The shocking present (and future) of the nostalgic ice cream.

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Nary a soul can recall a walk through their favorite movie theater, food court, or theme park without passing the unassuming coolers promising the siren call of delicious innovation. There was a time, for those old enough to remember it, when those coolers promised excitement, joy, and mystery.

Dippin’ Dots debuted in 1988 with a unique flash-freezing process that transforms milk, sugar, eggs, and cream into miniature spheres of super-chilled ice cream beads. Scooped out from hibernation and into a colorful plastic cup, the little frozen beads cling to your tongue before melting into the familiar flavors of strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, and cookie dough. Now, there’s a distinctly nostalgic taste associated with these tiny frozen beads. An ice-cold spoonful of Dippin’ Dots might feel like you’re eating the past, but the technology behind it has gone on to help power the future.

As a boy growing up in rural Illinois, Curt Jones always loved playing with his food. Fascinated by the curious combination of science and sugar, Jones relished the process of hand-cranking his homemade ice cream–maker with his friends, watching the egg and cream slowly transform into the sweet, velvety dessert.

In 1986, Jones landed his first job at Alltech, a Kentucky biotechnology company where his work researching large-scale freezing methods for preserving bacteria and enzymes led the microbiologist to ask himself the question: What if I could freeze ice cream without the ice crystals that come along with it? After trying and failing with dry ice, Jones had a moment of clarity that inspired him to turn to the flash-freezing power of liquid nitrogen. In 1987, Jones walked into his work at Alltech with a vat of ice cream mix in tow to test his hypothesis and came out a changed man. As each ice cream droplet hit the bath of liquid nitrogen chilled to –320 F, it instantly froze into bead-size dots.

“What I was really hoping to find out was to see if I could detect any ice crystals in there,” remarked Jones in a 2019 episode of How I Built This With Guy Raz. “You know, with homemade ice cream, you had that real icy taste. And the first thing I noticed is that when I bit into the little beads, it was a totally different texture.”

Jones left his job soon after, and by 1989, he and his wife, Kay, had struck a life-changing deal with Opryland theme park in Nashville. The Dippin’ Dots stand at the park didn’t last. But it kickstarted what would become the brand’s bread and butter—stalls at family-friendly tourist destinations. Its next kiosk was at the Kennedy Space Center, where the phrase “ice cream of the future” was coined. The next year, Curt and Kay were granted a U.S. patent (No. 5,126,156) for their unique freezing method.

By the fall of 1998, you could find Dippin’ Dots in 350 outlets across 42 states. The Joneses expanded aggressively by placing coolers in malls, amusement parks, and stadiums nationwide. The brand spawned a franchise program, cementing Dippin’ Dots as a mall-and-theme-park staple for an entire generation of kids. But success opened up a swath of new challenges. The ice cream required ultra-cold freezers that made supermarket distribution nearly impossible and limited growth. And then there was the fallout from the lawsuits.

Dippin’ Dots sued competitor Mini Melts for patent infringement in 1996. Mini Melts countersued Dippin’ Dots with an antitrust claim. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruled against Dippin’ Dots on the grounds that the company had filed the application more than a year after the product’s first commercial sale. The ruling effectively invalidated Dippin’ Dots’ claim, leading to costly settlements and a protracted legal battle that drained both time and resources. While the company continued to operate, the dispute marked the beginning of a turbulent period of financial strain. The combination of legal costs, limited distribution channels, and the broader mid-2000s economic downturn brought the company’s finances to the breaking point. By 2011, unable to sustain operations under the weight of the ongoing legal battles, Dippin’ Dots filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, seeking a way to restructure its debts and preserve what remained of its iconic brand. By 2012, Dippin’ Dots was sold—acquired by the father-son team of Scott and Mark Fischer for $12.7 million. (Stories vary on when exactly Jones left the operation, but suffice to say he wasn’t a major part of his company’s new era.)

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Under the new ownership, Dippin’ Dots shifted focus to licensing, partnerships, and more practical distribution methods. The company secured deals with movie theaters, convenience stores, and event vendors, broadening its presence in places where overheated adults and sugar-fiending children congregated. But its new stewards got creative, too. Scott Fischer licensed Jones’ “dot-forming” technology through a new venture called Dippin’ Dots Cryogenics LLC, selling the flash-freezing formula to pharmaceutical companies seeking to extend product shelf life and plant-based meat makers who used it to turn oils into fatlike microbeads that enhanced flavor and texture. Between April 2019 and April 2020, while the brand’s ice cream sales dropped by 85 percent, its cryogenics arm grew by 348 percent. Eventually, in 2022, Dippin’ Dots was acquired by J&J Snack Foods for a whopping $222 million—not too shabby for a brand that had been bankrupt about a decade prior.

For his part, Curt Jones turned his innovative eye and deep understanding of cryogenics toward another everyday favorite: coffee. His creation, 40 Below Joe, takes the same flash-freezing technology that made Dippin’ Dots famous and applies it to coffee, transforming it into tiny, frozen pellets. (Eat them on a spoon—sound familiar?—or add water for a cup of instant coffee.).

It’s hard to divorce the magic of Dippin’ Dots from its original form. While plant-based meat, coffee, and pharmaceuticals don’t quite capture a kid’s imagination as strongly as ice cream, those of us who remember those striped awnings in food courts and ballparks know the inherent joy of the dessert. Despite the bumpy ride, the uses for frozen-pellet technology have matured along with us. For the kids and grown-ups thrilled at the thought of ordering up a cup of freezing-cold beaded vanilla spheres, Dippin’ Dots will still be there to deliver.