You can have it in the dining hall, you can have it in the library and you can even get it from the C-Store, but what you may not know is how Howling Cow produces the treat that some of us live off of.

The dairy processing plant in Schaub Hall receives the cream from University farms, usually on Tuesday mornings. Gary Cartwright, director of the Dairy Enterprise System, supervises the process, and once the delivery comes in, he sends it straight from the truck into the pasteurization system. After the cream is pasteurized, it is then ready to go one of two ways, ice cream or milk.

The milk route has four avenues — skim, low fat, whole or chocolate. Once the milk is made into those four categories, it is then packaged into cartons and put into crates to be stored at 36 degrees Fahrenheit, waiting for delivery.

For ice cream, the plant processes the cream into different mixes. These mixes are made on Tuesdays, frozen on Tuesday nights, packaged on Wednesdays and ready for delivery by Friday. The ice cream is stored at minus 18 degrees to prevent any thawing and refreezing, and is served between 5 and 8 degrees.

According to Cartwright, these mixes take time to perfect since the freezing process can produce adverse effects if the correct measures are not taken.

“You can’t just throw fresh strawberries into ice cream,” Cartwright said.

The moisture from fresh strawberries would result in ice crystals forming in the carton, which would make the ice cream deteriorate at a faster rate. Instead, the Dairy Enterprise System must preserve the strawberries, taking the moisture out, and produce ice cream that has a much longer shelf life.

Likewise, the peanut butter cups in the Wolf Tracks flavor are not what you would buy at the store. The Food Science Department designed these peanut butter cups to stay together at sub-zero temperatures. Using normal peanut butter cups would result in brittle chocolate and peanut butter when frozen.

By taking these measures, Howling Cow is able to produce great tasting ice cream that lasts, however there are other ingredients in the ice cream that diversify the flavors. Cartwright believes using the freshest cream, milk and cane sugar also aid in producing the best products, and the proof is in the ice cream.

The Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences, which is responsible for making the milk and ice cream, manages the money involved in the production and sales.

“Dairy is the life support system to the academic research [going on at the Department of Food, Bioprocessing , and Nutrition Sciences],” Cartwright said.

The University only provides the building for this department, everything else, including salaries for the Dairy Enterprise workers, medical benefits and utilities, are paid by the sale of the ice cream and milk. In the past, this was not possible because the Umstead Act prohibited anything government-funded to compete with private companies. Howling Cow, however, does not receive state tax funding, and after the brand appealed, it’s now able to sell anywhere on campus and also at Carter-Finley Stadium.

The Creamery is the main outlet of Howling Cow, ordering an average of 90 gallons of ice cream two to three times per week. The other major outlet of Howling Cow ice cream is the State Fair, where the Food Science Club sells 4,500 gallons of ice cream in 11 days—nearly half of the total amount of ice cream Howling Cow produces each year.

The department is working on constructing a new building, the first floor of which would be a Creamery where it would sell ice cream and milk to the public. In the future, however, this could be a full-scale creamery, providing dairy products like butter, yogurt and cream cheese, all fresh from the farm. In the near future, students can expect to see five new flavors of ice cream in prepackaged cartons.

According to Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences Department interim head, Chris Daubert, Howling Cow plays into the University’s land-grant mission—University programs and research making local impacts. The extra revenue goes back to the department, making these novelties more than just a sweet treat.