Everybody Seems So Happy Here: the Clumpies Origin Story
Twenty seven years ago, a new ice cream shop opened on the North Shore.
Food as a verb thanks
for sponsoring this series
In 1996, Marshall Brock was strolling through a quaint little ice cream shop called St. Michael's on the eastern shore of Maryland, when the idea plopped onto his mind, like a scoop of vanilla rolling onto a cone.
Hmm, he thought, everyone here seems so happy.
An ice cream store looks like a fun thing to do.
Marshall had grown up loving ice cream, and gosh knows — his family built The Brock Candy Co. — he grew up around candy. As the recent college grad returned to Chattanooga from Maryland, he tucked the St. Michael's experience away inside.
A few years later, some friends said: why don't you revisit that ice cream idea?
So, like a second scoop rolling onto his growing cone of an idea: let's open a new type of ice cream shop.
Where?
How about the North Shore?
The what?
These were the early days of Coolidge Park and Frazier Ave. His business plan wasn't that elaborate.
"The original thing: me thinking ice cream sounded fun," he said. "That was about as much of a business plan as I had."
At home, Marshall would often make malt chocolate milk shakes; he'd load the blender up, and only pulse it two or three times. The result?
Thick.
And clumpy.
In 1999 — some 27 years ago last month — Clumpies Ice Cream Co. opened on the North Shore.
What they tried to do was James Dean the ice cream experience. Ice cream may be cold, but is it cool?
"I felt like Ben and Jerry's had left the throne," Marshall said. "There needs to be a new upstart. I wanted to be the next Ben and Jerry's."
Over the years, Clumpies would become both ice cream and identity, a brand + design + experience story as much about creativity as it was dairy.
As an infant Coolidge Park was still being created, they hauled in tractor seats as guest seating; local artists painted murals of cows on the wall. "We're going to put a barn in a store," Marshall said.
"Because ice cream is milk and milk comes from cows and cows are animals that eat grass," he said. "The earth and nature and farms. We were trying to evoke that."
It started with Marshall, his wife Kim and two friends:
"Scott Noll and Anthony Tucker," he said, who helped do everything. "Plan it, figure out how to make ice cream, figure out how to run a store."
In October 1999, they opened their doors. Marshall, who has this inviting, contagious blend of humility, humor and vision, had created the start of one of the most iconic, long-lasting brands in our city's modern history.
Twenty seven years later, the moment needs to be enrishined and elevated as pivotal to both our food culture and city's identity.
So, back to 1999. They opened in October. Read that again please: October.
"Make sure you tell them how good it is to open an ice cream shop in October," Marshall said.
Lots has happened since then. In 2013, the Brocks sold the business to Rock City; earlier this year, the fabulous Chef Ashley Bottoms and her husband Justin became the new owners of Clumpies.
Not long ago, Ashley had this brilliant idea. Anthony, who was with the Brocks from the very beginning, had dropped by the store with all this old memorabilia and scrapbooks, like Clumpies' original designs.
"I fell in love with them," Ashley said.
So, to celebrate Clumpies 27th birthday, Ashley created a new line of merch.
Welcome to the new Clumpies' Nostalgia Line.
The new Nostalgia merch can be found online and in stores. But to really get nostalgic, we need to tell the early origin stories.
That's why we sat down with Anthony, Kim and Marshall. (This is a big weekend for the Brocks. Marshal is a co-founder of CFC, who hosts in the Eastern Conference finals this afternoon. When Sarah met them, she called them "Chattanooga royalty.")
Cookies 'n Cream was their first flavor. Their first sale?
A $2 Powerade.
"I couldn't frame that dollar," Marshall said. "I waited until somebody bought an ice cream."
They built Clumpies around small batch production, which means one ice cream machine — an Emery Thompson that only was put out to pasture recently — was single-handedly responsible for all flavors made.
"One flavor at a time," Marshall said.
And ... rich.
"16.9% butterfat," he said.
"We were married with two babies," said Kim, "and I was pregnant with our third."
Paul Rustand's Widgets & Stone made the design, which fit immediately. Date nights often meant scooping ice cream and mopping floors at midnight.
But ... something was in the air.
"A buzz," said Kim. "We felt wanted and people were excited we were there."
"We all made ice cream," Anthony said. At the time, he was a 21-year-old soccer player at Covenant College studying business.
"It was a perfect opportunity to do what I thought I wanted," he said.
They took classes at Penn. St., went to conferences and swapped ideas in hotel lobbies with other ice cream makers.
"We were entering into this batch freezer ice cream world," said Marshall. "In English, that means we were making one flavor at a time.
"Luckily, there's a really tiny, weird, disorganized world of batch ice cream makers."
They'd drive to Atlanta or scour catalogs for ingredients. Inspiration came from anywhere and everywhere. Once, they bought a big stock of tiny little chocolate caramel-filled turtles.
"With an actual pattern on their back," said Marshall.
Everyone agreed:
"We've got to figure out a way to use these turtles," Marshall said.
One night, Marshall's watching Saturday Night Live.
He belly-laughed at a cartoon "rebel, undeground character who was angry and trying to get back at the Man."
It was a turtle.
"Tippi Turtle," Marshall said.
And that's when, like a scoop onto a cone, the idea fell into place. It was perfect Clumpies: a mix of ingenuity, wit and timing.
"We called the ice cream Tippi Turtle," he said.
More ingredients: Pop Rocks, Chai, blackberry white chocolate chunk.
They'd make 11 batches at a time, or 100 gallons a day. They'd win ice cream contests, often for their ice cream, and often for, well, other reasons. Slightly bigger servings. Or, descriptions that weren't plain vanilla, but ....
"Vanilla made with Madagascar vanilla from an island in Tahiti," Marshall said.
Which brings us to one of my favorite food stories in Chattanooga history.
One day, they'd just finished 20 batches of cookie dough. Marshall was cleaning the machine when he noticed this teensy tiny blade was missing.
"A hitch clip pin," he said.
It's a little thicker than a paper clip.
And it was gone, broken off into one of the 20 batches they'd just finished.
So, they hustle-opened the first two tubs of cookie dough and began scooping them down the drain, searching for this missing hitch clip pin.
"Everything is really tight financially," Marshall recalls, "and we're smashing it down the drain."
After the third batch down the drain, he stopped.
No, he said. Enough. I'm not doing this.
We're going to have to find another answer.
Someone suggested another idea.
"A contest," Marshall laughs.
Like the Wonka Golden Ticket, but, well, more dangerous. They tried it on for size.
Hey, everyone. We've got a fun thing going on. If you find a metal clip in your ice cream, you win a free kiddie scoop.
Nope. Couldn't do that.
Then, Marshall had another idea:
"A metal detector," he said.
He took a sample hitch clip pin to a store that sold metal detectors, but the detectors weren't strong enough to register the pin.
Another idea:
You know what you ought to think of doing? Go to the airport and run it through their screening.
"I went out to the metropolitan airport and asked TSA: if I bring you tubs of ice cream, can we run it through your X-ray and look for this metal pin?" Marshall said.
The airport said yes.
So, at 5.30 am one morning, Marshall filled the Clumpies freezer truck with 40 tubs of ice cream. Inside one of them: a missing hitch clip pin.
They parked in the loading zone. They stacked the cartons, pushing the dolly five-tubs-at-a-time on the airport up-escalator and onto the conveyer screening belt that fed the X-ray.
Negative. Nope. Nothing here.
They'd dolly-hustle the ice cream five-tubs-a-time back down the down-escalator, repeating the process.
Then ... victory.
"I remember running back up that escalator and I see a TSA guy walking towards me with a tub over his head and everybody's cheering," Marshall remembers.
"It was a peach sorbet with a metal hitch clip in the center of it."
In that moment — the TSA arms raised, laughter all around, the connection formed between different communities, the hilarious creativity of Marshall Brock — there is the perfect Clumpies moment.
No, it didn't become a huge a moneymaker for them in those years. It was a small business with small business struggles. But in the end?
"The way I look at it and measure it? There's something very cool sitting on the North Shore that didn't exist and that's been there longer than most everything around it," said Anthony.
"When I walk down Frazier Ave., I'm very proud of what we did."
"I feel very proud of him and his vision," said Kim. "He's just really good at kind of seeing a big picture and wanting to go big."
Marshall likes to smilingly remind us that Chef Erik Niel — who worked behind the Clumpies bar while building his Easy Bistro business plan — started his career here.
"Make sure that's on the record," he laughed.
Also on the record: Clumpies changed everything. And, under Ashley's new ownership, continues to. Some 100 flavors on the menu, among the most creative in our region. Years building a cow-to-cone ice cream process. Annual sales of 350,000 scoops, enough to cross the Walnut Street Bridge 30 times.
All because of an idea built together with family and good friends.
"I think maybe that was revolutionary," said Marshall, "but we weren't trying to be revolutionary, if that makes sense."
Today, just like the last 27 years, someone will stroll through quaint ice cream shops on the North Shore or Southside. And like a most delicious scoop rolling onto the heart, it will be so obvious:
Hmmm, everybody seems happy here.
Story ideas, questions, feedback? Interested in partnering with us? Email: david@foodasaverb.com
This story is 100% human generated; no AI chatbot was used in the creation of this content.
food as a verb thanks our sustaining partner:
food as a verb thanks our story sponsor:
Easy Bistro & Bar
In 1996, Marshall Brock was strolling through a quaint little ice cream shop called St. Michael's on the eastern shore of Maryland, when the idea plopped onto his mind, like a scoop of vanilla rolling onto a cone.
Hmm, he thought, everyone here seems so happy.
An ice cream store looks like a fun thing to do.
Marshall had grown up loving ice cream, and gosh knows — his family built The Brock Candy Co. — he grew up around candy. As the recent college grad returned to Chattanooga from Maryland, he tucked the St. Michael's experience away inside.
A few years later, some friends said: why don't you revisit that ice cream idea?
So, like a second scoop rolling onto his growing cone of an idea: let's open a new type of ice cream shop.
Where?
How about the North Shore?
The what?
These were the early days of Coolidge Park and Frazier Ave. His business plan wasn't that elaborate.
"The original thing: me thinking ice cream sounded fun," he said. "That was about as much of a business plan as I had."
At home, Marshall would often make malt chocolate milk shakes; he'd load the blender up, and only pulse it two or three times. The result?
Thick.
And clumpy.
In 1999 — some 27 years ago last month — Clumpies Ice Cream Co. opened on the North Shore.
What they tried to do was James Dean the ice cream experience. Ice cream may be cold, but is it cool?
"I felt like Ben and Jerry's had left the throne," Marshall said. "There needs to be a new upstart. I wanted to be the next Ben and Jerry's."
Over the years, Clumpies would become both ice cream and identity, a brand + design + experience story as much about creativity as it was dairy.
As an infant Coolidge Park was still being created, they hauled in tractor seats as guest seating; local artists painted murals of cows on the wall. "We're going to put a barn in a store," Marshall said.
"Because ice cream is milk and milk comes from cows and cows are animals that eat grass," he said. "The earth and nature and farms. We were trying to evoke that."
It started with Marshall, his wife Kim and two friends:
"Scott Noll and Anthony Tucker," he said, who helped do everything. "Plan it, figure out how to make ice cream, figure out how to run a store."
In October 1999, they opened their doors. Marshall, who has this inviting, contagious blend of humility, humor and vision, had created the start of one of the most iconic, long-lasting brands in our city's modern history.
Twenty seven years later, the moment needs to be enrishined and elevated as pivotal to both our food culture and city's identity.
So, back to 1999. They opened in October. Read that again please: October.
"Make sure you tell them how good it is to open an ice cream shop in October," Marshall said.
Lots has happened since then. In 2013, the Brocks sold the business to Rock City; earlier this year, the fabulous Chef Ashley Bottoms and her husband Justin became the new owners of Clumpies.
Not long ago, Ashley had this brilliant idea. Anthony, who was with the Brocks from the very beginning, had dropped by the store with all this old memorabilia and scrapbooks, like Clumpies' original designs.
"I fell in love with them," Ashley said.
So, to celebrate Clumpies 27th birthday, Ashley created a new line of merch.
Welcome to the new Clumpies' Nostalgia Line.
The new Nostalgia merch can be found online and in stores. But to really get nostalgic, we need to tell the early origin stories.
That's why we sat down with Anthony, Kim and Marshall. (This is a big weekend for the Brocks. Marshal is a co-founder of CFC, who hosts in the Eastern Conference finals this afternoon. When Sarah met them, she called them "Chattanooga royalty.")
Cookies 'n Cream was their first flavor. Their first sale?
A $2 Powerade.
"I couldn't frame that dollar," Marshall said. "I waited until somebody bought an ice cream."
They built Clumpies around small batch production, which means one ice cream machine — an Emery Thompson that only was put out to pasture recently — was single-handedly responsible for all flavors made.
"One flavor at a time," Marshall said.
And ... rich.
"16.9% butterfat," he said.
"We were married with two babies," said Kim, "and I was pregnant with our third."
Paul Rustand's Widgets & Stone made the design, which fit immediately. Date nights often meant scooping ice cream and mopping floors at midnight.
But ... something was in the air.
"A buzz," said Kim. "We felt wanted and people were excited we were there."
"We all made ice cream," Anthony said. At the time, he was a 21-year-old soccer player at Covenant College studying business.
"It was a perfect opportunity to do what I thought I wanted," he said.
They took classes at Penn. St., went to conferences and swapped ideas in hotel lobbies with other ice cream makers.
"We were entering into this batch freezer ice cream world," said Marshall. "In English, that means we were making one flavor at a time.
"Luckily, there's a really tiny, weird, disorganized world of batch ice cream makers."
They'd drive to Atlanta or scour catalogs for ingredients. Inspiration came from anywhere and everywhere. Once, they bought a big stock of tiny little chocolate caramel-filled turtles.
"With an actual pattern on their back," said Marshall.
Everyone agreed:
"We've got to figure out a way to use these turtles," Marshall said.
One night, Marshall's watching Saturday Night Live.
He belly-laughed at a cartoon "rebel, undeground character who was angry and trying to get back at the Man."
It was a turtle.
"Tippi Turtle," Marshall said.
And that's when, like a scoop onto a cone, the idea fell into place. It was perfect Clumpies: a mix of ingenuity, wit and timing.
"We called the ice cream Tippi Turtle," he said.
More ingredients: Pop Rocks, Chai, blackberry white chocolate chunk.
They'd make 11 batches at a time, or 100 gallons a day. They'd win ice cream contests, often for their ice cream, and often for, well, other reasons. Slightly bigger servings. Or, descriptions that weren't plain vanilla, but ....
"Vanilla made with Madagascar vanilla from an island in Tahiti," Marshall said.
Which brings us to one of my favorite food stories in Chattanooga history.
One day, they'd just finished 20 batches of cookie dough. Marshall was cleaning the machine when he noticed this teensy tiny blade was missing.
"A hitch clip pin," he said.
It's a little thicker than a paper clip.
And it was gone, broken off into one of the 20 batches they'd just finished.
So, they hustle-opened the first two tubs of cookie dough and began scooping them down the drain, searching for this missing hitch clip pin.
"Everything is really tight financially," Marshall recalls, "and we're smashing it down the drain."
After the third batch down the drain, he stopped.
No, he said. Enough. I'm not doing this.
We're going to have to find another answer.
Someone suggested another idea.
"A contest," Marshall laughs.
Like the Wonka Golden Ticket, but, well, more dangerous. They tried it on for size.
Hey, everyone. We've got a fun thing going on. If you find a metal clip in your ice cream, you win a free kiddie scoop.
Nope. Couldn't do that.
Then, Marshall had another idea:
"A metal detector," he said.
He took a sample hitch clip pin to a store that sold metal detectors, but the detectors weren't strong enough to register the pin.
Another idea:
You know what you ought to think of doing? Go to the airport and run it through their screening.
"I went out to the metropolitan airport and asked TSA: if I bring you tubs of ice cream, can we run it through your X-ray and look for this metal pin?" Marshall said.
The airport said yes.
So, at 5.30 am one morning, Marshall filled the Clumpies freezer truck with 40 tubs of ice cream. Inside one of them: a missing hitch clip pin.
They parked in the loading zone. They stacked the cartons, pushing the dolly five-tubs-at-a-time on the airport up-escalator and onto the conveyer screening belt that fed the X-ray.
Negative. Nope. Nothing here.
They'd dolly-hustle the ice cream five-tubs-a-time back down the down-escalator, repeating the process.
Then ... victory.
"I remember running back up that escalator and I see a TSA guy walking towards me with a tub over his head and everybody's cheering," Marshall remembers.
"It was a peach sorbet with a metal hitch clip in the center of it."
In that moment — the TSA arms raised, laughter all around, the connection formed between different communities, the hilarious creativity of Marshall Brock — there is the perfect Clumpies moment.
No, it didn't become a huge a moneymaker for them in those years. It was a small business with small business struggles. But in the end?
"The way I look at it and measure it? There's something very cool sitting on the North Shore that didn't exist and that's been there longer than most everything around it," said Anthony.
"When I walk down Frazier Ave., I'm very proud of what we did."
"I feel very proud of him and his vision," said Kim. "He's just really good at kind of seeing a big picture and wanting to go big."
Marshall likes to smilingly remind us that Chef Erik Niel — who worked behind the Clumpies bar while building his Easy Bistro business plan — started his career here.
"Make sure that's on the record," he laughed.
Also on the record: Clumpies changed everything. And, under Ashley's new ownership, continues to. Some 100 flavors on the menu, among the most creative in our region. Years building a cow-to-cone ice cream process. Annual sales of 350,000 scoops, enough to cross the Walnut Street Bridge 30 times.
All because of an idea built together with family and good friends.
"I think maybe that was revolutionary," said Marshall, "but we weren't trying to be revolutionary, if that makes sense."
Today, just like the last 27 years, someone will stroll through quaint ice cream shops on the North Shore or Southside. And like a most delicious scoop rolling onto the heart, it will be so obvious:
Hmmm, everybody seems happy here.
Story ideas, questions, feedback? Interested in partnering with us? Email: david@foodasaverb.com
This story is 100% human generated; no AI chatbot was used in the creation of this content.
Food as a verb thanks our story sponsor:
Food as a Verb Thanks our sustaining partner:
Food as a verb thanks our story sponsor:
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