Apr 9, 2024
This oh-so-San Francisco story
begins with two brothers and a dairy farm at Noe and 29th
Street.
Larry Mitchell and his older
brother Jack opened
Mitchell's Ice Cream in 1953. Five years earlier,
the building that now houses the well-known ice cream shop was
going to be torn down for the widening of San Jose Avenue. The
Mitchell family fought those efforts and a compromise was
reached—The City would turn and move the building. The old liquor
store that had been on San Jose was no more.
That space sat empty for a
couple years until Larry Mitchell decided that he wanted to do
something with it. His parents had a small dairy farm on
Noe and 29th Street. There was a parlor called Garrett's Ice Cream
out on Ocean Avenue that was doing well. Larry and his brothers saw
an opportunity.
A salesman from Foremost Dairy
taught them how to make ice cream, which they sourced from
Foremost. Larry, his brothers, their dad, and some friends built
the store out and it opened on June 6, 1953.
Initially, it was a small
operation. But in 1956, they built a bigger, newer freezer, and it
just took off from there. Through the years, they've done their
best to keep up with demand. The ice cream has always been made
on-site.
Larry Mitchell's oldest
daughter was already alive when the shop opened. His second
daughter, Linda, who joined us for this episode, was born in
1954, a year after the store began operations. His youngest kid,
Brian, who also appears in this episode, was born in 1961.
Today, Linda Mitchell and Brian
Mitchell are co-owners of Mitchell's Ice
Cream.
Marlon Payumo,
Mitchell's operations manager, is originally from the
Philippines. He left his homeland with family in 1987, first
landing in Guam, then on to San Francisco in 1988. Marlon had
been in The City for two weeks when his friend came to visit
him at his aunt's house, where he was staying. The friend brought
some mango ice cream and a job application. Marlon interviewed, got
the job, and has been with Mitchell's ever since. He was 19 when he
started.
Mitchell's was already popular
when Marlon came on. Linda, Brian, and Marlon all agree: The long
lines were even worse then! We talk about the frozen
yogurt craze of the Eighties and how they dabbled in it but let it
go to refocus on their crown product—the ice
cream.
Linda started working at the
family business in 1991. By then, they were the only ice cream shop
in the Mission, but their product wasn't in many stores
just yet. Brian started back in 1979 after high school. He went to
college on the Peninsula and worked at the shop on weekends. He got
a degree in business management and came on full-time in the
early Eighties.
Linda's story of how she ended
up at the family business is that their Aunt Alice, who had been
Mitchell's bookkeeper/customer service rep for some time, was
retiring. Linda had worked in banking for a while, and she'd lived
in Florida and Texas, but it was time to come home. Linda took
over their aunt's job.
In the early Nineties,
Mitchell's had about 30 employees. Today, that number isn't too
much higher—they estimate it at around 40. They succumbed to the
coffee/espresso craze of that decade. But that, too, didn't last
long.
Check back next week for Part 2
and more on the legacy and history of Mitchell's Ice Cream with
Linda, Brian, and Marlon.
We recorded this episode at
Mitchell's Ice Cream in February 2024.
Photography by Jeff
Hunt