Bakersfield, one of California's fastest-growing cities, is now home to one of the world's largest ice cream plants. Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream Holdings Inc is celebrating the completion of a $100 million expansion of its Bakersfield Operations Center, the company's largest of seven ice cream manufacturing facilities.
BOC will now make more than 100 different Dreyer's and Nestle ice cream products and frozen snacks.
Dreyer's has recently hired another 230 employees to help staff the new 650,000 square-foot facility. A total of 730 employees work at the Bakersfield plant, and the company announced it plans to add another 100 employees over the next two years.
Besides adding six new ice cream manufacturing lines to its previous 19, Dreyer's has also built a 120,000-sq-ft, -20 degree F ice cream warehouse, and 20-door distribution center. The five-story warehouse is used to freeze and temporarily store freshly made ice cream before it is loaded onto freezer trucks and shipped nationwide.
Dreyer's expects the Bakersfield plant to dish out nearly 70 million gallons of ice cream and 100 million dozens of frozen snacks a year.
"Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream started out as a little ice cream shop on Grand Avenue in Oakland CA in 1928," said T Gary Rogers, Dreyer's chairman and chief executive officer. "Today, our Dreyer's, Edy's, Haagen-Dazs, and Nestle ice creams are sold everywhere in the United States."
