RIP Irvine Robbins, Co-Founder of Baskin-Robbins

Without ice cream pioneers like Irvine Robbins and his brother-in-law Burt Baskin, we might not have someone like Tai Kim creating wacky deliciousness like pistachio/maple/riesling cherry or banana/peanut butter/bacon at Scoops. Robbins opened his first ice cream shop, Snowbird Ice Cream, in Glendale in 1945. He joined Baskin in 1948 to form Baskin-Robbins, which always offered 31 flavors, but Irv was always trying something new. From the LAT obit:

When the Dodgers came to Los Angeles in 1958, they were greeted with Baseball Nut, complete with raspberries for the umpires. Lunar Cheesecake was launched the day after man landed on the moon in 1969. At the height of Beatlemania in 1964, a reporter asked Robbins what flavor would salute the Fab Four; Baskin-Robbins had yet to invent one, but Robbins replied, "Uh, Beatle Nut, of course" and had it in stores in five days.

Baskin-Robbins had more than 40 stores by 1949; by the time Robbins retired in 1978, the company was selling almost 20 million gallons of ice cream a year in more than 2,000 stores around the world. People loves their ice cream, don't they. So did Irv: His pool was ice cream shaped, his boat was named the 32nd Flavor, and he was "known to start the day with a bowl of cereal topped with a scoop of banana ice cream." Robbins died on Monday at the age of 90. RIP ice cream dreamer. (Photo credit: Baskin-Robbins/LAT)
· Irvine Robbins, 90; co-founder of the Baskin- Robbins ice cream empire [LAT]