Two family-owned Cincinnati institutions are crossing category lines: United Dairy Farmers, Inc. and Grippo Foods, Inc. will begin shipping a co-branded 16-ounce pint — Homemade Brand™ Fun Food Crunch — to Cincinnati-area Kroger stores and all 170-plus UDF retail locations the week of August 16, available while supplies last.
The Product
Fun Food Crunch centers on a buttered-popcorn flavored ice cream base swirled with a Bar-B-Q spice-infused caramel and finished with chocolatey pretzel pieces — a sweet-and-salty profile designed to evoke Grippo's Bar-B-Q chips, the snack brand's signature line. The pint carries co-branded packaging, marking the first time Grippo's flavors have extended into the frozen dairy aisle.
Strategic Fit
The deal represents a familiar but still-effective playbook in the packaged-foods sector: established regional snack brands licensing flavor equity into adjacent categories to drive incremental volume without expanding their own manufacturing footprint. For UDF's Homemade Brand, the collaboration adds a limited-edition sku with built-in consumer recognition, a tactic that has proven effective for regional dairy brands competing against national private-label and branded ice cream lines in the freezer case. For Grippo Foods — a five-generation, 107-year-old snack maker — it extends brand visibility into a new daypart and retail context without capital investment in production.
Together, the two companies claim nearly 200 combined years of operating history in the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana tri-state market. UDF, founded in 1940, operates more than 170 convenience and ice cream parlor locations and employs more than 3,200 full- and part-time associates across retail, manufacturing, distribution and corporate functions. Its manufacturing arm produces Homemade Brand™, UDF Brand®, and Main Avenue Creamery® ice creams alongside bakery products.
Retail Footprint
"This collaboration brings together two hometown brands that share a commitment to quality, family values and creating products people love," said Michael Ahmed, Chief Executive Officer of United Dairy Farmers. John Dourson, Vice President of Sales for Grippo Foods, framed the partnership as a natural extension of Grippo's longstanding positioning as the original "Fun Food Company."
Distribution through Kroger stores alongside UDF's proprietary c-store network gives the sku dual-channel exposure — a meaningful advantage for a limited-time offering where velocity in the first weeks of availability typically determines whether a collaboration graduates to a permanent listing. Regional co-branded ice cream launches with strong grocery placement have shown reorder rates well above typical new-sku averages in the Midwest convenience and dairy segments, according to broader category trends tracked by food and beverage industry analysts.
The limited-time format also aligns with a wider consumer-trends pattern: shoppers in the Midwest and South have shown above-average receptivity to sweet-and-salty frozen novelties, a segment that has outperformed standard ice cream volume growth in several recent retail periods. Whether UDF and Grippo's extend the collaboration beyond this initial run will likely hinge on sell-through data from the August launch window.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
