A Conestoga farmer, a Depression milk route and a name on a deed.

Turkey Hill is an American brand of ice cream, iced tea and other drinks made by Turkey Hill Dairy in Conestoga, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It began as a farmer’s milk round. The Associated Press reported in a feature by Rebecca J. Ritzel, carried by phillyBurbs on 8 August 2004, that during the Great Depression the Conestoga farmer Armor Frey started selling extra milk out of his sedan. English Wikipedia dates the start of the dairy to 1931.

The company tells the same story in warmer terms. Its own history page, as archived in January 2010, says Armor Frey began each day by watching the sunrise from the top of Turkey Hill, then put a few bottles of milk into the back of his touring sedan and set off to sell them to his neighbours, at a time when every penny helped. The route grew, the company says, until his “extra milk” business became his whole business.

The name comes from the land. The AP feature said the dairy was named after a ridge called Turkey Hill that one of William Penn’s sons mentioned in the Frey family’s deed to the property, and that the Susquehannock people, displaced by the settlers, had considered the site a prime hunting ground for turkeys. A copy of the deed, written on sheepskin, hung in the company’s conference room, the report said. English Wikipedia, citing the company, says the family obtained the farm from Thomas and Richard Penn and that the deed refers to “turkeyhill”.

The business passed to the next generation after the Second World War. The AP feature and the company history both say that in 1947 Armor Frey’s sons, Glenn, Emerson and Charles, bought their father’s business. The company says that at that time all of the dairy’s customers still lived within a few miles, and that milking the cows and running home delivery routes provided enough of a living for the three brothers to raise their families. The farm stayed close to the business: the AP reported in 2004 that the Frey dairy farm sat next to the plant, and that milk used to be pumped straight to it before the Freys joined a dairy co-operative of nearby farmers who sold to Turkey Hill.

Ice cream, Philadelphia, Kroger and Peak Rock.

Ice cream came next, and the record gives more than one date for it. The AP feature of 2004 said that seven years after the 1947 purchase the brothers added homemade ice cream, made from their mother’s recipe, to their daily deliveries; English Wikipedia gives 1954. The company’s own history dates its biggest step to 1980, when it says the Frey brothers expanded ice cream production and Turkey Hill Ice Cream became a favourite in Lancaster County stores.

Philadelphia followed. The company says that in 1981 the Freys persuaded a few independent stores in the Philadelphia area to give “Turkey Who?” a try. The AP reported that the name puzzled Philadelphians who tried the ice cream, but that the Freys stuck by it, and that by 2004 Turkey Hill ice cream and tea were stocked in stores from Maine to Virginia. The company says light ice cream and frozen yoghurt soon followed, and later iced tea, ice cream sandwiches and sundae cones.

Ownership left the family in the 1980s, though the family stayed. LNP, the Lancaster newspaper, reported on 11 October 2017 that the Turkey Hill dairy and the Turkey Hill convenience stores were both acquired by Kroger in 1985, and that the dairy was a separate company from the store chain, Turkey Hill Minit Markets. English Wikipedia says the sale was made to Dillons, a Kroger subsidiary, and that Charles Frey, the youngest of Armor’s sons, remained president. It says he was succeeded in 1991 by Quintin Frey, son of Emerson, and that Kroger announced Quintin Frey’s retirement on 28 May 2013. The company’s 2010 history page and the AP feature of 2004 both describe Quintin Frey as Armor’s grandson.

Kroger later sold. Reuters reported on 19 March 2019 that Kroger said it would sell its Turkey Hill business to an affiliate of the private equity firm Peak Rock Capital, having said the previous August that it was exploring alternatives for the business, including a sale. Reuters described Turkey Hill as a producer of milk, ice creams, frozen dairy treats, iced teas and fruit drinks. Peak Rock Capital has owned Turkey Hill since 2019, and its website listed Turkey Hill among its current portfolio companies in October 2026.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group sit in three corners of the freezer and the baby-food shelf: bagged frozen vegetables, pints and tubs of ice cream and gelato, and food for babies sold in jars and squeeze pouches. Each of those formats asks a lot of a small surface. A frozen bag is read through frost and at a glance from an open case; an ice-cream pint is turned in the hand, its lid seen from above; a jar or pouch is bought by a parent who wants to know quickly what is inside.

Names in these categories have often started with a family, a farm or a single shop and later passed to larger food companies, sometimes more than once. A label can therefore outlast several owners, and the place on the front of a pack is not always the place where the food is now grown, churned or packed.

Each guide separates what independent, dated sources record from what the company says about itself — who started the brand, who owns it now, where its food is made and how its packs and logos have changed — and marks plainly what rests on the company’s own word.

A slogan of 2000, one plant on the Susquehanna and a museum in a silk mill.

A central piece of Turkey Hill’s identity is a line about place. The AP feature of 2004 said the marketing slogan “Imported from Lancaster County” appealed to the dairy’s out-of-state customers, and quoted the marketing supervisor Melissa Mattilio as saying the company had stuck by its 2000 slogan because it worked. “We try to suggest a land of good eating and hardworking individuals, a place people would like to visit,” she told the AP. The company’s archived history page uses the same phrase, saying people up and down the East Coast enjoy products that are “Imported from Lancaster County”.

The slogan rests on a single address. The AP described the dairy as a farm and factory on the shores of the Susquehanna River in Conestoga, and quoted its special projects manager, Ernie Pinckney, who said in 2004 that Turkey Hill made its products at the Conestoga site. Milk, ice cream and tea were all made under one roof, the report said, in a production building that had been greatly expanded in recent years, while the marketing staff had recently moved out of an old farmhouse into a modest office building. The cartons themselves came from elsewhere: the AP said the plant’s lids and containers were printed at a factory in upstate New York. Freshly filled cartons, the report said, went to a hardening room, a giant freezer.

The company has also written its own story in a modest voice. Its 2010 history page says the ice cream was always good “but priced so everyone could enjoy it”, and that some say the dairy “still has a shy personality”. The same page describes the brand’s spread in stages headed “A long time ago”, “Not so long ago” and “Just the other day”.

The brand also has a building of its own for visitors. English Wikipedia says the Turkey Hill Experience, an attraction about the dairy’s history and its ice cream and iced tea making, opened in June 2011 in Columbia, Pennsylvania, in a former Ashley and Bailey silk mill, part of which was built in 1899. It also says that in 2011 Turkey Hill agreed to buy the electricity from two wind turbines on the Frey Farm landfill next to its plant, in a partnership with PPL Renewable Energy and the Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority.

For a design guide, Turkey Hill shows how a dairy can turn its county and its family deed into a brand, keeping one plant, one place name and one slogan through two changes of owner. Compare it with Breyers, an ice cream that also began in Pennsylvania, and Friendly’s, another East Coast ice cream name. For this guide we use ridge green, barn red, milk cream and iced tea amber with a slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Turkey Hill’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.