Buck's Ice Cream provides Columbians
with a taste of MU's black and gold.
by Diane Bordenkircher
In the back room of Buck’s Ice Cream Place, a group of employees measures cups of vanilla and egg custard for a batch of Tiger Stripe ice cream. Above the noise of the ice cream mixer, the staff whistles the University of Missouri fight song.
Buck’s signature flavor, a gold-colored vanilla ice cream striped with dark chocolate, has more ties to MU than its colors.
“Tiger Stripe ice cream has become part of the tradition of Mizzou,” Buck’s manger Rick Linhardt. “Parents went to school here and got ice cream and now their kids are coming here to get ice cream.”
Tiger Stripe is sold at local restaurants, grocery stores and distributed at campus events. In August, incoming students are welcomed with 6,000 servings of Tiger Stripe at the annual Tiger Walk, at which freshman run though the columns at Francis Quadrangle to signify their entrance to MU.
In the front parlor photographs and history of the old Buck’s Ice Cream shop hang on the walls. In one photo, cows graze in a field where the College of Veterinary Medicine now stands, when Buck’s was known as Eckles Hall Ice Cream. It served as a research lab and provided ice cream, milk, butter and cheese to MU cafeterias in the 1920s.
Although the dairy plant closed in 1972 for financial reasons, ice cream research resumed in 1989 with a donation from Ruth and Wendell Arbuckle. The modern-day ice cream parlor is named after Wendell, who went by the nickname “Buck.”
The teaching and researching side of Buck’s Ice Cream is designed for food science students, said Linhardt, who is Coordinator of Research Operations and teaches Intro to Dairy Products.
“It gives students outside the classroom experience,” Linhardt said. “It gets them ready for the work world and for going out into the industry. We have a lot of students who have worked at Buck’s and who get jobs in the dairy flavoring or product development industries.”
Graduate students use the research lab to improve ice cream production. Currently, students are researching how to make flavors last longer and how to produce a low fat ice cream that tastes like a high fat one, Linhardt said. However, customers will not experience the newly developed dairy products for themselves.
“Our research has to go through and be accepted by (the ice cream) industry,” Linhardt said. “We can’t have research ice cream put out in the retail store very easily.”
Only a black and gold awning on the south side of Eckles Hall distinguishes Buck’s and its research plant. Inside the tiny parlor there are a couple tables and a viewing window to observe the inside workings of Buck’s. Students scoop up a variety of flavors, including strawberry, cookies and cream and butter pecan, but Tiger Stripe is definitely the most popular, Linhardt said.
“There is a very spread out demographic of the people who come here,” said Laura Ortinau, a food science doctorate student who has worked at Buck’s for four years. “I see families, older couples and college students.”
Although butter pecan is Ortinau’s favorite flavor, she appreciates Tiger Stripe ice cream’s hometown ties.
“When Dr. Marshall formulated Tiger Stripe, he used as many Missouri products as possible,” Ortinau said. “The stripe is actually made of a corn syrup. Missouri is known for growing a good amount of corn.”
Columbia resident Mike Roberts shared the MU tradition with Vin Dablo, a visiting graduate student from Australia, at Buck’s Ice Cream Place.
“This guy gets it so often that when we walk around campus together, people yell, ‘Mike! Where's your ice cream?’” Dablo said. “I knew I had to check out what the hype was about. I'm definitely not disappointed!”
The taste of Buck’s ice cream can be a rite-of-passage for MU students, Linhradt said. He meets customers who got their first taste of Tiger Stripe at Tiger Walk and return when they graduate for their last bite.
“It has become my lively hood,” Linhardt said. “Ice cream is something that makes people happy. I’m a graduate of MU and I’m doing something that promotes MU in a positive image.”