On December 31, 1982, John and Debbie Lopez purchased the franchised ice cream store at the corner of Olive and D, next to Smith’s Market, in Porterville, CA. We moved from Merced, along with Stephen and Tim, our two young sons.

For the next 16 years, we operated the ice cream store along with our growing family, adding Sam, Leah, David Daniel and Katie during that time. Choosing to homeschool the kids allowed them to begin working around the age of 10.  The store has played an important role in their business education, teaching them also the value of serving others, an integral part their Christian education as well.

During these years as a franchise, our franchisor seemed to be
getting further and further away from ice cream. Changes in ownership, mergers, and corporate decisions that emphasized other products (which eventually led to them discontinuing their actual ice cream production; it is now contracted out) pushed us to independence.

On November 1, 1998, All About Ice Cream was born, named out of frustration that our former franchisor was no longer all about ice cream (plus, A comes before B alphabetically, insuring our presence above our former name on most lists…..) We found an exceptional ice cream manufacturer, family owned and operated McConnell’s of Santa Barbara, to make us a much better product than we had previously carried. We continued running the business as usual on the corner of Olive and D, now next to Save Mart Supermarket, keeping our emphasis on Ice Cream.

For the next 10 years, without a franchisor to fall back on, we learned a lot about self-reliance. We had to do more ourselves, such as baking our own cakes for our increasingly popular ice cream cakes. A big plus is that the end product is far superior than previously trucked in frozen desserts. We also found a niche in the wedding cake market—both ice cream and regular wedding cakes. When our lease was up in 2008, we decided that we needed more space to expand our cake business, which was quickly growing larger than we could accommodate in our 900+ sq. ft store.

On February 10, 2009, we moved into our new location, 1323 W. Henderson, in the Target shopping center. With a bigger oven, more refrigeration, and more space, we can manage more efficiently, and with a larger customer area, we can serve Porterville better.

• Steve lives in the Sacramento area and works as a Geek Squad agent (yes, he gets to drive one of those cute little cars!)
• Tim lives in the Los Angeles area and works at Symantec (he's a beta test coordinator for Norton Anti-Virus.)
  
• Sam lives in Fresno and is a student at Fresno State (last we heard he's an English major.)
  
• Leah works at our local Home Depot (she plans on cosmetology school in the near future)
  
• David still scoops ice cream, but is a licensed EMT preparing to find a job in emergency services.
  
• Daniel is a Porterville College student and works at the ice cream store.
  
• Katie is our baby, 17 years old. You can find her 3 or 4 days a week at the store working with her dad. She will be attending Porterville College Fall 2010, after she completes her high school studies at home.
  
  

We look forward to serving Porterville for many years to come!