On December 31, 1981, John and Debbie Lopez purchased the franchised ice cream store at the corner of Olive and D, next to Smith’s Market, in Porterville, CA. We moved from Merced, along with Stephen and Tim, our two young sons.

For the next 16 years, we operated the ice cream store along with our growing family, adding Sam, Leah, David, Daniel and Katie during that time. Choosing to homeschool the kids allowed them to begin working around the age of 10.  The store has played an important role in their business education, teaching them also the value of serving others, an integral part their Christian education as well.

During these years as a franchise, our franchisor seemed to be
getting further and further away from ice cream. Changes in ownership, mergers, and corporate decisions that emphasized other products (which eventually led to them discontinuing their actual ice cream production; it is now contracted out) pushed us to independence.

On November 1, 1998, All About Ice Cream was born, named out of frustration that our former franchisor was no longer all about ice cream (plus, A comes before B alphabetically, insuring our presence above our former name on most lists…..) We found an exceptional ice cream manufacturer, family owned and operated McConnell’s of Santa Barbara, to make us a much better product than we had previously carried. We continued running the business as usual on the corner of Olive and D, now next to Save Mart Supermarket, keeping our emphasis on Ice Cream.

For the next 10 years, without a franchisor to fall back on, we learned a lot about self-reliance. We had to do more ourselves, such as baking our own cakes for our increasingly popular ice cream cakes. A big plus is that the end product is far superior than previously trucked in frozen desserts. We also found a niche in the wedding cake market—both ice cream and regular wedding cakes. When our lease was up in 2008, we decided that we needed more space to expand our cake business, which was quickly growing larger than we could accommodate in our 900+ sq. ft store.

On February 10, 2009, we moved into our new location, 1323 W. Henderson, in the Target shopping center. With a bigger oven, more refrigeration, and more space, we can manage more efficiently, and with a larger customer area, we can serve Porterville better.

• Steve, 31, lives in Rocklin, CA, and works as a Geek Squad agent. He "eloped" with Krista Zorichak on August 27, 2011. They are planning a public wedding ceremony and reception in April of 2012 for all their friends and family.
• Tim, 30, recently bought a home in Lake Elsinore and works at Symantec (he's a beta test coordinator for Norton Anti-Virus.) He's currently planning an October, 2011, wedding.
  
• Sam, 26,lives in Fresno and is currently working in medical records of an imaging company. He married his girlfriend of 5 years, Michelle Furnier, on August 7, 2010.
  
• Leah, 24, recently transferred to a Home Depot in Lake Elsinore, CA (she plans on cosmetology school in the near future)
  
• David, 23, moved in June, 2011, to Lacey, WA where he works in a call center for Verizon (be nice if you are a Verizon customer and call customer support!)
  
• Daniel, 21, is a Porterville College student and works at the ice cream store.
• Katie is our baby, 19 years old. She still works at the ice cream store, where she is getting quite good at decorating cakes. She is currently attending Porterville College.
  
  

We look forward to serving Porterville for many years to come!