Purple Cow - Food and Beverage

Food and Beverage

Purple cow may also refer to an ice cream soda made with grape soda. It may also refer to a mixed drink containing vodka and grape juice, much like a screwdriver, with grape juice substituted for orange juice.

Purple Cow is also the name of the ice cream shop found inside many Meijer stores, although Purple Cows were more commonly found in Meijer stores in the 1980s. Founder Fred Meijer would commonly hand out cards for free ice cream at any Meijer Purple Cow to customers or as ice breakers and has reportedly given such cards to Jimmy Carter, Generals Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf, and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

Kraft Foods' best-selling brand of milk chocolate, Milka, also has used a purple cow as a well-known symbol in its print and TV advertisements for several decades. The "Milka Cow" is a lilac and white colored Swiss Simmental cow sporting a bell around her neck, usually shown in an Alpine meadow. The name Milka is derived from combining Milch and Kakao (the German terms for milk and cocoa, its primary ingredients). The chocolates are also distinctively packaged in purple wrapping paper, which is even protected by trademark in Europe.

Purple Cow is also the name of a company in the Philippines that is known for its milkshakes. Its milkshakes come in chocolate, vanilla, cookies and cream, cheese and mocha. The company sells in fairs, bazaars, children's parties and corporate events. It was founded by seven seniors of the Ateneo de Manila University as a business thesis.

An award-winning restaurant chain in the southern United States, The Purple Cow has locations in several states and features burgers, shakes and other traditional "diner" foods.

In the late 1960s, there was a grape-flavored taffy lollipop called Purple Cow. It was similar to a Sugar Daddy.

For many years, in Crimora, Virginia, home town of bluegrass legend Mac Wiseman, there was a drive-in called "The Purple Cow" and it's memorialized with a local road off US 340 called "Purple Cow Road," though the original drive-in is now a used-car lot.