History of Drumstick ice cream

At the 1904 World’s Fair, an ice cream maker ran out of bowls. He asked a nearby waffle vendor to roll waffles into cones, turning them into a finger food. The ice cream drumstick was invented by Parker Brothers – Bruce, I.C., and J.T. of the Drumstick Company of Fort Worth, Texas, in 1928 by adding chocolate coating topped with nuts. The Parkers wanted to provide prepackaged ice cream cones but found that the cones became too soggy before they could be shipped to sellers.

To solve their problem, they reached out to Ohio State food scientists who quickly came up with the idea of coating the cone in chocolate. Jewel (wife of I.C Parker) said that this invention looked like a chicken leg, so the brothers called it a “Drumstick.”

Subsequent innovations included adding the chocolate to the inside rather than the outside of the cone. In 1991 multinational company, Nestlé made 31 acquisitions. Among the companies purchased were Alco Drumstick, a U.S. ice cream manufacturer with many European activities.

In 2016, Nestlé and PAI Partners established Froneri, a joint venture to combine the two companies' ice cream activities. The Drumstick name is owned by Froneri and the product is sold under the Nestlé brand in the US. There have been many variations on the original format of vanilla ice cream in a choc-lined waffle cone, with a chocolate and nut topping.
History of Drumstick ice cream