Baskin-Robbins brings 31 Flavors to Japan in 1974

It was 1948, near Pasadena, California, and Irvine Robbins, 31, and Burton Baskin, 34, were broke business owners. Robbins had opened five ice cream stores, giving them the name Snowbird. Baskin, lured into the ice cream industry by Robbins, his brother-in-law, had three stores, which he’d named Burton’s.

After three years of opening new stores, however, financial frustration set in.

“The customers liked us,” Robbins recalled in author Scott Cohen’s book, Meet the Makers: The People Behind The Product, “but, doggone it, we weren’t making money.”

Their problem, Robbins believed, was a lack of “attention to each store.” The two owners “were losing touch with the retail trade…We hired people, but they didn’t have the incentive to work like we did.”

In December 1947, each owner was fined $50 by police for a “short-weight” charge — Baskin using an illegal scale and Robbins deliberately underreporting the weight of a gallon of ice cream. The crime, reported by a local Pasadena newspaper, was embarrassing and magnified even more their problems making money.

Irvine Robbins

Growing up in Tacoma, Washington, Irvine Robbins (1917–2008) was surrounded by dairy. His workaholic father ran a store called Olympic Dairy.

“They were in the milk business,” writes Cohen, “but with their surplus they manufactured ice cream.”

Selling most of their product to grocery stores, the Robbins family grew frustrated with how poorly those same stores attempted to sell ice cream. Irvine’s father noticed that once the family opened a shop exclusively devoted to ice cream, interest and sales soared.

Young Irvine never forgot it. After a full day of school, he went to work “cleaning up and replacing ice cream,” absorbing the experience that a place of business can mean having customers with “a happy frame of mind.”

His father, meanwhile, taught him the importance of ambition. When asking for a day off to hang out with friends, Irvine’s father told his son: “I’ll tell you what, you work while they play and a day will come that you’ll play while they work.”

After earning his degree in political science from the University of Washington in 1942, Robbins enlisted in the army during World War II. When the war ended in 1945, Robbins was married with a daughter and had $6,000 in savings. He considered going back to Tacoma to help his father, Ernie, but chose instead to head toward warmer weather.

After coming up empty while looking for a store to rent in San Francisco — Robbins blamed the fact that there’d been “no construction” during the war — the aspiring business owner drove toward Los Angeles, stumbling onto a “for rent” sign in Glendale after being inspired to visit the Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery, or the graveyard of the celebrities. When he arrived at the cemetery, he realized it wasn’t open until 9 a.m. While driving around waiting for the cemetery to open, Robbins found his location.

“That’s how store number one got started [on Dec. 7, 1945].”

Burton Baskin

Born in Streator, Illinois in 1913, Baskin’s childhood wasn’t spent around dairy, like Robbins. Rather, according to Illinois journalist Craig Wieczorkiewicz, Baskin’s first job was in his father’s haberdashery, selling clothes and other accessories.

Nicknamed “Butch” in high school, Baskin loved football, basketball and track, but succeeded most in swimming. He graduated from high school in 1931 — that will mean something later — and the University of Illinois in 1935. Baskin went on to follow somewhat in his father’s footsteps, running a men’s clothing store in Chicago, but once Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, priorities changed. Baskin enlisted in the Navy in 1942, marrying Robbin’s sister Shirley, a creative artist, the same year.

Baskin got out of the Navy around a year later than Robbins, and Shirley must have twisted his arm and asked him to head to Pasadena, where her brother lived and ran Snowbird. I say this because Shirley Baskin ended up becoming a founder of the Los Angeles public television station KCET. She may have been more ready for the desert heat than the calm and collected Baskin. If the historical record is any indication, Baskin rarely gave interviews, choosing to not — forgive me — bask in the spotlight.

It was largely Robbins’ idea for Baskin to start selling ice cream.

“I was about to sign a lease on a store in Pasadena,” recalled Robbins, “and I said [to Baskin] you take it; you go into the ice cream business and do the same thing I’m doing, and as soon as we have enough stores open, we can open up a little ice cream factory. So he took that store.”

But here they were, eight stores later, flat broke. Something had to change.

The origins of 31

Both men found themselves too divided over managing the minutiae of the store, measuring customer satisfaction and supplying and transferring the product. They found themselves in a financial hole. They didn’t have enough time to expand their business as they were too busy keeping it afloat.

So, they shifted the paradigm. As Robbins put it: “…we hit on the idea that as long as we’re going to manufacture ice cream, let’s sell these stores to our managers. Let them run the stores and we’ll sell them the ice cream and make a profit that way.” Robbins admitted later that this was indeed the birth of post-war American franchising, but “the word franchise wasn’t in our vocabulary.” Still, their idea was life-changing.

“We will do the merchandising, do the sign, determine the flavors and know-how, but [the managers] will be in the position, since they owned that store, to give it the personal attention that we were no longer able to give.”

This changeover was quick, concluding over a period of four months. By pivoting exclusively to merchandising and franchising, there were new choices to be made. Instead of being called Snowbird or Burton’s, the men combined their surnames, Baskin winning a coin toss, so his name went first.

“The Japanese love ice cream, but we had a problem. The older people simply would not buy a cone and eat it on the street.” —Irvine Robbins, 1986

In 1953, as their newly focused company hummed and stores with the name Baskin-Robbins began to open, they had an important encounter with the Carson-Roberts Advertising Agency. The ad men wanted to be of use, so they asked: What makes Baskin-Robbins unique?

Over the years working with their Snowbird and Burton’s stores, the men had created a few dozen flavors, the Snowbird at times even offering 21. So, the men told them “almost in jest, that we had a flavor for every day of the month—thirty-one,” Robbins recounted.

At that thought, the ad men “hit the table and said that was it. So we changed the name of the company to Baskin-Robbins 31.” For Baskin, the number was poetic, since it conjured memories of the year he’d graduated from Streator Township High School. He was a long way away from his clothing store in Illinois. Soon, he’d be a millionaire, many times over.

Expansion and a heart attack

Without needing to attend to day-to-day managerial duties, Baskin-Robbins stores started popping up on an average of “thirty a year.”

By 1967, there were over 540 stores across the United States. Ice cream was being consumed at a historic rate. Journalist Bob Abel, writing for Parade in July of that year, reported that, around 1940, “the average American consumed ten quarts of ice cream a year.” But in 1967, that number had more than doubled, to 24 quarts. Abel rightfully gave credit for this spike in eating behavior to “the advent of the supermarket and the home freezer.” For Baskin-Robbins, the potential to grow seemed limitless.

By 1967, Baskin-Robbins had created nearly 300 different flavors, sometimes taking the advice of their customers. One humorous anecdote relayed by Abel involves a man who wandered into a California store, unaware that Burton Baskin was nearby. The man shook his head at all the flavors.

“The guys who think up these flavors must be plumb nuts.”

As Abel tells it; “The next thing he knew he was being congratulated by a tall, amiable-looking chap named Burton Baskin…” Baskin nodded and said, yes, plum nuts ice cream is a great idea.

But in the early morning hours of Christmas Eve, 1967, that same tall amiable man experienced a sharp pain rip through his chest. At 54, Burton Baskin died of a heart attack.

The tragedy, besides impacting Shirley and their two children, hurt Robbins as well. It’s unknown how much the two brothers-in-law had already discussed acquisition options, but shortly after, Baskin-Robbins was sold to United Fruit, Inc. for $12 million. The company was about to go global, but Baskin would not be around to see it.

Fujiya takes the lead

Baskin-Robbins Tokyo Dome City La Cua store (東京ドームシティラクーア店) in 2013. Image: PoppingShower/Wikimedia Commons/CC 3.0

By 1973, few barriers remained for Baskin-Robbins. Irvine Robbins remained an integral part of the company, as its brand was offered to international bidders. On Nov. 9, 1973, Robbins agreed to a joint venture with Fujiya Confectionery Co., billed in newspaper announcements as “Japan’s largest confectionery ice cream and restaurant chain.” Fujiya “agreed to manufacture and market Baskin-Robbins ice cream in Japan.”

It was a conservative decision. Robbins most likely had heard of some of the cultural missteps that had occurred with American fast-food outlets such as Loy Weston bringing Kentucky Fried Chicken to 1970s Japan and McDonalds. By choosing Fujiya, and by allowing them total freedom to alter their product to what their market research showed, Robbins was assured his brand would be taken care of.

Still, some small issues flared up.

“The Japanese love ice cream, but we had a problem,” recalled Robbins. “The older people simply would not buy a cone and eat it on the street. It was against their culture to eat while walking in public.”

In the 1970s, this wasn’t about to change anytime soon — and to this day, eating while walking in public is often frowned upon. Instead, Baskin and Robbins focused on the next generation, “mostly to the younger people, although the older ones are coming around.”

From their launch, Fujiya marketers emphasized “31” over the harder-to-pronounce “Baskin-Robbins.” When the first store in Meguro opened in April 1974 (Japanese), the sign read (from left to right):“Thirty-One” in katakana, followed by a centered numeral “31.” Then, finally, on the far right end — as if contractually obligated — “Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream” in English.

The store called “31” quickly became popular with Japanese customers. One early tale of its popularity comes from author Thomas P. Jones’s 1975 book, The Ice Cream World of Baskin-Robbins. In it, Jones details the efforts of Roppongi resident Hitoshi Kikuchi, who “owned a house on a large, valuable, and picturesque parcel of land.” Kikuchi had learned of plans to build “yet another skyscraper” where his home, surrounded by gardens, stood.

Kikuchi negotiated with lawyers to turn the land space into a large garden area. City officials weren’t interested. Financially it didn’t make sense. So, Kikuchi went to Baskin-Robbins Japan and proposed a garden space complete with a flower shop. It worked. As Jones mused nearly 50 years ago: “The Roppongi Baskin-Robbins in Torizaka Garden will undoubtedly always remain the most magical, beautifully situated ice cream shop in the world.”

Well, nothing lasts forever. It appears that the Torizaka Garden has vanished, but there remain several branches of 31 in the Roppongi area.

As of 2024, there are close to 1,200 "31" stores in Japan, 2,250 Baskin-Robbins in the United States and about 4,500 more across 50 countries.

Irvine Robbins remained fond of the brand until his death in 2008.

For many years, he had an ice-cream cone-shaped pool at his home and drove around with “31 BR” as his license plate. And for many years he started his day with a bowl of corn flakes and a softened scoop of Baskin-Robbins banana ice cream.

“Frankly,” he said back in 1973, “I never met a flavor I didn’t like.” But by 1990, his son John Robbins, an author and vegetarian, was relieved to report that his then-72-year-old father had “reduced his ice cream consumption.”

Next up in the “When They Opened in Japan” series is Kirin Brewery’s Meiji-era beginnings. 

Other stories in "When They Opened in Japan":

• David Rosen helps launch Sega in Japan
• Ford’s Model T lands on Japanese soil in 1913
• Coca-Cola storms Japanese market in the 1950s
• Loy Weston brings Kentucky Fried Chicken to 1970s Japan
• Starbucks debuts in Ginza in 1996

Patrick Parr’s second book, One Week in America: The 1968 Notre Dame Literary Festival and a Changing Nation, was released in March 2021 and is available through Amazon, Kinokuniya and Kobo. His previous book The Seminarian: Martin Luther King Jr. Comes of Age, is available in paperback.