The new owner of the former Reinhold Ice Cream Co. is introducing its own, namesake brand of ice cream to the Pittsburgh area.
LaSalle "super premium" pints recently went on sale at the Shur Save supermarket in Murrysville -- the first sign outside the old Reinhold plant on the North Side that the company now is LaSalle Pittsburgh Corp. The new ownership has plans for new products and a strong return to local grocery and convenience store freezers.
"We are the last remaining ice cream company here," said Mike Mandell, Reinhold's former president and now vice president and general manager at LaSalle Pittsburgh.
"People in Pittsburgh have a lot of pride in buying locally made products. Everyone has ups and downs," Mandell said, referring to Reinhold's financial troubles in recent years. "As long as they see you're going to come back, they're willing to stick with you."
LaSalle Brands Inc. of Bronx, N.Y., which acquired Reinhold's assets a month ago for an undisclosed price, is spending $1 million to upgrade the plant's freezing capacity and install new equipment -- including a machine that makes specialty ice cream sticks and other treats. That will require the addition of 15 workers when it's put into operation by Jan. 1.
Within a few years, LaSalle Pittsburgh's staff could double from the current 50 employees, said Bob Haberman, vice president of LaSalle Brands.
For now, the LaSalle ice cream being sold in the Pittsburgh area at an introductory price of $1.99 is made in Michigan.
Production of that brand in the North Side should begin within three months, Haberman said.
LaSalle Pittsburgh, meanwhile, continues to churn out Reinhold's three-gallon containers of ice cream, served at Eat'n Park and other local restaurants and ice cream shops.
The plant makes dozens of other products, under Reinhold and other brand names -- half-gallons, quarts and pints along with sandwiches, cones and cups that go to stores, schools, nursing homes and hospitals.
LaSalle Pittsburgh's total ice cream production is projected to grow from the current 2 million gallons a year to 3 million, Mandell said.
Reinhold's problems began five years ago, when the company expanded too quickly and was distributing to 6,000 stores across Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, Mandell said.
Other ice cream makers at the time were cutting back because of rising milk fat and vanilla prices, and other market factors.
LaSalle became one of Reinhold's distributors in the New York area. Acquisition talks started several months later. Mandell and his father, Bob, had pledged personal assets to keep Reinhold's open, but they needed new capital to keep it afloat and to modernize.
LaSalle Brands bought Reinhold's assets from a creditor, Chicago-based BLN Capital.
LaSalle also reworked parts of Reinhold's contract with Teamsters Local 205, and extended it by 3 1/2 years.
No changes were made to wage and benefit terms, and all the employees kept their jobs, union President Bill Lickert Jr. said.
LaSalle also is talking with the union to resolve a $2.08 million lien on the Reinhold assets, based on a withdrawal from the pension fund that covers several closed dairies' former workers and spouses.
