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| - This location of Andy's is a welcome addition to this time zone! Based on my wholly unscientific sample size of "Ozarks Turtle Sundae, 1", I can confirm that this franchisee has done the job well!
This shopping center has both Andy's and Ezekiel's soul food, the parking lot of Ahwatukee Palms Plaza is now my favorite dining spot in town! I'm in town a few times a year on business, so I'm hoping it will be more often now. :)
Having spent my college and post-college years living in Springfield, Missouri, I've been eating Andy's Frozen Custard since there were only two stores in the Home of Cashew Chicken and they were surprisingly close to one another.
You'd often be able to talk to Andy himself, but everyone in southwest Missouri felt like you already knew him from the the radio commercials he voiced himself. (Whether this was a calculated or cost-cutting move, or both, was never really mentioned.) He would pay good money to educate the public on the seemingly boring topics like the legal, government approved definition of frozen custard and why on earth anyone would pay $20,000 MORE for a Ross frozen custard machine instead of a regular soft serve. He always made those commercials interesting because you could sense his passion for what he was selling and the people both selling and eating it.
It worked.
The people of the Ozarks responded with the same passion. Hundreds of thousands of people learned about "overrun" and how he used the most expensive pecans he could find. (Now the very first Ozarks Turtles used melted Kraft caramels instead of a sauce, but then again, they'd have to cost $10 nowadays.) When a new product was launched, you learned the history behind it. Famed Ozarks DJ Woody P. Snow was the creative force behind the Snowmonster. Then, there was the Stolen Brownie Sundae, the story behind Sprecher's Root Beer, the announcement that peaches were in season in the Ozarks, so they were once again offering the Peach Concrete as long as the harvest of local peaches held out.
Those commercials forged a personal connection with the wonders coming out the window and gave birth to hundreds of thousands (millions?) of Frozen Custard Snobs. The passion for the product was ladled on as thickly as the hot fudge.
Of course, even for the kids who didn't listen, they knew one thing...that Andy's was just better than plain old ice cream.
Now, there are other frozen custard shops and franchises, but if it's not Ted Drewe's or Andy's (don't get me started on THAT), it's just NOT as good.
A few years ago, someone opened a Sheridan's FC store in Las Vegas in a building that looked too damned close, but not quite to the familiar Andy's design. They weren't open yet, so I knocked on the window and asked "What freezer are you using?"
His response..."Where are you from?" He clearly knew where this line of questioning was headed.
I said "Guess" and he replied with "Probably southwest Missouri, and I'm guessing you're an Andy's fan. If not, you're from St. Louis."
Yup, the jig was up. He proudly displayed the Ross freezer and told me that he looked into an Andy's franchise, but the distance from the distributors made it too darned expensive. It was good. He even had Sprecher's Root Beer for awhile, but it just wasn't quite right.
Obviously, no one should eat frozen custard on a regular basis, but if you're going to spend the calories, you want it done *perfectly*.
I don't know if the same commercials run now, but for the folks in Arizona who don't know the difference, allow me to provide a crash course.
1. Frozen custard is ice cream, but few ice creams are frozen custard. The FDA requires frozen custard to have at least 10% milk fat and 1.4% egg yolk. Anything less is just plain old ice cream.
2. Ice cream can have as much as 100% "overrun" or air mixed into it to fluff it up. I don't know about you, but I get all the air I need when I breath. It's FREE! I sure don't want to pay some frozen dairy purveyor for it. The special, expensive (and now, custom made for Andy's) continuous freezers only whip about 15% air into the mixture and that's incidental to the freezing process.
The air is not intentionally added so that you can pay more to get less product.
3. The higher milk fat and yolk content let the product freeze at a higher temperature than ice cream...so, you taste it better at 18°F than ice cream at 10°F. Unfortunately, that means it's also closer to the melting point.
Yes, it melts quickly in the summer heat in Arizona, but it's almost as bad everywhere else, too. Everyone driving down Sunshine St. in Springfield in July is fighting the drip from the cone, too.
Everything at Andy's is more expensive because....it's worth it.
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