They ride off the conveyor belt having taken a beating.

One by one, the neatly packaged cold treats had been through a mixer, submerged in water 35 degrees below zero before being placed upright and stabbed with an army of 10,000 wooden sticks.

At a brisk pace, they were sealed in air-tight clear plastic wrap, each given the same name — Creamies. The only thing that separates them is their color. Yellow. Brown. Pink.

But not all of the Creamies survive, however, as their fellow siblings ride off the belt to be packaged into boxes, welcomed by a team of workers. The ones that didn’t have been tossed aside, left to sit in a plastic bucket. The official cause of death is melting.

Donning a hair net, Craig Charlie Earl makes sure that the Creamies are lined up as they leave the conveyor belt; at times, tossing away a stray wrapper of the ones that didn’t survive.

According to Earl, watching the ice cream treats that have become the signature product of Heart to Heart Foods, Inc., headquartered in Hyde Park, never gets old — he’s been president of the company since 1990.

And Earl, who also conducts some of the company’s business with his wife, jokes that he can’t bring home pints of ice cream like he used to as a student at Utah State University, but that’s probably a good thing (His favorite flavor? Huckleberry).

“I’m still pretty involved,” said Earl, who began his career in the ice cream business 30 years ago. “What’s neat is that over the years, especially at Charlie’s, we’ve had hundreds of employees. You build relationships with them. They tell me, ‘you helped put me through college.’ People still come up and talk to me even after not seeing me for five years or more, and that’s the best part.”

Heart to Heart Food has three main products: The original Creamies — which sells approximately 15 million a year — Maui Wowi and Charlie’s, located on Main Street in Logan, the popular restaurant that sells the company’s ice cream products.

Heart to Heart has been making mixes for Maui Wowi, a coffee and smoothie company, for the past two to three years, but most recently, it has started shipping internationally, in places like Turkey, Kuwait, Singapore and — soon — Ireland. The Maui Wowis that Heart to Heart has helped distribute have already been sold at New York Yankee baseball games and the Kentucky Derby.

Heart to Heart does not rotate ice cream flavors a lot like Coldstone or Ben & Jerry’s. Currently, Heart to Heart has over 30 flavors of shakes.

So, is there a “secret ingredient”?

“It’s just high quality, high butter fat,” Earl said.

History

Heart to Heart Foods started in 1990 before Earl got involved, primarily by C. Anthon Ernstrom, who was the head of Utah State University’s Food Science Department, in 1990. The company primarily made cup yogurt in Richmond, Earl said.
“It was Heart to Heart, as in, a heart to heart talk with your son or daughter,” Earl said. “He wanted it to be a company with values.”

The company would later make ice cream bars, ice cream for Charlie’s in Logan, and eventually, cream cheese for Einstein Brothers Bagels — a nationwide chain which includes a location in Logan.

Einstein Bros. wanted Heart to Heart to make cream cheese for them, Earl said, but “wanted nothing to do” with the ice cream, so Einstein bought half of Heart to Heart.

Heart to Heart was now two companies: Heart to Heart and Doc’s Cheese. Doc’s Cheese would eventually go out of business, leaving Heart to Heart the way it operates now. The company does not make cream cheese. Heart to Heart moved from its location in Richmond to its current location at 142 W. 3200 North, Hyde Park, 15 years ago.

Earl credits Ernstrom for getting him into food science and ice cream. Not only would Ernstrom serve as a mentor for the eventual Heart to Heart owner — who earned a degree in food science at USU — he was also his next door neighbor.

“He was a really intelligent man,” Earl recalls. “He was quite a jovial guy, with a really big laugh.”

Earl remembers the best piece of advice Ernstrom gave him.

“When I decided to go into food science, he told me, ‘everybody eats, and no matter what the economy does, people still eat and that’s why food scientists survive and thrive in a bad economy — And he was right, we’ve been through this bad economy last four years and yet we still continue to increase,” Earl said.

Future

Heart to Heart will likely start producing mixes for Muai Wowi in Ireland starting next year.

A few years ago, Heart to Heart distributed its Creamies to an island in the South Pacific, but that was a one-time mission.

As far as the Creamies ever going national, Earl said there’s not much room for Heart to Heart to grow. Multi-million dollar companies like Nestle and Good Humor already have a big chunk of the market, and for the Hyde Park-based company to put on the same kind of advertising campaign is not realistic.

“It’s not that easy; we’ve tried other places like Southern California, Arizona,” Earl said.

But at the end of the day, Earl is happy that Heart to Heart Foods has remain what it was all along — a place to provide dairy products to Cache Valley residents.

Heart Heart recently came out with pro-biotic Creamies, with three flavors.

Charlie’s, the restaurant store in Logan, continues to see more customers — especially during the summer months.

“I feel good that we continue to grow every year,” Earl said. “Some years are not a huge growth .... but a lot of industries are not (growing), a lot of industries are suffering.”

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