It’s no secret that college is stressful. From midterms to presentations to meetings, students are constantly in search of life’s simple pleasures to make it through. Here at NC State, Howling Cow offers just that: scoops of frozen, decadent therapy that can cure — just about — anything.
The beloved campus creamery, run by NC State’s Dairy Enterprise System, takes on the challenge of satisfying students’ sugar cravings. Feldmeier Dairy Processing Lab, part of the Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Science, is where the magic happens. The skim, low-fat, chocolate and whole milk is retrieved straight from the farm, near Lake Wheeler, and is brought back to Feldmeier as it makes its way through an extensive processing routine.
Gary Cartwright, director of the Dairy Enterprise System, describes the intensive process that is developing new ice cream flavors, which are often pitched by the community.
“We get calls and emails all the time for people willing to test our flavors, but even when someone from outside recommends an ice cream flavor and we decide to pursue it, we have to do a lot of research,” Cartwright said. “You can’t just take a chunk of chocolate and put it in the ice cream, because it’s served 5 degrees above zero. There are very specific ingredients you can put in ice cream to make it work.”
Chancellor’s Choice, an age-old tradition that allows newly appointed chancellors to choose a new ice cream flavor, has aided in expanding Howling Cow’s flavor list.
“When Chancellor [Randy] Woodson came on board, he heard about the possible ice cream flavor and said ‘give me some time,” Cartwright said. “Two months later, he said ‘My favorite is moose tracks, but I want you to call it Wolf Tracks.’ We got out on the Brickyard with his new flavor and we had a heck of a crowd out there. We made a giant ice cream so large that we had to take it out of the truck with a forklift. It was a little over 100 gallons of ice cream. Immediately, Wolf Tracks went to No. 1.”
NC State’s Dairy Enterprise System has been in existence since the late 1940s, responsible for providing the university with fresh milk, but no true branding was implemented until 2007. The business boomed with famous “Howling Cow” branding in 2007, with the help of business officer and associate director, Carl Hollifield.
“In the last 15 years Howling Cow has grown tremendously,” Hollifield said. “We make twice as much ice cream as we did 15 years ago. When I started, we had maybe eight flavors and now we have about 20.”
From making sure the animals are healthy and happy, to making milk deliveries, to mixing the milk with sugar and heavy cream, Hollifield is another pivotal figure behind the production of students’ ultimate guilty pleasure.
“It’s a lot of real work, but once a week we freeze ice cream and we do the hard job of tasting it to make sure it’s right,” Hollifield said. “We have a constant supply of ice cream and chocolate milk on hand.”
A newer addition to Howling Cows’ milk menu is Power Pack: a chocolate milk training and recovery drink. The senior design team of the Dairy Enterprise System helped Cartwright and Hollifield develop the product, which will celebrate its three-year anniversary this summer.
Both Hollifield and Cartwright emphasized that there is much science and hard work behind the production of Howling Cow products, allowing students in the Department of Food Science to learn firsthand what it’s like working in the business.
“We’re not just here to make ice cream,” Hollifield said. “We’re here to make sure that students get an education. That’s our mission.”
Howling Cow fans will be able to see the magic for themselves at the Dairy Enterprise System’s soon-to-be available visitors center, which will be located on the dairy farm.
Large tanks located in the Robert H. Feldmeier Dairy Processing Lab hold ice cream mix to be transitioned to tubs for sale. Milk was pasteurized in additional containers in a different section of the lab and then moved to these tanks in preparation for the final stages of production of Howling Cow Ice Cream, stages that occurred on April 12.
