United Dairy Farmers, Inc. is extending its Homemade Brand™ ice cream lineup with a limited-time co-branded pint developed in partnership with Grippo Foods, Inc., the 107-year-old Cincinnati snack maker. The SKU — Fun Food Crunch — hits Cincinnati-area Kroger shelves and all 170-plus UDF retail locations the week of August 16, available while supplies last in an exclusive 16-ounce pint.

The Product

Fun Food Crunch leads with a buttered popcorn–flavored ice cream base, layered with a Bar-B-Q spice–infused caramel swirl and chocolatey pretzel pieces. The profile maps directly to Grippo's signature Bar-B-Q potato chip — the snack brand's flagship SKU — translated into a sweet-and-salty frozen format. The collaboration marks the first time Grippo's flavor DNA has appeared in a branded ice cream product, opening the snack company's equity to the freezer aisle without requiring its own cold-chain manufacturing investment.

Channel & Category Context

For UDF, the LTO serves dual retail channels simultaneously: its own convenience-store network across Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, and a regional grocery partner in Kroger. That two-door launch strategy is increasingly common among regional dairy brands seeking to drive volume through existing wholesale relationships while reinforcing destination traffic at proprietary locations. UDF's Homemade Brand wholesale business sits alongside its UDF Brand® and Main Avenue Creamery® labels, giving the company manufacturing and distribution infrastructure capable of supporting co-branded runs without significant capital outlay.

The sweet-salty flavor mashup also fits squarely within a documented trend in the premium packaged ice cream segment, where LTOs built around snack-brand equity — think chip-flavored or pretzel-swirl formulations — have consistently outperformed baseline novelty SKUs in regional convenience and grocery accounts. For a c-store operator with more than 170 units, a limited-time pint exclusive creates a reason-to-visit that a standard commodity dairy set cannot replicate.

"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 deal as a category-extension move: the partnership gave Grippo's a path into frozen dairy without departing from its core snack identity.

Together the two family-owned operators represent nearly 200 combined years of tri-state market presence — UDF founded in 1940, Grippo's tracing its roots back 107 years — giving the collaboration a regional authenticity that national co-branded pints from larger manufacturers typically cannot replicate. For independent and regional c-store operators watching the deal, it illustrates how a proprietary manufacturing arm can be leveraged to generate exclusive retail SKUs that deepen brand loyalty and drive incremental basket size at the unit level.

For more on convenience-channel foodservice strategy, see our coverage of c-store foodservice trends and regional dairy brand innovation.

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.