My 5 minutes (or 5 seconds, maybe)....

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/16370488.htm

How a cone led to a heap of cold cash

By Dawn Fallik

Inquirer Staff Writer

PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY

Jeanne and Earl Berkey took a poster as their cue to give $3 million for a new Penn State creamery.

It might be the most successful yard sign ever.

"We're building a new creamery," read the 3-by-5-foot poster planted in the yard of the Pennsylvania State University creamery. "For naming rights and donations call..."

It was the summer of 2001 and Jeanne and Earl Berkey were standing in line for a cone. Although Jeanne was a dairy science alumna from 1948, she hadn't been back to the State College campus for years. But it was her birthday - her 75th - and the couple decided to visit her old stomping grounds.

Then, Earl gave his wife a $3 million birthday present.

"It caught me rather by surprise," Jeanne Berkey said with a laugh.

There are only a handful of working college creameries left, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison (mmm, Wisconsin Cranberry Cheesecake ice cream), Cornell University (mmm, Nutty Buddy Franklin) and Washington State University (mmm, Blackberry Ripple).

Founded in 1865, Penn State's creamery, now known as the Berkey Creamery, is one of the university's most-loved stops for students, their parents and alumni.

After football games, on graduation and during sunny days, lines snake outside the store as people wait for their scoop (mmm, Bittersweet Mint).

That was part of the problem, creamery manager Tom Palchak says. In its previous incarnation as the University Creamery in Borland Laboratory, the facility was providing dairy products to more than 42,000 students in the campus' dining halls and cafeterias

Then there were the ice cream, sherbet and frozen yogurt sold in the store. The lab, part of the College of Agricultural Sciences, had developed 120 flavors; only 30 were served at a time.

"We were simply outgrowing the facility," Palchak says. "We needed to update the equipment, and we had to address the amount of customers coming into the creamery store."

He was talking about more than a couple of scoops. In a typical year, the creamery serves 750,000 cones (the most popular flavor is vanilla). On average, there are 2,000 to 4,000 customers a day, depending on football games or other campus activities.

In 2001, the university started planning a new Food Science building, food-processing plant, and a bigger ice cream store. Price tag: $46 million.

Now, normally, when a university goes looking for big donations, it's not with a handwritten sign. But department officials thought it was a fun idea and knew just where to put it.

"It was placed right outside the creamery where the lines tend to go," said Abigail Hopkins, assistant director of stewardship in the College of Agricultural Sciences. "We basically wanted people to know there was a new building campaign in progress."

The Berkeys were waiting in line for ice cream cones when they saw the sign. The couple had had a relationship with creamy sweets since the 1940s, when Jeanne took a summer internship at the H.W. Walker Co., a dairy in Somerset that happened to be owned by Earl's father.

Over the years, the couple hired a few employees from Penn State's food science program and made small donations. But, for big bucks, "they weren't on our radar," Hopkins said.

When Earl saw the sign, the wheels churned. It was a good fit. The couple's dairy in Somerset had been sold and then closed by the new owners; this seemed like a good way to make a permanent stamp on a business they both loved.

"I hadn't known about the new building, and I didn't know what they were looking for" in the way of donations, Earl said. "So we just went to the development office listed on the sign."

But the development director was on a business trip, and the dean of the school was out, too. Suddenly Hopkins, who usually doesn't solicit gifts, had a couple in front of her ready to write a big, big check.

"They came in and said they were interested in helping fund the creamery, and I was just blown away," she said.

The new facility was dedicated in September, and since then sales of ice cream have been up 13 percent. One of those flavors was the Berkey Brickle - vanilla ice cream with caramel and peanut butter brickle candy.

The couple, who spend eight months of the year in Arizona and the rest in Western Pennsylvania, came to the dedication and plan to return this summer to their cool namesake. Of course, there's only so much influence $3 million will buy.

"We still have to stand in line, we don't get to go to the front," Earl Berkey joked. "I guess they didn't think about that."

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Contact staff writer Dawn Fallik at 215-854-2795 or dfallik@phillynews.com.