Former Blue Bell CEO touts book about career in ice cream

Ricky Dickson was a student at Baylor University when he wrote a paper on the business model of Blue Bell Ice Cream.

After writing that paper, he took advantage of an opportunity to go work for them as a territorial customer service director.

Taking on that role was the start of a 43-year career at the ice cream giant, known for its different flavors.

He retired from that role earlier that year, but not before he wrote a book reflecting on his career: “One Scoop at a Time.”

Dickson and his wife, Anita, were at Old Country Store last week signing copies of the book. He was at Old Country Store because Blue Bell is the brand of ice cream sold at Miss Ann’s Ice Cream Parlor at Casey Jones Village.

“It’s not really a story about my career or anything like that,” Dickson said when asked about the book. “Each chapter is its own separate story that is designed to show how well Blue Bell’s business model works but also to show how faith in Christ either helped us make decisions in tough times or got us through those tough times when things that were out of our control were going on.”

Blue Bell is based in Texas, but it ahs a few factories where it makes ice cream in different places throughout the South – the closest being in Sylacauga, Ala. There are nearly 70 distribution centers mainly in the eastern portions of the country as well.

Without giving away anything that’s in the book, Dickson discussed the time in his career that tested his faith and Blue Bell as a business the most, and that’s when they dealt with a listeria outbreak that was blamed for the death of three people.

“We had a problem that we had to deal with, and we had to shut the business down for a couple of months to deal with it,” Dickson said. “It was the first time in Blue Bell’s history – which goes back more than 100 years – that we’ve ever laid anybody off.

“And for a time, we weren’t sure if our business would ever come back.”

The business did come back and the experience of dealing with listeria actually helped Blue Bell when the COVID-19 pandemic hit five years later.

“All the stuff everybody had to do because of COVID, we had already done and some of it we were still doing because of that,” Dickson said. “But the book tells about how God was faithful to us through that process and coming out of it that we’re obviously grateful for, and hopefully anyone who reads it will see God’s goodness even in tough times.”

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news