A couple, a counter and a slab of granite.

Cold Stone Creamery began in 1988 in Tempe, Arizona, where Donald and Susan Sutherland opened their own ice cream shop. English Wikipedia says the couple were after ice cream that was neither hard-packed nor soft-serve, and that the shop they opened that year is still the brand’s store number one: it moved in the early 1990s from its original address to a site near the corner of McClintock Drive and Southern Avenue in Tempe, where it still trades. A May 2007 press release issued by the company and its merger partner also dates the original Tempe store to 1988.

The name describes the counter. Wikipedia says Cold Stone takes its name from the frozen granite slab on which staff fold mix-ins such as candies, nuts, brownies and syrups into a serving of ice cream chosen by the customer. The company’s own “About” page, as archived in January 2016, called it the brand’s “signature process” of preparing each custom order on a frozen granite stone. Wikipedia also notes that the mix-in idea follows a format earlier associated with Steve Herrell, who founded Steve’s Ice Cream.

The business stayed close to home for its early years. Wikipedia says the first franchised store opened in 1995, also in Tempe, followed shortly by a location in Camarillo, California. The same year Doug Ducey became president and chief executive; he led the company until 2007 and was later elected Governor of Arizona. Head office moved from Tempe to Scottsdale in 1997, and in July 2005 the company moved into its present building there, which Wikipedia describes as a two-storey headquarters with classroom space, a product-development laboratory kitchen and a training store.

A merger, a run of co-branding deals and a Canadian owner.

The company says it rebranded its own concept in 2003, a date it gave in the 2007 merger announcement. That announcement, dated 11 May 2007 in Scottsdale, combined Cold Stone Creamery with Kahala Corp., a franchisor of quick-service restaurant brands, under the new name Kahala•Cold Stone, with Ducey as chief executive and Kahala founder Kevin Blackwell as chairman. The combined group, headquartered in Scottsdale, also held sandwich, smoothie and teriyaki names such as Blimpie, Surf City Squeeze and Samurai Sam’s Teriyaki Grill, alongside the ice cream shop. The arrangement was short-lived at the top: QSR Magazine reported on 17 September 2007 that the board had ended its relationship with Ducey and that Blackwell would serve as chief executive as well as chairman.

Co-branding followed. QSR Magazine reported in November 2007 on the opening in New York City of a shop combining The Original SoupMan, the soup business built on Al Yeganeh’s recipes, with a Cold Stone Creamery counter, set for Friday 16 November, and quoted Cold Stone’s president, Dan Beem, on customers’ demand for choice. Wikipedia records a 2008 master agreement with the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and, from 2009, an alliance with Tim Hortons that put the Canadian coffee chain inside Cold Stone stores in New York City, including the Times Square shop, and opened co-branded locations in Canada; it says that venture ended in 2014.

Ownership moved north. Wikipedia says the Toronto-based Serruya family bought a majority interest in Kahala in 2013 and renamed the business Kahala Brands. MTY Food Group, the Canadian restaurant franchisor, says it bought Kahala Brands in July 2016, bringing Cold Stone Creamery into its portfolio, and Wikipedia describes Cold Stone as owned and operated by Kahala Brands, with headquarters in Scottsdale. Abroad, Wikipedia lists stores opening in Copenhagen in 2008, in Canada in 2009, in Ankara and in El Salvador in 2015, and on Charing Cross Road in London in April 2023; it also records a store opening in Nigeria in 2012.

Design and documentation.

A mall treat shop has to be read from a distance and in a hurry. Many of its customers are walking past, often with somewhere else to be, so the name above the counter, the colour of the canopy and the shape of the sign do most of the work before anyone reaches the menu board. In a food court or on a concourse, a kiosk may stand only a few steps from a rival, which puts weight on a short name, a strong colour and a sign that can be seen from the escalator.

Up close, the identity moves onto smaller things: the cup, the cone sleeve, the spoon, the napkin, the take-home tub and the paper bag. These are the pieces that leave the shop, and they often carry the brand further than the storefront does. The counter itself, with its freezer cases, mixing stations or display glass, is part of the show.

Each guide in this group looks at who started the name, who owns it now, and how its signs, cups, characters and packaging have been described in dated sources, and marks plainly what rests on the company’s own word.

A name that describes the counter.

The cold stone is both the brand name and the piece of equipment that sits at the front of every shop, and the order is built on it in full view: the customer picks a flavour, picks the mix-ins, and watches the two being folded together on the slab before the ice cream goes into a cup, a cone or a waffle bowl. The company’s 2016 “About” page leaned on that performance, describing the visit as a “10-Minute Vacation”, a phrase it marked as a registered trademark, and mentioning “singing crew members” behind the counter.

The name has also travelled onto other companies’ products. Wikipedia records a 2008 licensing agreement under which Jelly Belly made jelly beans flavoured after Cold Stone ice cream flavours, and a 2009 partnership with Kraft Foods that brought flavours based on Jell-O pudding into the shops. The same year a simulation game, Cold Stone Creamery: Scoop It Up, developed by CyberPlanet Interactive and published by Zoo Games, was released for the Nintendo Wii.

Behind the shop front, the brand now sits inside a wider franchise group. Kahala Brands manages it from Scottsdale, and MTY Food Group, its owner since 2016 by MTY’s own account, runs a long list of other restaurant names.

For a design guide, Cold Stone Creamery shows how a name can describe the service itself, so that a granite slab behind the glass does the work of a mascot or a slogan. Compare it with Baskin-Robbins, another franchised scoop-shop chain built on flavour choice, and Ben & Jerry’s, whose pints also trade on mix-ins. For this guide we use creamery red, granite grey and waffle cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Cold Stone Creamery’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.