A Brief History of Mr Whippy
Mr Whippy’s Beginnings in the UK
Dominic Facchino is accredited with starting Mr Whippy. From Italian decent but born in England, Dominic was excited having visited the US in 1958 and having seen the “Mr Softee” ice cream trucks in operation.
His family were from an ice cream background and he was denied the UK franchise for Mr Softee so set up his own business, “Mr Whippy” in 1958 with a pilot of 6 vans in Birmingham, UK. Mr Softee was blue and white so Mr Whippy became pink and cream and the Greensleeves tune adopted.
Carpigiani supplied the soft serve machines and the first Mr Whippy ice cream mix was supplied by an Englishman, Ernest Pacitto. Thanks to successful franchising, by 1961 there were 150 Mr Whippy vans on the road in England and another 175 in the pipeline. Mr Whippy had even commenced manufacturing its own ice cream mix buying a small ice cream company.
In 1966 Walls Ice Cream acquired 100% of Mr Whippy and it remains in their ownership today (Walls / Unilever). Walls supply the Mr Whippy ice cream mix.
An ice cream-like food was first eaten in China in 618-97AD. King Tang of Shang, had 94 ice men who helped to make a dish of buffalo milk, flour and camphor.
Another kind of ice cream was invented in China about 200 BC when a milk and rice mixture was frozen by packing it into snow. Roman emperors are supposed to have sent slaves to mountain tops to bring back fresh snow which was then flavoured and served as an early form of ice cream.
The King of England, Charles I, is supposed to have offered his chef £500 a year to keep his ice cream recipe a secret from the rest of England. The explorer, Marco Polo (1254-1324), is believed to have seen ice creams being made during his trip to China and introduced them to Italy.