History
The company was co-founded in 1988 by Susan and Donald Sutherland, who sought ice cream that was neither hard-packed nor soft-serve. Publicity materials describe it as "smooth and creamy super-premium ice cream." Cold Stone Creamery opened its first store that year in Tempe, Arizona. The original Cold Stone Creamery, store #0001, is still in operation today at the original location in Tempe.
The company's business model is the same as the one originally created by Steve's Ice Cream's founder Steve Herrell. The company uses in-store made ice cream that is combined with mix-ins, candy or other items that is folded into the ice cream to make a new flavor. Cold Stone's name comes from the frozen granite stone, used to mix "mix-ins": candy, nuts, or other edibles into various flavors of ice creams.
In 1995, Cold Stone Creamery opened its first franchise store in Tucson, soon followed by a store in Camarillo, California, its first out of state. Almost 1,400 franchises are in operation. Cold Stone Creamery is now the sixth-best-selling brand of ice cream in the U.S. and now operates stores in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Puerto Rico, Indonesia, Guam, China, Mexico, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Trinidad, Trinidad and Tobago, Qatar, Nigeria and Kuwait . Cold Stone opened their first franchise in Europe in 2008 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Three more shops were later opened in other parts of the country. The company was also named the 11th fastest-growing franchise by Entrepreneur Magazine in January 2006. In June 2009 the company opened its first location in Canada in the city of Mississauga, Ontario. Two stores opened in Singapore in 2011 and a third one is opening in 2012.
In May 2007, Cold Stone Creamery merged with Kahala Corp to form the company Kahala-Cold Stone, which collectively owns 13 brands. Doug Ducey, former president and CEO of Cold Stone Creamery, was named CEO of the new company. Kevin Blackwell, the former CEO of Kahala, became chairman of the board and chief strategist. In September 2007, Ducey announced he was leaving the company. Blackwell was named CEO.
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