Houston-based Marble Slab Creamery, a premium ice-cream franchisor, is featured along with a couple of competitors in this NY Times article that describes their battle as the fight to become ice cream’s equivalent of Starbucks — “a ubiquitous chain offering a high-priced, high-quality version of a relatively mundane product.”
Marble Slab opened its first store in Houston in 1983 and now has 371 franchises in the United States, Canada and the United Arab Emirates, and another 220 under development. The company estimates this yearís sales will from $75 to $90 million, with sales at established stores increasing by 3 percent. Its main competitor is Phoenix-based Cold Stone Creamery, which has expanded to 1,400 units over the past five years, but which has suffered sales erosion both of the past two years.
By the way, Marble Slab’s ice cream is better than Cold Stone’s, too.
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Marble Slab does in fact sell darn fine ice cream. I vaguely recall the first store opening and going in for ice cream in 100-degree weather.
Perhaps ice cream vendors in hot-and-humid locales (e.g., Houston) know something that their counterparts in hot-and-dry locales (e.g., Phoenix) do not.
I don’t know. Cold Stone’s cinnamon ice cream is the best I’ve had anywhere.