Craig Culver is the co-founder and president of Culver’s Frozen Custard and Culver Franchising System, Inc. This empire of ice cream began 16 years ago as a single converted drive-in restaurant in Sauk City, Wisconsin and has grown to 110 stores in 11 states throughout the Midwest.

A Culver’s Frozen Custard restaurant is a hybrid of fast food and family sit-down, and the concept seems to have caught on. Culver’s serves food that is cooked to order, not just assembled when ordered. Customers get their food how they want it, and they get it hot.

Culver’s mission is “to provide enhanced customer service while serving quality, affordable food in a clean, friendly, quick service family atmosphere.” A tall order for a burger joint, but then, Culver’s isn’t your typical burger joint. The menu is made up of a variety of sandwiches including a Norwegian cod fillet sandwich, a pork tenderloin sandwich, a Philly ribeye steak sandwich, and a sourdough turkey BLT.

Then, of course, there’s dessert. For the uninitiated, frozen custard is a freshly made premium ice cream. Custard has much less air beat into it than ice cream, making it extremely heavy and dense. Cream and eggs add to its rich flavor and velvety smoothness. At Culver’s, the custard is made in view of the customer in small batches throughout the day.

“Freshness is truly the key,” Culver said. “When we’re the busiest, we have the best custard because it’s the freshest.”

One-third of Culver’s sales is custard, another third is their trademarked ButterBurgers™ and everything else on the menu combined makes up the remaining third. Culver’s is America’s largest frozen custard establishment and will serve more than 49 million scoops this year, employing 38 dairy farms year round. Every day, in addition to chocolate and vanilla frozen custard, Culver’s offers one of 141 officially sanctioned “flavors of the day,” even though Craig Culver is a self-proclaimed “vanilla guy.”

Fresh meat, fresh custard and fresh salads may make for the tasty fare, but fresh ingredients make the risk of foodborne illnesses higher than in a restaurant where everything comes from a freezer or a can.

“We want to stay on the cutting edge of food safety,” Culver said.

Barbara Behling, Culver’s director of public relations, said while the state and federal standard is to have one employee per store who is certified in food safety, Culver’s has four per store, and a goal of five.

“In part because we have fresh product we have to have higher standards,” she said. “Fresh product has a limited shelf life. We can’t just throw it in the freezer, we have to order better and rotate.”

All of Culver’s meat is specially packed for them in white boxes with user-friendly food safety messages printed on the outside to remind workers of good handling practices on a daily basis. White is the predominant color used in the interior design of Culver’s restaurants too.

“We have white restaurants because if you can keep white clean, you know it’s really clean,” Behling said.

Safety and cleanliness are just two of the values at the heart of the Culver’s philosophy. Being good corporate citizens in the communities where they are located is important as well.

Culver’s donates generously to charitable organizations, and franchisees get involved in civic organizations, neighborhoods and schools because it’s good for the community, employees and business according to Behling.

“You have to be a partner with your community in order for your community to embrace you, ” Behling said.

Some of Culver’s well-publicized partnerships include their “Eat More Pork” campaign designed to raise public awareness of low pork prices. Not to slight their dairy friends, Culver’s launched the “Drink More Milk” campaign when the price paid to farmers for milk hit an all-time low. This summer, Culver bid $11,000 on the Reserve Grand Champion steer at the Wisconsin State Fair and then donated the animal back to the fair to raise an additional $5,000 in a second auction. The funds went to help rural and urban kids throughout the state and the steer was donated by both buyers to a Milwaukee food bank where it provided more than 600 meals.

In keeping with its small-town beginnings and mom & pop philosophy, most of Culver’s original stores were located in communities of 10,000 people or less.

“Over time, we started putting them in bigger areas and found they could do a lot more business,” Culver said. “Now as we expand we’re hitting bigger cities. Suburbs work well for us demographically.”

Tom Williams, Culver’s corporate architect, said to be successful, a Culver’s franchise needs to be seen by 20,000 cars a day.

“But it’s not a necessity to be on a freeway,” he said. “What we need for a good lunch crowd is business, industry and schools. For dinner we need rooftops, meaning residences. We look for a combination of both when we select sites.

“We sell an upscale product compared to typical quick serve places,” Williams added. “So we’re looking for people with household incomes that allow them to eat out often and a willingness to pay for quality products.”

In two to three years, Culver sees his business at 200 stores, and a little further down the road he sees expansion leveling off at 500 or 600 locations.

“Opening restaurants is not the most important thing,” Culver said. “Sure, I’m competitive and I always want to do better than last year, but it’s most important to grow each individual restaurant. We take care of one customer at a time and open one restaurant at a time.”

Williams said he and other members of Culver’s corporate staff are involved in selecting the best location for new restaurants and the best equipment for those new establishments. That equipment, from grills and fryers to heating units and water heaters, is gas-fired.

“We definitely tell them (franchisees) what equipment to use,” he said. “We send out cooking instructions for each menu item, and those instructions were developed on specific pieces of equipment. If we are to have consistent quality, we have to all use the same equipment.

“Why use gas? It’s clean, it’s dependable, it’s economical and I can get it wherever I go without major service extensions,” Williams said. “The downside to electricity is that in almost every location it is more expensive than gas.”

He said he also has questions about the reliability of electricity.

“My estimation is that in two years the grid for electricity will be maxed out in many locations,” Williams said. “There isn’t a lot more for them to provide. I haven’t had any indication of that happening with gas.”

Ninety percent of Culver’s Frozen Custard restaurants are franchised and are owner-operated. Each new franchise owner pays a $45,000 franchise fee to use the Culver’s name, products, trademarks and support services. The price of a typical Culver’s with 95 seats, including building, land and equipment, is more than $1 million.

Prior to opening a restaurant, new franchisees must successfully complete a 60-hour evaluation period and an intense 16-week training program. During the program owners receive training in operations, sanitation, safety, advertising and marketing, employee recruitment, relations and retention, financial management and leadership. Culver Franchising System, Inc. owns four training restaurants in Wisconsin that serve as hands-on training grounds for new franchisees. In addition, Culver’s corporate office in Prairie du Sac is equipped with a full learning center classroom and test kitchen.

“If we don’t train them here, they’re not going to adhere to the Culver’s way, which we think is pretty good,” Behling said.

Culver Franchising System, Inc. also conducts seminars and an annual convention to bring franchise owners and managers together to discuss industry topics and trends. All are designed to improve skills, leadership and profitability.

Ninety-five percent of Culver’s franchisees attended last year’s annual convention, and two of those absent would have gone if they hadn’t been busy having babies that week.

“There’s so much learning and networking that can increase your profit,” Behling said of the annual convention. “Why wouldn’t you go?”

As for franchisees having babies?

“Well, we’re a young company,” Behling said. “There’s a lot of entrepreneurial spirit.”

Fall, who hails from suburban Chicago and has also lived in both Iowa and Wisconsin, chose Grafton, a village of 10,000 souls 20 miles north of Milwaukee, as the place he wanted to operate a Culver’s franchise because “people already knew what custard was.”

While Fall’s Texas relatives thought he was talking about pudding when he first told them about Culver’s custard, the premium ice cream needs no explanation in Wisconsin. “Going for some custard,” is what people do on a hot summer evening in the dairy state.

This December, Fall will be bringing Culver’s custard and ButterBurgers™ to another near-Milwaukee community when he opens a second franchise in north suburban Brown Deer.

Busalacchi, the new owner of a Culver’s franchise in Jackson, 25 miles northwest of Milwaukee, has been in the restaurant business for 22 years. He could have chosen one of the better known names in fast food when he decided to go it on his own, but to his thinking, Culver’s stood out in the crowd.

“They take care of people and are dedicated to the business,” Busalacchi said of the Culver family.

Someone else in the Milwaukee area is taking care of these two Culver’s franchisees when it comes to their energy needs, however. Wisconsin Gas Sales Consultant Marilyn Jacobson advises foodservice customers like Fall and Busalacchi on new gas equipment and the savings they will realize when they choose natural gas over a competitive fuel.

“Wisconsin Gas facilitates customer service from putting the pipe in the ground and the meter on the building for service to Energy WI$E consulting on energy efficiency,” Jacobson said.

Fall is in the process of purchasing equipment for his new Brown Deer location including a 60-inch gas grill, five deep fat gas fryers, a gas water heater and a booster water heater.

“It is specified by Culver’s that we use gas,” Fall said. “Because it’s very important that each franchise maintain the Culver’s quality standards.”

By choosing gas-fired equipment, Fall will qualify for more than $1,000 in rebates from Wisconsin Gas.

“High-efficiency gas equipment will lower operating costs and save you money,” Jacobson said. “Installing a gas booster heater can save you up to two thirds of your current water heating costs.”

To avoid the up-front costs of buying a water heater, Busalacchi decided to lease a 200,000 BTU high-efficiency water heater from Wisconsin Gas Leasing Services for his Jackson location.

“The program made sense because it offset the equipment expense,” he said.

Busalacchi also received a rebate of $1,050 from Wisconsin Gas for the purchase of a 200,000 BTU gas griddle and four 120,000 BTU gas fryers when his restaurant opened in February.

Cooking Equipment:

1 Keating Miraclean Model 60 x 30 Gas Griddle

5 Pitco Model 14RS Gas Fryers

Building Systems:

2 Carrier Combination Gas Heating, Electric Cooling Rooftop Unit 185,000 BTU Heating Capacity

1 Reznor Separated Combustion Make-Up Air Unit 160,000 BTU Heating Capacity

1 Voyager Sealed Combustion 80 Gallon Gas Water Heater 130,000 BTU