future. If Dipping Dots was truly the ice cream
of the future, they would not have run out of vanilla. Okay, okay, yeah,
(25:41):
so yeah, so yeah. In seventeen, when he was uh
the White House Press secretary. Um, they reached out and
offered to host an ice cream social at the White House.
Um and uh he he made a counter suggestion, um,
and what they wound up in instead was giving veterans
(26:01):
and first responders five hundred douchers to uh to six
Flags Maryland. Huh Okay. I think they made a twitter.
They posted a tweet about it, and they used connect
the dots, which I really like us make those funds,
I know. Um and yeah, and the company was making
(26:21):
three thirty million dollars in annual revenue that same year.
Fisher created a subsidiary called Dip in Dots Cryogenics to
license out there quote dot forming i P and cryogenic
technology to be used outside of ice cream, including pharmaceutical
companies and plant based meat alternatives. Yeah. They offer everything
(26:44):
from peloticizing equipment to mini fridge sized freezers to a
dang storage container like forty foot storage container that contains
the equipment to keep stuff frozen as low as forty
grease fahrenheit. Um, you can also contract them to manufacture
pelotized stuff for you. And yeah, they make more money
from things like Impossible burger our plant based meat alternatives
(27:07):
in general than they do from their ice cream wild
yeah yeah, yeah. And speaking of but when covid vaccines
started to roll out in the US, there was a problem.
The fiser vaccine had to be stored at negative ninety
four degrees fahrenheit about negative seventy degrees celsius. The specialty
freezers operated by Dippin' Dots located across the country were
(27:29):
offered as a potential storage solution. Um, these are the
same freezers where the ice cream is stored. But it
is a part of the Dippin' Dots Cryogenics subsidiary. Yes,
it's the same technology, Um, different branch of the company.
You're you're not going to find covid vaccines in with
the dipping dots at your at your grocery store. No no, no, no,
(27:51):
but yeah, Maderna's vaccine also has to be stored cold
at negative four fahrenheit. That's negative twenty and uh yeah yeah,
UM the okay, So so this is a this is
a whole issue, UM. And it's it's an issue that
that dipping dots is perhaps uniquely placed to to be
knowledgeable about and helpful with because all right, UM, the
(28:14):
capacity to ship and store things cold as on like
an industrial infrastructure scale, UM is called the cold chain.
And the logistical difficulties of the cold chain, and also
the cost in solving those those difficulties is part of
what is making vaccine distribution tricky outside of the areas
(28:35):
that do have infrastructure for it, um, like most of
the US. UM. And it's an interesting problem. It's not new. Um.
The ebola vaccine had to be kept even colder than these,
uh than any of these COVID vaccines though, UM with
COVID nineteen. Yeah. Part of the issue is UM that
you're dealing with both max vaccination sites, which are relatively
(28:57):
easy to deal with, and UM individual clinic and doctor's
offices that are distributing much smaller numbers of the vaccines UM,
because once you thaw the vaccine to a usable temperature,
you've got to use them pretty much right away. It's
like your thirty person dipping dots party, Like you're not
just going to be able to like put it back
in a freezer. Refreezing them would create those ice crystals
(29:17):
that would ruin them. Um. This is how I got
my Johnson and Johnson shot uh incidentally, because the I
happened to see an email from my local doctor's office
that was like, Hey, we have this vaccine, come and
get it, like like we need arms to put this in.
Is it yours coming on? Um? And I was like yes,
(29:39):
m hm. Furthermore, about about the whole vaccine thing, you're
still dealing with dry ice for shipping and storage um.
And like you you you can store the big trays
of fiser that they distribute for up to thirty days,
but you've got to refresh the dry ice keeping them
cold every five days. Um. And they are only so
(30:00):
many companies that make dry ice. UM. And like everything,
the cold chain has been disrupted by the very pandemic
that we need it to help vaccinate against. Um. Also,
transit delays, which are a very pandemic problem. UM are
a big deal because during shipping, if you run into
transit delays, all the dry ice can sublimate um, which
(30:22):
is just the chemistry word for for melting straight from
a solid into a gas. All the drys can sublimate
before you reach your destination. Um. When this happens with
Dippin Dots, they've then got to send like a third
party dry ice person to to intercept the shipment before
it's ruined. Um. And apparently a small amount of ways
to do to this is built into the Dippin Dots
(30:44):
business plan. UM. But it's a much bigger and or
sadder deal when it's vaccines. Yeah. Yeah, UM, we should
definitely come back and do an episode on that because
that was really interesting. I was not expecting this to episode.
It makes sense that it did. I just wasn't expecting it. Yeah. Yeah,
(31:05):
you never know, you never know where the researchers can't
take you really don't. Um. And yes, the whole thing
that started this for me, at least this interest. In July,
ten employees were injured definite explosion at a Dippin Dots
facility located in Kentucky. For we're injured in a similar
incident at the same place in Um. From what I
(31:26):
could gather, no one was seriously injured uh in any
of these, but you know, still not good. Uh. And
they're they're investigating the most current one as to why
it happened. It happened when they were unloading the nitrogen. Yeah. Yeah,
if you're if you're not careful with stuff like that.
I'm I'm speaking off the top of my head. I
(31:47):
did not look into it. But um, but but you're
dealing with things that are under a lot of pressure. Um.
And uh. And that pressure is partially um uh kept
by the temperature that it's being held at. And so
if you if you lose pressure um a k A,
if you have too much variation and temperature, yeah, it can,
(32:09):
it can expand very quickly, right and yeah, so yeah, um.
And then there have been a lot of news stories
recently on the nostalgia around dipping dots, which I thought
was really interesting in like places opening dipping dots in
New York or you know these big marketing places that
(32:30):
aren't in like amusement parks but is an actual dedicated store,
which I do think. I mean, the power of nostalgia
is oh yeah, oh yeah, well, I mean you know,
kids who were um growing up with this at amusement
parks and malls and whatever, um in the early nineties
(32:51):
are having kids now. So so that's you know, if
you're out with your kid and you see a Dipping
Dots and you're like, oh man, I remember loving this
when I was a child. I want to share that
with you then of course of course, yeah, so I
mean that in poptrol I, the old and the news
coming together. Um. But yes, that's what we have to
(33:14):
say about Dipping DUTs for now. It is. We have
some listener mail for you, we do, but first we
have one more cup break for word from our sponsor.
And we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you, and
(33:35):
we're back with this. Man. We didn't make any Mr
Freeze punks. Oh man, I'm ashamed. I'm as opportunity. There's
so many good ones too. Oh this is gonna hot
my dreams. Oh oh Annie, chill out. Yes, it's like
(34:04):
a battery is getting charged within me. If that would
be my movie of like any you can't die now
and then you make a pun and it's like, I'm
pretty sure, all right, I'll keep that in mind if
an emergency situation ever arises we need like an emergency
(34:27):
pun box that we break ballerie rope. In the zucchini episode,
and you mentioned that you make a lasagnia with thin
slice zucchini as the noodles, I'd like to suggest that
you can also use a mix of thin slices of
zucchini and eggplant. Eggplant is a polarizing food, so this
is definitely not something that everybody would enjoy. But if
(34:48):
you like it as much as I do, then a
quote lasagna made with zucchini and eggplants and noodles is amazing.
I've also added thin sliced potatoes into the mix, and
that is good too. I haven't ever salted a drain
the noodles for this, but I do big this zigni
for a really long time to make sure that the
veggies end up fully cooked. Yeah, that sounds so good.
I do like eggplant, and I've been on a big
(35:11):
during this pandemic. I don't know why, but well you
know why. It's because I had that was the last
meal I had out and about before we shut down
was fried eggplant. Uh, so I've been on a really
big eggplant kick. Okay, but that does sound good to me. Yeah, yeah,
(35:31):
that sounds amazing. I love everything that you just mentioned there,
that is. Yes. Oh and we're kind of in like
prime egg plants season right now. Okay, alright, I'm like
making a gross realist in my head. Yes, okay, Jared wrote,
I am an Idaho native and grew up completely entrenched
in the Idaho spud lover stereotype. However, only last year
(35:55):
did I learned that one of my mom's first cousins
was one of the engineers that designed the prototype tater
top machine for or Ida. I love tater tots and
was just busting my buttons to know that I was
related to one of the pioneers who made these gastronomical
miracles possible. Also, as for corn dogs, growing up, the
only corn dogs I had were in school lunches. I
(36:17):
was not a fan of the soggy corn batter and
typically peeled it off and ate the hot dog alone.
As I grew up, I was exposed to better ones
and my palette matured. I now really enjoy an occasional
corn dog when I feel the craving, but We'll still
favor a good hot dog in a bun, not a sandwich. Well,
that's really cool one that you have a relative that
(36:40):
was and tater tots. Ah, that's always so fun. I know,
oh I know, Um yeah, I totally forgot about school
lunch corn dogs and I knew a lot of people
that would do that. You peel off the back, eat
the hot dog. Um. And I have to say a
lot of you have written in about corn dogs, which
(37:03):
is excellent and wonderful and we're so excited to share.
It inspires a lot of feelings in people, as we suspected. Yeah,
and and we we we enjoy. We enjoy a strong
opinion here on we do. Um. So thanks to both
of those listeners who writing in. If you would like
(37:24):
to write to us, that you can. Our email is
hello at savor pod dot com. We're also on social media.
You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
savor pod and we do hope to hear from you.
Savor is production of my Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, you can visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks, as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagin
(37:46):
and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we
hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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