Walter Lappert, at the age of 61, founded a business in Kauai to manufacture and sell "super-premium" ice cream based on family recipes from his European upbringing. He rode a wave of enthusiasm for gourmet luxury foods using fresh, high-quality local ingredients in Hawaii. Lappert's Aloha Ice Cream grew to have annual revenues exceeding $15 million in six U.S. states and produced 18,000 gallons of unique flavors of ice cream each month. Using Belgian chocolate, vanilla beans from Madagascar, local macadamia nuts, guava, and coffee beans from Kona, Lappert created a menu of 125 flavors.
Life Before Ice Cream
Lappert was born in Austria to a French father and an Austrian mother. He grew up in Prague, with Austrian grandparents who owned a shop "where they made apple strudels and sold coffee, and in summertime, when the fruit was ripe, they made peach or strawberry ice cream." Later this shop would become the model for his retail outlets.
At age 61, Walter Lappert retired to the Hawaiian island of Kauai, turning over his restaurant business to his son, Michael. Retirement, however, soon evolved into a new business venture when he found local dessert fare wanting. He and his wife invested half their savings, $150,000, to set up a factory to make ice cream in the town of Hanapepe, far from the tourist and commercial areas of Kauai. His first batch of 4,500 gallons was created on December 21, 1983 and sold out in two weeks, which convinced them they were going to be successful. A store in Koloa, a historic town near the popular sunny beaches of Poipu, and near Lappert's one-bedroom apartment, followed. Lappert adopted the Koloa store as an unofficial headquarters and was often found there, dressed in quintessential Hawaiian fashion of shorts, sandals, and flowered shirt, wearing a small cap and a white beard and accompanied by his black Labrador Maxi, chatting with tourists and locals after a dip in the surf. He made his personality part of his brand, integrating his smiling face into his labels and ads and encouraged the sobriquet, "the Hanapepe Ice Cream Man," although to some, he was the Colonel Sanders of Hawaii while others considered the popular figure a Hemingway look-alike. By the late 1980s, Lappert's ice cream sold through some 75 stores across Hawaii and six states in the western part of the USA plus a franchise in Japan. The business branched out to roast its own coffee in 1985 and also began producing baked goods in some locations.
Succession
Walter Lappert died in 2003. His former wife Mary Pratt and Michael each inherited half of the company. Two companies now exist: Lappert's Hawaii, led by Mary Pratt and headquartered in Hanapepe, Kauai, Hawaii; Lappert's Ice Cream, led by Michael Lappert and headquartered in Richmond, California. Lappert's Ice Cream on the US mainland still uses the original logo that features Walter Lappert's distinctive silhouette in their branding.
