As someone told me recently, "It takes two to tango." And so it was with Farrell's...

A couple of months after meeting Bob Farrell, I received an e-mail from a gentleman who asked me about Ken McCarthy's involvement with Farrell's Ice Cream Parlours. I had to confess that my knowledge of Ken's contributions were somewhat limited. Ken had retired from the company long before I began working there, and the various managers that had worked with Bob in the pre-Marriott days had little information.

Well, as it turned out, the gentleman who had e-mailed me was a longtime friend of Ken. After a few informational exchanges, I gave him my home address and, a couple of weeks later, a letter arrived in my mailbox. It was from Ken McCarthy himself. He provided me with a rather detailed and extensive history of the Farrell's organization and the "players" from 1960 until just before Marriott bought the company. He also provided me with his home phone number, so I gave him a call and we chatted for about an hour.

Ken McCarthy had been with Carnation Dairy for 14 years when he and Bob started up Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour. He had started by driving milk runs, and worked his way up to account representative. In this position, he helped customers set up new soda fountains and point-of-sale opportunities for Carnation's ice cream products. He knew the ins and outs of ice cream, and he knew the players in the market.

After leaving Farrell's, Ken bought and operated a small manufacturing company for several years, but since then, he has kept out of the limelight, living in Oregon.

Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour was started up in an era when soft-serve ice cream was all the rage. Customers who wanted a traditional ice cream sundae had no place to go.  If Bob was the P.T. Barnum of Farrell's, Ken was probably the Einstein of the company. From such things as fountain menu development and pricing, Ice cream recipe development, acquisition of critical financing for the company, and development of the original training program and operations manual for the company, Ken's involvement probably had more to do with Farrell's growth as a successful, profitable business throughout the 1960's than Bob's. Although as Ken stressed repeatedly, no single person could likely have made Farrell's the success that it ultimately was.

One of the things that made early Farrell's successful (the company name had not become legendary yet) was the quality of their food and fountain items, outstanding service, a spotless restaurant, as well as the decor and the hoopla that would become synonymous with Farrell's.  Ken was most proud of his training program. "I developed an employee training program, which covered all facets of the operation. Job descriptions for cashier, cook, fountain, waitperson, bus person and dishwasher were created and became an operations manual. The manual was supported by 300 color slides of each position given in a presentation/training format. I trained individuals to teach each of these positions. Quickly I had three crews of five teachers ready to teach the employees of each new store, both company-owned and franchised."

After Ken retired, the training crews were disbanded and the former teachers were given management positions in parlours. Bob Farrell took the manual and slides and had LaBelle training filmstrips produced, with Bob providing the narrative on the audio track. His training crews for future stores would consist of hourly staff "borrowed" from existing parlours. This method of training generally lacked the rigor and thoroughness of Ken's program.

Maybe Ken's contribution is better compared to Ray Kroc, who took a small San Bernardino-based fast food restaurant and built the world's largest foodservice business. Ray kept his eyes and his company's focus on the basics during his tenure with the company. His mantra, "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean", gave McDonald's the reputation for having clean restaurants, as well as consistent food and fast service. After Mr. Kroc died, the company lost its focus on the basics, until today the world's biggest restaurant chain is fraught with operational problems, is working to recover lost sales, and a couple of years ago posted its first ever quarterly loss.

What had happened to the Golden Arches also happened to Farrell's after Ken retired. As the ice cream's butterfat was slashed, beef quality was lowered, and other menu changes cheapened the product quality, west coast parlours saw some sales decrease. (The stores east of the Rockies never knew the ultimate quality that Ken had designed into the original Farrell's recipes).  When expansion is substituted for quality and service, eventually you have nothing but a lot of restaurants that people don't want to go to.

As I thought about it more, I began to understand why many of the parlours opened from 1973-75 never made a dime. The long slide in product quality had started long before the "deliberate change" program (although that program certainly sped things up). As these changes were undertaken, Farrell's began its arduous transition from a quality establishment with a novel twist to a novelty with some quality. And as that transition occurred, Farrell's slowly became the place to go only on "those special days". Certainly it cost too much to go there on a regular basis...

As I talked with Ken, the straight-talking former founder stressed that, in spite of the philosophical differences he had with Bob, he does not hold ill will toward his former partner. He simply calls it as he sees it.  I still have to wonder, where would Farrell's be if the duo had not split up in 1970?