July is National Ice Cream Month!

WILBRAHAM, Mass. (Grassroots Newswire) July 14, 2011 – July is National Ice Cream Month, when warm weather, holidays and family vacations combine to make this frosty treat a part of the sweet memories for everyday and special celebrations.

In honor of this month-long celebration and National Ice Cream Day on July 17th, Friendly’s has provided some fun facts about their premium ice cream that should send you in search of your local Friendly’s restaurant for your own favorite treat.

Friendly’s Uses Local Ingredients: The milk used in Friendly’s ice cream comes from local dairies.
Friendly’s Focuses on Fresh, Fresh, Fresh: It takes only 24 hours for Friendly’s to transform each load of cream into a batch of ice cream – and the finished treat is in local Friendly’s restaurants as early as three days later.

Friendly’s Favorites Endure: Friendly’s has produced the same hot fudge formulation for more than 35 years, and it starts just like you make it at home: with cocoa, sugar and fresh milk.
Friendly’s Makes a LOT of Ice Cream: Friendly’s produces almost two 48-ounce pre-packaged cartons of ice cream every second – for a total of just over 30 million cartons of ice cream last year! That’s 360,000,000 scoops of ice cream!

If all those cartons were lined up, they would stretch from Wilbraham, MA to Richmond, VA (approx 473 miles).

Friendly’s Makes a Flavor for Everyone: Friendly’s offers 49 different ice cream flavors in 48-ounce pre-packaged containers. Flavors range from the simplest Vanilla to the most complicated, like Friendly’s Banana Split Ice Cream, with three different flavors, each with a special inclusion mixed in each flavor.
The flavor combinations are endless!For a 3-scoop sundae there are 18,424 combinations and for a 5-scoop sundae there are 1,906,884 combinations!

“It should come as no surprise that National Ice Cream Month is one of our favorite months,” said Tim Hopkins, Executive Vice President of Manufacturing and Retail for Friendly’s. “Ice cream is a year-round treat, but summer and ice cream are a natural fit. Enjoying an ice cream cone or digging into that ultimate ice cream sundae brings back sunny, summer memories for many of us.  Sharing that pleasure with your family just helps those memories endure.”

Friendly’s will celebrate their 76th Anniversary on July 18th.

Friendly’s products are available at local supermarkets and Friendly’s restaurants throughout New England, New York, and New Jersey, as well as parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Florida. For more information, please contact Maura Tobias at (413) 731-4238, or visit www.friendlys.com for additional information about Friendly’s Restaurants.

About Friendly Ice Cream Corporation
Friendly Ice Cream Corporation is a vertically integrated restaurant company serving signature sandwiches, entrees and ice cream desserts in a friendly, family environment with system-wide sales of $700 million and distribution through more than 6,500 retail locations. With a 76-year operating history, Friendly’s enjoys strong brand recognition and is currently revitalizing its restaurants and introducing new products to grow its customer base. For additional information please visit www.friendlys.com.