Toluca Lake Baskin-Robbins Gets a Facelift

Sometimes you just need a scoop of ice cream. Whether it’s to beat the blues, beat the heat, or to celebrate a birthday, every few months I walk a few blocks and visit my local on Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake.

I stopped by last week and didn’t recognize the place.  

The ice cream retail chain had a different look and more room than I remembered. Owner and manager Varuzh Tirityan informed me that the shop recently underwent a design and space renovation. 

“We changed signage, moved our cake and pint and gallon displays to the back and added more seating,” he said.  

The chain also launched a line of ice cream cake bites and a new flavor. The new “mini” cakes — smaller versions of Baskin-Robbins famous ice cream cakes — are available in double chocolate, praline caramel, chocolate mint, vanilla blondie, chocolate dipped strawberry and love potion 31. The March flavor of the month is the new 3-Point Chocolate, a triple threat of chocolate ice cream, a salty caramel ribbon and orange-colored caramel pretzel balls in honor of the return of college basketball's March Madness.

Throughout the years, Baskin-Robbins has created dozens of flavors for specific events, such as Baseball Nut for the Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles in 1958, Lunar Cheesecake for the moon landings in 1969, and BeatleNut during the height of Beatlemania in 1964.

Irvine Robbins opened his first ice cream store, Snowbird Ice Cream, in 1945 in Glendale. He offered 21 flavors including Rocky Road, Coffee Candy, and Burgundy Cherry. Burton Baskin, who was Robbins brother-in-law, opened Burton’s Ice Cream in Pasadena in 1946.

By 1948, the five Snowbird and three Burton’s shops combined into a single enterprise and launched their 31st flavor, Chocolate Mint.

It wasn’t until 1953 that the ice cream chain dropped separate names and became Baskin-Robbins. They changed to a uniform identity and added the 31 flavors logo to represent a flavor for every day of the month.

Baskin-Robbins had about 500 stores in 1967 when the ice cream empire was sold to United Fruit & Company. Today, the company is part of the Dunkin’ Brands, has replaced the original brown and pink logo with a pink and blue modern graphic, has more than 6,700 retail shops in nearly 50 countries and has created more than 1,000 unique ice cream flavors. Irv Robbins used to say, “Not everyone likes all our flavors, but each flavor is someone’s favorite." 

Although Baskin-Robbins has changed its look, my favorite remains the same, the classic Rocky Road.