Ensuring Longevity through Employee Ownership
If you walk down the frozen dessert aisle of your local grocery store, there’s a good chance that most of the products on the shelf have components made by Joy Cone. Although this ice cream cone manufacturer is headquartered in Pennsylvania, Flagstaff is home to one of only three United States locations, making the town a big deal when it comes to ice cream.
Taking on the West
According to legend—as told by Lane Fisher, Plant Engineer—Joy Cone ended up in Flagstaff when Joe George (son of the company’s founder) read a book by Sam Walton describing Flagstaff as the gateway to the West for business. The university town appealed to Walton, and subsequently to George, in large part due to its location that allowed good east to west transmission along both I-40 and the rail lines and good access to Southern Arizona via I-17. Having just bought out a California competitor at the time, Joy Cone was ready to move into Flagstaff and take on the western market.
The original Flagstaff facility, built in 1999, was 67,000 square feet—small for a major food manufacturing facility and warehouse—but it has expanded over the years to a current 257,000 square feet with plans to add additional warehouse space in the near future. Recently, market demand for Joy Cones’s cake, sugar, and waffle cones has increased causing their number of employees to grow as well. Whereas the Flagstaff branch of the company was stable for many years at around 150 employees with some seasonal help during the summer, it now employs between 250 and 300 year-round workers.
From Family Business to Employee Ownership
Joy Cone has also adapted when it comes to ownership, transitioning to a fully employee owned model in 2016 after three generations of family ownership. As Fisher puts it, “the general rule is that after three generations, almost all family-owned businesses kind of fold up.” He explains that the first generation starts the business, their kids are committed to carrying the business on, but the third generation of kids often have their sights set on becoming doctors or lawyers instead of staying home to run the family business.
In Joy Cone’s case, David George, the company’s current CEO and third generation family member, did take on responsibility for the business, but wanted to see it protected in the long term. According to Fisher, George “didn’t want to see it get sold or parted out… to a big company.” Knowing that his children were not interested in taking on the business, George made an unconventional move and put his own stock shares up to be distributed among the company’s employees. As Fisher puts it, “Basically, what he gambled was his portion of the fortune.” George’s decision paid off as the company appreciated in value over the years, restoring the wealth he gambled for the company’s long-term security.
The benefits of working for an employee-owned company are huge for employees who stick around for the long haul. Fisher has noticed that the longer an employee stays with Joy Cone, the more vested and invested they become as they realize what their ownership stake means. “Every dollar saved or every good idea that comes out of me or this plant pays back in our retirement,” he explains. Often this shows up in employees proposing safety improvements that help to both improve the work environment for themselves and their fellow employees and save the company money.
Joy Cone in the Community
For many years, Flagstaff’s Joy Cone was a popular destination for school field trips. Groups of second graders would line up and walk through the facility marveling at exactly how much space a ton of sugar takes up or how batter is poured into a mold and cooked into the familiar shape of an ice cream cone. Although the tours were stopped when COVID-19 came on the scene, they have had a surprisingly lasting impact for the company. Fisher laughs as he explains that many people who are now applying for jobs at Joy Cone are 16, 17, or 18 years old, and when asked how they heard about the company, they say they did a tour of the facility in elementary school. Fisher admits his surprise at this community service turning out to have been a good workforce development tool: “We didn’t realize it at the time, you know. Who could have known that we would be hiring in 12 years?”
Since the tours have ceased, Fisher sees a definite opening for more opportunities for more “grassroots” style community partnership. Recently, Joy Cone has sponsored community events like Hullabaloo and worked with interns from Coconino High School and Northern Arizona University, but Fisher would like to see the company lean into those types of efforts even more. To him, something like giving a high school robotics team experience working with the 7-axis robot arms used in Joy Cone’s facility is a mutually beneficial arrangement. At minimum a team of potential engineers gets real world experience while Joy Cone gets their name in local residents’ heads as they are considering where to look for work.
Keeping the Environment in Mind
Flagstaff Joy Cone also makes a consistent effort to keep environmental impact at the forefront of its decision making. Fisher notes that past company projects with an environmental benefit have included recapturing heat from the baking process and using it to make the internal conditions more comfortable for employees instead of venting it to the atmosphere, selling scrap cones (such as those with defects) to be used as a component in pig feed to reduce waste, and upgrading a portion of the facility’s scrap system to remove the need for incineration of certain products that the old system could not manage. Currently, the company is evaluating ways it can tie improved wastewater treatment into its planned expansion.
Although Joy Cone has multiple locations across North America, the Flagstaff location’s efforts to create the best work environment for its employees, to be active participants in the local community, and to take care of Flagstaff’s unique environment make it feel like as local a business as any homegrown mom and pop shop.
