Aggie Chocolate Factory merges with Aggie Ice Cream
After almost seven years of Aggie Chocolate, the factory will now be combined with Aggie Ice Cream. This means changes for the two stores and new management overseeing it.
Program Coordinator Rhees Crompton said this change in management will benefit both Aggie Ice Cream and the Aggie Chocolate Factory.
According to the Aggie Chocolate Factory’s website, the main purpose of the Factory was to provide opportunities for students to have an immersive learning experience about food production. The factory has been used to teach students about topics such as food science and economics.
“The Chocolate Factory is still going to operate as the Chocolate Factory,” Crompton said.
Crompton also said this merger will not remove any student jobs ensuring that students will still have a key part in the production of both ice cream and chocolate.
After Professor Silvana Martini and other senior employees of the Aggie Chocolate Factory left, Crompton says the most logical thing to do was combine the two shops to give the factory more access to the benefits Aggie Ice Cream already has.
“The reason that this kind of came about is that those people that were working on the Chocolate Factory, some of the senior people left, including a professor,” Crompton said.
The benefits that the Factory will now have include a marketing team that intends to build more attention for the chocolate through the publicity of Aggie Ice Cream.
“I think we’re actually going to be in a better place because we have a team at Aggie Ice Cream,” Crompton said. “It’s kind of we’re all helping each other.”
Crompton says selling the chocolate right next to the ice cream is an attempt to get the word out about Aggie Chocolate. In addition, the Aggie Ice Cream team plans to track which chocolates do better than others to ensure production of Aggie favorites. They have begun this process as the Aggie Ice Cream shops are already selling the Factory’s chocolates.
Onalee Estrada, the Business Council President at the Huntsman School of Business, said she can see how this combination of management could create additional problems for the shop.
“I think what’s going to be hard is managing two completely different operations under one manager,” Estrada said.
Estrada brings up the concern that having an ice cream management take over a chocolate management, may result in the management not understanding the chocolate manufacturing process the same way they do the ice cream one.
“This is where specialization can be a problem,” Estrada said, “If a manager knows ice cream really well, they’re probably not going to know the Chocolate Factory very well.”
In regards to running the management successfully Estrada emphasized the importance of human relations within the workplace.
“The people that you have are your greatest assets,” Estrada said.
While Estrada had a few concerns regarding the merger she additionally said she agrees with Crompton, that merging the two shops makes the most logical sense due to them already being similar in location.
Many Aggie Ice Cream customers stated they were excited about the new combination of ice cream and chocolate and planned to start purchasing the two together.
One of these customers includes Quinn Fraser, a current student at Utah State. Fraser told the Utah Statesman that she intends to purchase some chocolate as a “quick pick me up after class.”
When the Statesman first interviewed students about the Factory’s opening in 2018, students said they hoped it would become a tradition at Utah State. Through Crompton’s view of the plan, and customers’ excitement for an ice cream and chocolate combo it seems the Aggie Chocolate Factory will continue as a part of the school’s legacy.