Leon’s Frozen Custard
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Milwaukee is famous for its summer festivals, beer, Friday Fish Fries and Frozen Custard. Milwaukee is known as the “unofficial frozen custard capital of the world”. “Per capita, Milwaukee has the highest concentration of frozen custard shops in the world and the city supports a long-standing three-way competition between Kopp’s Frozen Custard, Gilles Frozen Custard and Leon’s Frozen Custard. Milwaukee has a few ice cream shops and some soft serve places but Custard reigns.

When I was a child living on the west side of Milwaukee we lived near the first Kopp’s Custard Stand that was started by Elsa Kopp to support her family when her husband developed Parkinson disease. There were two flavors of custard, vanilla and chocolate, until the 60’s when Mrs. Kopp started mixing flavors and creating special concoctions. It became known as the ‘flavor of the day’ and is standard in all custard stands. For example Kopp’s now offers two flavors of the day. Some flavors of the day the next few days at Kopp’s are ‘Turtle Sunday’, ‘Key Lime’, Mint Chip and German Apple Streusel.

When I was a young adult Kopp’s moved out of the original location to large locations, east, west and south. Kopp’s original stand was taken over, by what I understand to be, one of their employees and called Roberts. It stayed Roberts for a long time and since I still live on West side of Milwaukee have made many visits to it. But a few years ago when Mr. Roberts died it was sold and became “Junior’s”. Although its web site is ‘gotcustard’ the place started to change. playing down frozen custard and emphasizing diverse fast food that custard stands also had available. However, Junior’s kept offering the flavor of the day which was made fresh in the custard machines behind the counter.

Last night I was driving home from a meeting at the Society of St. Vincent de Paul central office and frustrated how the board could not see how a store in North Central Milwaukee at low cost would better serve the mission of the Society than a 3.2 million dollar in the suburbs. I was going by Junior’s and notice interesting ‘flavor of the day’ custard on the outside sign. Like so many times before in my life I stopped, went inside and ordered a ‘single cone flavor of the day’. The young man who took my order said okay and went into the back room with taking my money. Someone else asked me if I was being served and I said I thought so. I looked around and saw the three custard making machines were shut down. I saw a woman making a Sundae for a customer on the other side of the store using a machine that looked like a soft serve machine. As I waited I look at the menu board and could not even find frozen custard even listed. The closest I can see anything custard was the logo on t-shirts of employee with wegotcustrd web site. Finally a young woman asked me what I wanted and I repeated my order, ‘single cone,
flavor of the day.’ She told me they were out of the flavor of the day and only had vanilla or chocolate. I glanced over to the abandoned custard machines and said that was okay and walked out, thinking a tradition of this custard stand had died.

Outside was a young man in ragged clothes that I had noticed when I was going in the stand. I told him of my frustration of not being able to order the ‘flavor of the day’ and we struck up a conversation. I learned that he was homeless and claustrophobic and thus could not stay in shelters. He knew someone who would let him sleep on the floor for $10 a night but most nights just slept outside.

Finally he gently asked me for some money and I pulled the $2 I had put back in my pocket when there was no custard of the day. I gave it to him and thought that was a healthy decision than spending the money on custard. Custard stands are still big in Milwaukee and tonight on the way home after a funeral I stopped at Giles, another famous custard stand, one we hung out when I was in high school. A bit of the custard tradition had died for me but newer tradition of always giving money to people who asked for money was reinforced with the custard money. With Milwaukee become more known for poverty, discrimination and marginalized person maybe the homeless will make Milwaukee famous.

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