Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

Diane McIntyre THE DREYER’S GRAND ICE CREAM ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interviews conducted by Victor Geraci in 2011

Copyright © 2013 by The Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable.

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All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Diane McIntyre, dated August 3, 2011. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Excerpts up to 1000 words from this interview may be quoted for publication without seeking permission as long as the use is non-commercial and properly cited.

Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to The Bancroft Library, Head of Public Services, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should follow instructions available online at http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/collections/cite.html

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

Diane McIntyre, “The Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream Oral History Project,” conducted by Victor Geraci 2011, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2013.

Table of Contents— Diane McIntyre

Interview 1: May 18, 2011

[Audio File 1] 1

Family background, upbringing in Sacramento, education—Business, public relations, and English—Marriage, relocation, birth of sons Ian and Colin— Working at Contra Costa Times, Security National Bank, other jobs—A call from Gary Rogers—Invitation to work on a political campaign, and then at Dreyer’s— Public relations and the ice cream business—Autonomy, decision-making, creativity.

[Audio File 2] 27

The man who got paid to eat ice cream, and other Dreyer’s publicity campaigns— Working with in communications with major media, establishing a customer relations department at Dreyer’s—Creating Dreyer’s/Edy’s web site in 1994— “Flavorology”—Challenges of promoting different brands—Forming the Dreyer’s Foundation—Community relations and the Dreyer’s bus—New flavors— Bringing sons to work at Dreyer’s—Families, friends, co-workers, Dreyer’s culture—Establishing Dreyer’s toll-free phone number.

[End of Interview] 1

Interview #1 May 18, 2011 [Begin Audio File 1]

01-00:00:00 Geraci: I am Vic Geraci, food and wine historian from the University of California Berkeley’s Regional Oral History Office. Today’s date is Wednesday, May 18, 2011 and seated with me is Diane McIntyre. Ms. McIntyre has been in public relations for Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream, Incorporated. Good morning.

01-00:00:29 McIntyre: Good morning.

01-00:00:29 Geraci: We’re ready to start. What I like to do in the interviews is start with a little bit about your background and your life. Growing up, parents, where were you born, raised, early education so we can get a little bit of a context for you before you come into the Dreyer’s story.

01-00:00:42 McIntyre: Sure.

01-00:00:43 Geraci: So we’ll just start there.

01-00:00:44 McIntyre: All right. I was born in Sacramento, California. My dad was a City of Sacramento policeman and my mom was a dental hygienist. I had a brother who has since passed away.

01-00:01:02 Geraci: What was his name?

01-00:01:02 McIntyre: George.

01-00:01:03 Geraci: George, okay.

01-00:01:05 McIntyre: A sister. I was the oldest, then there was my sister, and then my brother.

01-00:01:10 Geraci: And your sister’s name?

01-00:01:11 McIntyre: Was Margie. Is Margie.

01-00:01:13 Geraci: Is Margie. [laughter]

01-00:01:14 McIntyre: She’s still around.

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01-00:01:16 Geraci: She’ll be happy to know that, right. Go ahead.

01-00:01:19 McIntyre: So I lived in Sacramento my whole life. We lived in a little Basalite house. They built the house and it was built in a subdivision that’s quite popular still in Sacramento. But it was the very first house in this subdivision. So I see old pictures where it’s like there in the middle of weeds all around us. But anyway, we sold the house after my mom passed away. I just had a really wonderful childhood. I wish people could still have those carefree days that we had. There was a whole neighborhood full of kids and we were always out in front playing, which you don’t even see kids doing anymore these days. And it was just a good mixture of boys, girls, different ages. Somebody for everybody. I had friends, my sister had friends, my brother.

01-00:02:20 Geraci: And there was always something to do.

01-00:02:21 McIntyre: Oh, yeah.

01-00:02:22 Geraci: Yeah.

01-00:02:23 McIntyre: You were never without anything to do.

01-00:02:25 Geraci: It’s not as if today we have to plan kids’ days for them. So—

01-00:02:30 McIntyre: Yeah. We played baseball in the street and cowboys and Indians. We had a little red wagon that we put a wooden box on, so it was like a covered wagon. I still remember it. Some kids were horses. It was hilarious. [laughter]

01-00:02:44 Geraci: I’m trying to be sensitive to age. I take it this is the 1950s.

01-00:02:47 McIntyre: Yes. Yes, it was.

01-00:02:49 Geraci: Isn’t that the typical American dream of that time? It’s—

01-00:02:53 McIntyre: I know. And I was popular in school and always held offices and played all the sports and played volleyball, baseball, basketball. It was a small house, very small house. A little three-bedroom. But we had a screened-in patio and my grandfather owned bars my whole life in downtown Sacramento and we always got the records, leftover records from the juke box and so we knew all

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the old songs. We knew all the songs. That’s why I think I love music to this day.

01-00:03:33 Geraci: To this day.

01-00:03:35 McIntyre: But he gave us a juke box that he was replacing, so we got the old one. And we had that on our patio. When I got to be a teenager, like twelve, thirteen, we had dance parties on that backyard on that patio and we had them—they weren’t every week but we had a lot. We had a lot of them. And the boys used to love to come over. There was always something going on on that patio. But the boys used to love to come over and listen to my dad tell stories of like things that had happened while—

01-00:04:12 Geraci: Being a police officer.

01-00:04:12 McIntyre: —doing his job.

01-00:04:13 Geraci: Yeah.

01-00:04:13 McIntyre: There were stories. And they would just sit transfixed while he would tell them these stories. So there were just always a lot of kids at our house. That I totally remember. And my mom had this great personality and the kids, they just loved her. They loved my mom. So—

01-00:04:30 Geraci: There always seems to be one house in the neighborhood that all the kids end up at.

01-00:04:35 McIntyre: Yeah. The kids from the neighborhood, yes, but mine was more the kids that I went to school with. And it wasn’t even easy for them to get to our house because I went to the Catholic school, Sacred Heart, and it was kind of—I don’t know if you’re familiar with Sacramento but it was downtown on like 39th Street. So I had to take a bus. Just a regular school bus—not a school bus, a regular public bus to get to school. And so if the kids came to visit me, most of them lived closer around Sacred Heart School in that neighborhood. They had to come a ways to get to my house. So the fact that they spent so much time there was just—

01-00:05:18 Geraci: And Sacred Heart’s being an all-girls Catholic—

01-00:05:21 McIntyre: Sacred Heart wasn’t. Sacred Heart—

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01-00:05:22 Geraci: Oh, it was—

01-00:05:23 McIntyre: It was—

01-00:05:23 Geraci: —coed?

01-00:05:24 McIntyre: —coed up to eighth grade and then you went—it was kind of crazy. You went to Saint Francis. If you were a girl you went to Saint Francis, which was two years and boys went to Christian Brothers. And then the last two years of high school you went to Bishop Armstrong, which was combined but there was a separate wing for boys, separate wing for girls and you had a cafeteria together. So—

01-00:05:53 Geraci: [laughter] They’d at least let you eat together, right?

01-00:05:56 McIntyre: Right.

01-00:05:58 Geraci: That’s kind of interesting, though, because I would take it, then, you were getting education from both Franciscans, Salatians and Jesuits.

01-00:06:09 McIntyre: Exactly. Yes. It seems odd now that you look back on it because that’s not the most—I think what happened, they built Bishop Armstrong as we were going through high school. So I think we would have spent all four years at Saint Francis if they hadn’t built Bishop Armstrong.

01-00:06:28 Geraci: If they had not built the high school. What were you interested in in high school? Academically, sports or—

01-00:06:36 McIntyre: Both. I was like a straight A student. I liked studying. I liked school. But I also liked sports and I also liked boys.

01-00:06:47 Geraci: [laughter] Well, that’s normal.

01-00:06:50 McIntyre: [laughter] I keep saying it was just a great growing up. I look back on it fondly. I just actually went through putting some albums together. While my mom had Alzheimer’s, she had kind of taken albums apart and pictures that had some significance for her. So I’ve been in the process of putting my pictures and everything into albums and trying to organize. It’s just brought back a lot of memories looking through all the old photos.

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01-00:07:30 Geraci: Was definitely a different time, wasn’t it?

01-00:07:32 McIntyre: Oh, yes. I have six grandchildren and I wish that things could be the same for them but it’s just a different world. It can’t be.

01-00:07:44 Geraci: Yeah, it can’t be the same.

01-00:07:44 McIntyre: No.

01-00:07:45 Geraci: No. So after high school?

01-00:07:48 McIntyre: After high school I went to College of Notre Dame in Belmont, California, which was an all-girls facility. So I was there four years.

01-00:07:58 Geraci: And you majored in?

01-00:07:58 McIntyre: I majored in business administration and I minored in English.

01-00:08:02 Geraci: So you knew right off the bat you wanted to work in the business world.

01-00:08:06 McIntyre: Yes. Well, this is a stupid reason why you would say I want to major in business. But when I was in high school, I loved typing. And now you think of a typewriter and it’s like, “My god.”

01-00:08:19 Geraci: Where’s the monitor? [laughter]

01-00:08:21 McIntyre: [laughter] But I loved typing. In fact, they took me out of the class and gave me jobs to do for the school because there wasn’t anything that they could teach—

01-00:08:38 Geraci: They could teach you anything. Typing is one of those things, once you’ve mastered it, how much further can you go?

01-00:08:45 McIntyre: Right. So I did work for the school and that was my class. But that was one reason that I decided I wanted to—in my day and age, when you decided on majors, at least for me—my goal then was maybe I can be the best secretary ever. So I know that sounds really crazy but—

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01-00:09:11 Geraci: No, it’s not crazy. Think about all the young girls of that gen—

01-00:09:16 McIntyre: You weren’t bosses and you weren’t—

01-00:09:17 Geraci: Yeah. It’s just prior to the second wave of the feminine movement really.

01-00:09:22 McIntyre: Right. If I could be a really good office assistant, I thought that would be a fabulous job to have at the time. So luckily, I’ve done more than that. But that was a goal for me then.

01-00:09:40 Geraci: Any other experiences college-wise? Were you involved in any groups or—?

01-00:09:47 McIntyre: I was. I was actually the PR person. I don’t know how I managed to do all this. But I can’t remember what the name or the title was, what the title per se was. I don’t think it was public relations. But that was my job, is to generate publicity for the school and the kinds of activities we were doing. What else did I do there?

01-00:10:15 Geraci: That’s really good training for a business major though.

01-00:10:18 McIntyre: Yes. Oh, yeah. It was fabulous.

01-00:10:19 Geraci: That’s excellent training.

01-00:10:20 McIntyre: It was very good.

01-00:10:21 Geraci: But there again, I think at that time, maybe I’m wrong, but public relations was still—that was almost like a feminine job. It’s a little bit more than a secretary but it’s—

01-00:10:35 McIntyre: Right.

01-00:10:35 Geraci: You’re still functioning—

01-00:10:36 McIntyre: But they didn’t even call it that. I was in the business. It was my major. But there were no public relations classes.

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01-00:10:47 Geraci: Right. It was just a burgeoning field at that point.

01-00:10:49 McIntyre: It was. There was no training for anything like that then. But I used what other skills I was learning and just applied them.

01-00:11:03 Geraci: Interesting being an English minor. I could see that would be extremely helpful—

01-00:11:06 McIntyre: Oh, it is.

01-00:11:07 Geraci: —for public relations.

01-00:11:07 McIntyre: It is. And I love reading. I, to this day, still love to read. And my magazines. There’s nothing better for me on a Sunday to have gotten—I get tons of magazines delivered every day. But just have my magazine and a glass of wine and out in the yard.

01-00:11:29 Geraci: Life doesn’t get much better, does it?

01-00:11:30 McIntyre: No.

01-00:11:31 Geraci: Especially on a good sunny day.

01-00:11:33 McIntyre: And you can read online. I know you can get newspapers online. You can get books. You can get anything anywhere these days. But I like the feel of the pages. It’s just a different feeling for me.

01-00:11:47 Geraci: Yeah. Growing up with books, it is. There’s a feel, there’s a touch. It’s tactile. It’s almost like an emotional security blanket when you’re reading. There’s a comfort there.

01-00:12:00 McIntyre: And the first thing I do every day when I get to work is I flip through the newspaper just to make sure I’m—and it’s not like I haven’t listened to the news while I was getting ready, haven’t listened to the news in the car, but here I go again once—the minute I get here.

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01-00:12:14 Geraci: Somebody once told me they had to read the newspaper each morning to make sure they weren’t in the obituaries. Did you work while you were in school?

01-00:12:24 McIntyre: I did.

01-00:12:25 Geraci: At college?

01-00:12:25 McIntyre: Yes, I did. I had a scholarship but I also worked.

01-00:12:28 Geraci: Oh, see—

01-00:12:29 McIntyre: I worked in the music department.

01-00:12:30 Geraci: What’d you do in the music department?

01-00:12:32 McIntyre: I helped with administrative things that were helpful to the teacher that was in charge. To be honest, it was more administrative than doing anything with the musicians or the students. But it’s been so long ago. It’s like some of this I’m having a hard time remembering. You’re the first one that’s asked me to like go back this far.

01-00:13:09 Geraci: [coughs] Excuse me. Going to a Catholic school, I’m sure you must have friends who went to just public or secular type schools.

01-00:13:18 McIntyre: Right.

01-00:13:19 Geraci: Did you get a big feel of a difference between—

01-00:13:23 McIntyre: Yes. I think the thing that I missed the most was that you don’t have the social—we have lots. It was like one big sorority basically. But you don’t have like the football team and the social things that go along with that kind of thing. We had sports but very limited. And I played volleyball and things like that. But there’s something about what happens at a Cal or a—so many people here went to Cal or Stanford. There’s that rivalry.

01-00:14:05 Geraci: I was going to say the Cal-Stanford game must be a great day to be at work. [laughter]

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01-00:14:10 McIntyre: [laughter] But I hear everyone talking about it and everyone knows everyone. Everyone plans to go to games, still, as alumni. We just didn’t have that. So that’s the thing I missed the most.

01-00:14:24 Geraci: But you substitute it with other social aspects?

01-00:14:26 McIntyre: We did but—

01-00:14:27 Geraci: Kids are kids. The social part of school is sometimes more important than the academic part. Not sometimes, probably most of the time.

01-00:14:35 McIntyre: Right. And what I totally enjoyed is that the people that I met I still am friends with. We still see each other and have an annual reunion, every five years reunion. But we’re truly great friends. One of my roommates was from Cuba and she escaped on the plane and so her mother was still back in Cuba. She was a character. She was a real character. And then what happened is they were building new apartments that were supposed to be ready when we started there at school. And so they asked if any of us would take another. So we were in a room that’s built for two people to share and they asked if any of us would share with a third person. So we became a group of—there were three in our room and there maybe, I think, about ten rooms total that had three people in them instead of just two. So you had to be good friends. And only—

01-00:15:46 Geraci: I was going to say, three women in a room. That’s a lot of—

01-00:15:47 McIntyre: Oh, I know. You can see. I have pictures where the dresses were stacked because we needed the room. Of the ten rooms, there were two rooms where the three roommates stayed together the whole four years and ours was one and then another room with three of our good friends also. But I think that’s a good testament to friendship. [laughter]

01-00:16:14 Geraci: Has to be that you lasted and survived, right? [laughter]

01-00:16:17 McIntyre: Exactly.

01-00:16:19 Geraci: So when did you finish school?

01-00:16:22 McIntyre: In 1968.

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01-00:16:23 Geraci: Okay. And what happens then?

01-00:16:26 McIntyre: Let’s see. I had worked for the City of Sacramento summers when I would come home. I always worked through the summer. So when I came back, I actually went back to work for them. I worked in the mayor’s office and I was there until—

01-00:16:49 Geraci: Now, what did you do as part of your work?

01-00:16:53 McIntyre: I wrote proclamations for the mayor and—

01-00:16:57 Geraci: Those English minor skills coming in.

01-00:17:00 McIntyre: Yes. Basically it was secretarial. It was like his secretary. But it was great. It was small then, city was small then, and the people that worked there were fabulous. I loved working. And I knew some of them from having been there summers because I worked in the engineering department when I was there for the summer. But he would get letters. You had to write letters back to people and just basically taking care of some things for him that he didn’t then have to spend his time on. So I worked there until I had my first son.

01-00:17:42 Geraci: So when did you get married?

01-00:17:43 McIntyre: Oh, forgot that piece. Oh, I did get married. I got married in 1969. So it was like a year after I graduated. He was in the Marines and he actually was friends—I went to a wedding of someone that I had gone to school with and he was friends with that person. So that’s how we met. Unfortunately, it didn’t last too long. It lasted seven years. But anyway, I worked there at the city while we were married until I had our first son.

01-00:18:23 Geraci: What’s your son’s name?

01-00:18:24 McIntyre: Ian. And another thing. While I was working at the city, my grandfather, I told you he owned the bars downtown. My whole life he had one bar or another. In fact, when I was in high school, he bought me my first car. The deal was that when he would want to go home and have dinner or whatever, that I would pick him up. He always took buses. He didn’t drive. I would pick him up and take him home and then bring him back. So I would see him regularly because I probably went over and had dinner with them like a couple of nights a week. But he used to come visit—

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01-00:19:10 Geraci: That’s a fair granddad—

01-00:19:11 McIntyre: It was.

01-00:19:11 Geraci: —tradeoff.

01-00:19:12 McIntyre: It was. It was very good.

01-00:19:13 Geraci: That’s good.

01-00:19:13 McIntyre: And I would pick him up because he loved to come and see my brother play baseball, little league. So I would go pick him up for that, too, and bring him. Oh, I started to tell you that when I was working at the city—City Hall was downtown, you could always see him. I could see out the window and he would always come by. He knew we didn’t have a whole lot of money because my husband was in school. He would bring me a bag of groceries. I could see him walking across the plaza, see him coming up with his bag of groceries. Everyone used to love to see him come. But anyway, it was— memories are—

01-00:19:56 Geraci: That’s kind of a special relationship though.

01-00:19:59 McIntyre: Oh, with my grandfather, yes.

01-00:20:00 Geraci: Yeah.

01-00:20:01 McIntyre: Yes. Yeah. I loved him. He came to this country from Yugoslavia and he delivered ice. It was really a story of—

01-00:20:11 Geraci: How about your grandmother?

01-00:20:13 McIntyre: My first grandmother, and she was Irish, he was Yugoslavian. Apparently wasn’t a good mix.

01-00:20:20 Geraci: I was going to say that’s an interesting combination.

01-00:20:23 McIntyre: And she left and then he married the only grandmother I knew. She was Italian. That probably wasn’t the best mix either. He worked from morning ‘til

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night. He was never home. All I know is that he had a partner who I vaguely remember. I was pretty little then. But he tried the deal of having a partner and she took a lot—

01-00:20:56 Geraci: Yeah, that didn’t work.

01-00:20:57 McIntyre: —and didn’t work out. That didn’t work out either. So he just was there whenever bars open at noon, I guess, and then he was there until it closed. So he just wasn’t home very much, unless I picked him up, took him home for dinner and back again.

01-00:21:16 Geraci: So we have you working and coming. Actually, just coming out of college.

01-00:21:20 McIntyre: Right.

01-00:21:22 Geraci: First jobs.

01-00:21:24 McIntyre: Yes, okay. Let’s see. I guess I was pregnant. Pregnant and I left. But my husband was in school. We lived in Albany, so I guess we moved. I have something out of order, though, because Ian was little when we—I guess— okay. I was pregnant, quit the city and he got into school at Cal and we lived in student housing in Albany.

01-00:22:13 Geraci: Which is right in Albany.

01-00:22:15 McIntyre: Right. So that was an experience, too. [laughter] Still there.

01-00:22:20 Geraci: Yeah.

01-00:22:22 McIntyre: I mean, I drive by it and see it there.

01-00:22:23 Geraci: Yeah. I drive by it all the time.

01-00:22:25 McIntyre: So we were there while he was getting his degree. I’m trying to think when we left there. I know he took a summer job and we left there, too. He was working for the Department of Agriculture at the stations when you cross the borders.

01-00:22:49 Geraci: Oh, okay.

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01-00:22:50 McIntyre: So for the summer we went out to Oregon or Smith. We were in two different places two different summers. We lived in Brookings, Oregon for one time and then Smith River, Oregon for another. And so he would work summers there and we would take off and do that and then come back so that he could finish school. We thought he had finished school and thought he had gotten all the credits in he needed and he took another job with the—what’d I say that—

01-00:23:32 Geraci: Department of Agriculture?

01-00:23:33 McIntyre: The Department of Agriculture. And we went to Needles. That was such a lovely assignment.

01-00:23:38 Geraci: [laughter] Now, that had to be a shock.

01-00:23:44 McIntyre: Anyway, found out he didn’t have enough credits, so after we were there for a few months he had to come back and take another class to finish. So we came back and did that.

01-00:23:56 Geraci: At least you got to leave Needles.

01-00:23:57 McIntyre: At least I got to leave Needles. That was just god-awful. Literally, people did not go out of their houses until 10:30 at night—

01-00:24:04 Geraci: You can’t.

01-00:24:05 McIntyre: —to do anything. That was terrible.

01-00:24:09 Geraci: And Sacramento’s not exactly a cool place in the summer but—

01-00:24:12 McIntyre: No, but I was used to—

01-00:24:14 Geraci: Yeah. So you weren’t working during this time?

01-00:24:19 McIntyre: No, no. I was taking care of the baby. And then we bought a house in Concord and he got a job as a—he had studied to be a golf course architect. So he got a job in Walnut Creek and we lived there a total of I don’t know how long but I’d say a couple of years. And I had my second child. So I had a little boy. His name was Colin. So they were like three and a half years apart.

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01-00:25:03 Geraci: Those are good Irish names.

01-00:25:05 McIntyre: Yes. My mom was Irish. So Irish on my mom’s side, Yugoslavian on my dad’s side. So we had Colin and then things didn’t—

01-00:25:56 Geraci: Thing happened.

01-00:25:56 McIntyre: —pan out so well. Right. So we separated when he was actually six months old and then I stayed in the house for a little while longer. We wouldn’t afford necessarily to stay in it so I moved to an apartment and then—

01-00:25:47 Geraci: You were confronted then with having to earn your own living.

01-00:25:51 McIntyre: Right. And I had gone back because I knew things weren’t going well and I had gotten a job at the Contra Costa Times newspaper. I worked nights, though, because of the kids. Which seemed bright at the time but I really wasn’t worth much in the morning when they woke up. But I sort of tried to stretch myself as thing as I could but I just didn’t want to leave them all day. They were so little. So a neighbor actually—I paid her to baby-sit for them. And I would get home around 1:30 and then get up with them and school.

01-00:26:36 Geraci: That’s tough in those days because you don’t have the childcare infrastructure that you do today.

01-00:26:40 McIntyre: No. I’m sure there were some but I couldn’t afford them.

01-00:26:44 Geraci: Right.

01-00:26:45 McIntyre: So yeah, it was hard. But I thought it was hard then. It was harder when they got to be teenagers. It was fine, though. I liked the job. I was entering copy. They would get copy and like press releases and things, whatever, and then once the editor decided what was going into the sections in the newspaper you had to put it into an OCR format, which meant putting certain characters and things like that so the copy room knew what to do with it.

01-00:27:27 Geraci: Those are all the printing instructions.

01-00:27:29 McIntyre: Right, right.

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01-00:27:34 Geraci: Again, English comes in handy.

01-00:27:36 McIntyre: Again. For my whole life. So I did that for—I’m losing track of time here again. But I think it was like a year and a half. And then they hired a new production manager and he was like new and he needed an assistant. So he interviewed people and they asked if I would interview for it, but it was a day job. By then I was kind of ready to figure something out. So I got the job. So I did that for a period of time until—what happened? Oh, I think I interviewed for the job at Security National Bank. So I went from Contra Costa Times to the bank. Right. Okay. And other people I think you may have talked with worked at Security National Bank. Have you—

01-00:28:42 Geraci: Um-hmm.

01-00:28:43 McIntyre: Did you interview Claude Hutchison?

01-00:28:46 Geraci: No, I haven’t.

01-00:28:47 McIntyre: At any rate, Gary and Rick happened to be—so I took a job as secretary to the president of Security National Bank.

01-00:28:58 Geraci: That was a nice transition then.

01-00:28:59 McIntyre: Yeah. It was a raise.

01-00:29:02 Geraci: Yeah. That was a very nice transition.

01-00:29:03 McIntyre: I could use the money.

01-00:29:05 Geraci: Yeah.

01-00:29:06 McIntyre: So anyway, at Security National Bank, I was secretary to the president, who was Claude Hutchison. It was a regional bank. We had like thirteen—

01-00:29:19 Geraci: Branch offices.

01-00:29:20 McIntyre: —branch offices, right. But it was owned by Adnan Khashoggi at the time, so it got a lot of press just because of that factor. And anyway, that was fun. I

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have a friend to this day who I worked with there. She and I just went on vacation. So I still have links to that. So I was there. I should have my résumé in front of me.

01-00:29:53 Geraci: Would you like—

01-00:29:54 McIntyre: I don’t think I went that far back on that particular one. I have an old one.

01-00:29:58 Geraci: Oh, okay. No, your résumé doesn’t go back that—

01-00:30:01 McIntyre: But I was there maybe five years, something like that. The bank was purchased by Hibernia in San Francisco. It could have been longer than five. But at any rate, when it was purchased I didn’t want to go in to San Francisco because of my kids. So I started looking around for something else and I went to—

01-00:30:26 Geraci: Now, were you still out in Concord?

01-00:30:29 McIntyre: Yes. We were in Concord. Yes. Oh, no, one thing happened before I left. One of the guys that worked at the bank was transferred to England to do some work for the Khashoggis. I don’t know why he went. But he was the investment guy. And I was asked if I would housesit their house while they were out of the country. So my kids and I moved to their house in Walnut Creek and house-sat, which was quite nice, because they went to a school that was really close and it really made things easier for me because the office was in downtown Walnut Creek, as well. So—

01-00:31:19 Geraci: So everything was close. Yeah.

01-00:31:19 McIntyre: Yeah. And anyway, we stayed there until they came back. I think he came back before the bank was acquired. But we lived there maybe three years. I may be off of my time frame—At any rate, so then I found another job and I went to work at Pacific Intermountain Express. And I worked for the executive VP and his name was Mr. Tickle. I still remember that to this day.

01-00:32:03 Geraci: [laughter] That had to be worth a lot of—

01-00:32:04 McIntyre: Oh, it was like, “I’m calling to make a reservation for Mr. Tickle.”

01-00:32:09 Geraci: Sure.

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01-00:32:11 McIntyre: Anyway, it was just a lot of paperwork. And it was a union shop. So a bell would go off when—not me, because I wasn’t in the union. But the bell would go off for lunch. The bell goes off—

01-00:32:29 Geraci: It’s kind of like being in school.

01-00:32:30 McIntyre: It wasn’t an environment I was loving but my kids were in Walnut Creek and PIE was in Walnut Creek. So I was there probably two or three years and then the phone rang one day and it was Gary. I knew Gary and Rick because they were clients of the bank and they were good friends with Claude Hutchison, who was my boss. They all went to school together at Cal. So when they would call for him, I would always chat with them. So anyway, lo and behold, Claude’s running for Congress and he was running against Ron Dellums. Gary had agreed to be his finance chairman, to raise money. So Gary called and asked if I would come chat with him about a job. And he mentioned the campaign and he said, “Well, why don’t you just come over. I just want to talk with you if you can come over.” And it just so happened I think my car was in the shop the day he wanted me to come. Even maybe it was that day, I can’t remember, that he wanted me to come. He said, “Well, I can send the car for you.” And I’m like, “Oh, my god. Somebody’s going to send a car for me.” [laughter] And I said, “No.”

01-00:33:55 Geraci: What’s up, right?

01-00:33:56 McIntyre: I said, “No. If we can make it tomorrow or whatever, when I can get myself there.” So I came through the tunnel and found my way here to College Avenue and introduced myself. Walked up the steps because it was different than it is now. Walked up the steps and a receptionist was there and I said I was there to see Gary. His office was kind of right—so he brings me in and Rick came in, too, to talk. And I’m sitting there on the couch. I had met them because they had come into the bank also, so—

01-00:34:33 Geraci: What year is this?

01-00:34:35 McIntyre: This would have been 1982. So anyway, he explained that he was going to work on this campaign and that he would like if I could come and work, help him with the fundraising. I basically said, “I really can’t do that because I’ve got two kids and I can’t quit the job I have that’s like a bird in the hand to do something that, what if he doesn’t win, and then I don’t—”

01-00:35:07 Geraci: And then where do I go?

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01-00:35:08 McIntyre: —“have a job.” And he said, “Oh, no, no, no. We’ll hire you. We’ll hire you for Dreyer’s and you’ll work for Dreyer’s and we’ll charge your time back to the campaign.” I said, “Well, what will I be doing for Dreyer’s?” So he said, “Well, we need work with consumer relations and we think you can help there.” So they handed me the prospectus, the background on the company because they had just gone public. So they gave me all of the information to take home and decide if I wanted to come join them.

01-00:35:44 Geraci: Now, this is a job that you had never had before.

01-00:35:45 McIntyre: No.

01-00:35:46 Geraci: So there’s kind of an open-ended you get to help create—

01-00:35:50 McIntyre: Right.

01-00:35:51 Geraci: —what you’re going to do.

01-00:35:53 McIntyre: Oh, exactly. But I didn’t look at it that way then. Looking back I see—

01-00:35:57 Geraci: You didn’t realize it then, right?

01-00:35:59 McIntyre: I see what an opportunity it was but I was like, “Ew, do I really—is this a good move or not?” So I went home, looked at all the materials. I think I talked with a friend that night.” I was crazy to even take two minutes to think about it, looking back. So the next day I called and told them that I would love to join the company.

01-00:36:24 Geraci: Knowing both Rick and Gary, isn’t that one of the things they’re looking for? Someone to be a little bit more of a risk taker?

01-00:36:31 McIntyre: Oh, yeah.

01-00:36:31 Geraci: To go outside their comfort zone.

01-00:36:32 McIntyre: Oh, right. I mean—

01-00:36:34 Geraci: And this really pushed you outside your comfort zone.

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01-00:36:36 McIntyre: For me, yes. Because with my parents, they never thought about like investing in real estate. It was just like getting through the month. My dad didn’t make very much money. So everything was very safe. They never thought of things like that because it was just—the fact that we took a vacation at all was because my grandfather gave us money. My grandfather bought my parents cars when they needed a car. My mother didn’t even drive until she was like in her late 30s—until she needed to transport us around for school and stuff. But everything was just safe because that’s all they could do. But then I was—

01-00:37:30 Geraci: Were they children of the Depression?

01-00:37:33 McIntyre: Well, they were born in the twenties.

01-00:37:35 Geraci: Or at least that idea.

01-00:37:36 McIntyre: So they went through the Depression. Yeah, yeah.

01-00:37:38 Geraci: There’s a different, I don’t know, mentality. A different approach to life.

01-00:37:48 McIntyre: Yes. And I notice in particular my husband’s mother, who must have suffered more, I think, than my parents did because just so many—she had a house that needed so much work and she wouldn’t put a penny into that house because she didn’t want to spend the money.

01-00:38:08 Geraci: Right. Well, the fear of not having money.

01-00:38:11 McIntyre: Right.

01-00:38:12 Geraci: It may just all go away.

01-00:38:13 McIntyre: Right. I know. That was it. So I saw it more in her than I saw it in my parents. But they were, what, twelve. And my mother and dad came from two very different families. My mother’s family, there were four kids, an Irish family. And then my dad was the only child and he didn’t have a very good life. Like my grandmother like punished him, hit him with a broom. He eventually went to go live with my grandfather’s sister. So that wasn’t the best life. But my mom had a really happy life. So you could see it. My dad was always more serious and my mom was always like bubbly and happy. So I guess you are—

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01-00:39:05 Geraci: You’re a product of your envir—

01-00:39:07 McIntyre: —a product of your environment, yes. So I forgot where we were, what was the—I went off on a tangent.

01-00:39:12 Geraci: Well, you were talking to Gary and Rick. You’re just thinking about accepting the job. Actually, you said you thought for the night—

01-00:39:19 McIntyre: I did. Right.

01-00:39:19 Geraci: —and then you took the job.

01-00:39:20 McIntyre: Right. So I came. Actually, I think that weekend they were having like a fundraiser for Claude at their former restaurant. Well, the restaurant they still owned at the time, the Vintage House in Orinda and they asked me to come to that.

01-00:39:40 Geraci: That was the last of the Vintage House’s then.

01-00:39:43 McIntyre: Right.

01-00:39:43 Geraci: First and last.

01-00:39:44 McIntyre: Right. So they explained the whole Vintage House thing to me and kind of how they had gotten involved in the restaurant business and gone to Texas and that whole story. And then they invited me to stay and have dinner, so it was with they and their families. We’re all there that night. So I met all the boys and— [laughter]

01-00:40:09 Geraci: Yeah. I would say all the boys. [laughter]

01-00:40:12 McIntyre: Then I met Janet and Cab. Anyway, if I had made a wrong decision I would have known I had made a wrong decision that night because I was like meeting the family.

01-00:40:29 Geraci: But you had so much in common with them to begin with. Family, Catholicism.

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01-00:40:37 McIntyre: Yes.

01-00:40:39 Geraci: Growing up in that fifties good children lifestyle. You all had that in common.

01-00:40:45 McIntyre: Right, yeah. Yeah. And they may have had a little more money than we did but it was—

01-00:40:57 Geraci: But it wasn’t wealthy-wealthy. Yeah.

01-00:40:57 McIntyre: —still the same. Right. It was still the same. So anyway, I know I made the right decision. That was a relief. Mostly I was working on the campaign in the beginning. For a year I was mostly working on the campaign. Computers were just starting to be [mainstream]. We had a sort of an IT guy. They didn’t even call him that then. It was a guy that like got the first computers going here.

01-00:41:30 Geraci: He’s a guy that knew how to plug it in.

01-00:41:31 McIntyre: His name was Roger and he had this kind of red fuzzy hair. Roger Lindquist. I was in what used to be the—there used to be a big delivery truck that would come from Union City and pick up ice cream that they made here and take it off to Union City. So I was in what was formerly the break room for the guys that would drive. It was stinky and it had this like heater that would go on and the more it went the stinkier the room got. And then I had this computer in the room. Trying to maintain a database of people that had donated and keeping track of who donated what and what the running total was. I can’t remember what the name of the system was but it was just archaic. But yet it was a computer, which helps. Anyway, it was an interesting year, let’s just say that. And then—

01-00:42:42 Geraci: Well, you learned a little something about being a part of a political campaign.

01-00:42:45 McIntyre: I did, I did and it convinced me I’d never, ever want to—

01-00:42:51 Geraci: Do it again.

01-00:42:51 McIntyre: No. And eventually he didn’t win. It was very close but he didn’t win. So then I was, “Okay, what am I doing for Dreyer’s?” So basically the thing they wanted me to work on was consumer letters, which I was doing while I was working on the campaign stuff. Wasn’t a hundred percent of my day. So

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basically, even though you work for an ice cream company, you still get complaints.

01-00:43:23 Geraci: Right.

01-00:43:24 McIntyre: Right. And some compliments but mostly complaints. So I would get those and so I would draft a response back. Then we were getting maybe seventy a month and now we get hundreds, thousands a month. But—

01-00:43:46 Geraci: But also look at the size differential—

01-00:43:47 McIntyre: Right. And the number of units produced—

01-00:43:47 Geraci: —in comparison.

01-00:43:49 McIntyre: —and all that.

01-00:43:50 Geraci: Right.

01-00:43:52 McIntyre: So I just started drafting letters and then I started working on—we have an internal publication called the Full Scoop. So I started working on that. There was a person that was doing it and so I took that over. And then that person left. So she also had managed donations, which was should we give a couple of gallons of ice cream to this group that was asking for it. So I started doing donations. There was a budget for that. The Full Scoop, all the employee- relations stuff. So picnic, Christmas party. What else did we have? Full Scoop. Any parties we had. I was like the party planner.

01-00:44:53 Geraci: Now, who is your supervisor?

01-00:44:55 McIntyre: The marketing manager. So the Dreyer’s—

01-00:45:01 Geraci: Who was at this time? Remember?

01-00:45:04 McIntyre: John Sommerville had started. Have you talked with him? John actually. Yes, it was John. He started right after I did. So I reported to him. And so anyway, I was the party planner, donations, employee relations and consumer relations and yeah, foundation. Well, it wasn’t called the found—it was just donations. And then John called me in one day and said that he had an offer. Took me to

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lunch. “Want to talk to you about something.” So I’m like, “Okay.” I loved working for him. He was a real mentor to me. So we go to lunch and they’d had a PR agency for a year and the agency had done one event and got like one clip for the whole year.

01-00:46:10 Geraci: Whatever fee they had paid, right.

01-00:46:13 McIntyre: I think it was $40,000. So he said, “We want to see if you would like to do this because you like to write and there’s a lot of writing involved in public relations. We’ll give you a budget. We’ll give you the same budget the agency had and let’s see what you do.” So I’m like, “John, I might have gone to school in business administration but there were no classes in public relations. I’ve never taken class in public relations and I don’t even know what you do exactly.” And he said, “You’ll do fine. I can help you because public relations is kind of a part of what we do at the advertising agency,” where he had come from, Foote Cone & Belding. And he said, “I can help you.” And he said, “Why don’t you think about it and then tell me tomorrow what you think.” So I went home again and thought about, “Okay.” I still have a job so it wasn’t like I was needing to—

01-00:47:10 Geraci: Yeah, it’s not—

01-00:47:11 McIntyre: It was just do I want to try this? So I said, “I’d love to but I’m going to need your help.” He said, “No problem.” He said, “First thing we need to do is do a press kit.” He kind of gave me instructions and I looked up some others to—I mean, you didn’t get on the Internet then, either, to check out what other people had done. You had to kind of do legwork.

01-00:47:35 Geraci: Because everybody has their press kit basically online now.

01-00:47:37 McIntyre: Right. You had to do legwork, believe me, to find anything. I even went to the library and there were a couple books on public relations and that was kind of it. So anyway, we got started and he really did help me a lot.

01-00:47:56 Geraci: This is a case under the Grooves, then, of ready, fire, aim.

01-00:47:58 McIntyre: Oh, yeah. Definitely. A classic case. So anyway, the first year was kind of quiet, but I got the press kit together and started to figure out how you access media. Ordering the right Bacon’s books that have them all listed and by broadcast and print. So just sort of figuring out—talking to people. Talked to some other people from agencies. John actually knew this guy who worked at an agency and he came over and spent time with me to bring me up to speed,

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too. So I sort of gradually figured it out. Basically you had to ask questions and just figure it out.

01-00:48:50 Geraci: Now, is this an absolute show on their part? Their faith in you to—it seems a lot of—with Gary and Rick, as they bring people in, they want you. They have the confidence that you’re going to think outside the box and you’re going to do what it takes. They’re not micromanaging you at all.

01-00:49:11 McIntyre: Oh, no. No.

01-00:49:12 Geraci: This really is a matter of it’s yours, take ownership.

01-00:49:20 McIntyre: Oh, exactly. I could have done anything I wanted at the time with—I mean, obviously you had restrictions but—

01-00:49:26 Geraci: Right, yeah.

01-00:49:27 McIntyre: But right. I built it the way I wanted to build it. John went in and recommended. He recommended it to them. And they bought off on it. And you’re right. Forty thousand dollars to me was like—no one’s ever said, “Here’s $40,000 for you to like—“

01-00:49:53 Geraci: Do something.

01-00:49:53 McIntyre: —“do what you can to get publicity on Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream.” I was like nervous. But the one thing when I was working on the campaign, even, is things would come up and I’d say to Gary, “Well, would you like me to do this? It’s this much money.” He said, “You decide. Do we need it? Should we do it?” And I was like, “Really.” It was the first time ever that I was dealing with large sums of money. I had to make the decision are we going to spend that money because he wasn’t going to make it for me. That first year of working for him is when I realized I’ve got to be able to make—I’m a Libra. Libra’s don’t have—it’s not easy for them to decide things. I was an assistant. I was people’s assistants my whole life. So they always told me what to do. So it was just a whole new thing when I got here to make choices and hope I’m doing the best thing for the company because god knows—I didn’t want to waste a dollar and here I was spending sums of money I’d never spent before in my life, responsible for.

01-00:51:13 Geraci: But it had to feel good in that they were taking—they were giving you responsibility because they trusted you to do what was the right thing.

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01-00:51:20 McIntyre: Right, right.

01-00:51:23 Geraci: And failure it seems, from their perspective, is something that happens to everyone.

01-00:51:30 McIntyre: Right, right. Well, hopefully it wasn’t going to—

01-00:51:32 Geraci: These are two partners that—by then Vintage House had failed.

01-00:51:35 McIntyre: Right.

01-00:51:36 Geraci: They come into Dreyer’s. They took failure and made it into something falling—basically falling forward type.

01-00:51:42 McIntyre: Right, right.

01-00:51:43 Geraci: Or failing forward. Excuse me.

01-00:51:44 McIntyre: Right. When you hear their story, it’s fraught with that but they made it—they turned it into something wonderful. But I was not going to lose a dollar. I was not going to fail is what I in my head was thinking. But there were a couple of times where I know he was disappointed in me. One time on the campaign with that stupid computer. Every week I would give him a report of how much money we’d raised that week. And I counted money twice somehow and then when I realized it, it was like, “Oh, my god.” I had told him already we raised this much money and then it was only half of that. And I tended to cry. I still do. You’ve seen me lose it here a couple of times. But I was so distraught. Ugh. I felt like I totally failed.

01-00:52:52 Geraci: The world has ended, right.

01-00:52:53 McIntyre: Oh, really. I thought I was going to lose my job. And, of course, it was Gary and he just said, “Don’t do it again,” and that was it.

01-00:53:07 Geraci: Learn from the mistake.

01-00:53:08 McIntyre: Right, right. So anyway, where were we? Help me out here.

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01-00:52:16 Geraci: Well, the campaign’s done. You’re actually coming in. You’ve just gotten the PR responsibility. They’ve just created your position. They gave you $40,000 to work with and said, “You go, girl.”

01-00:53:32 McIntyre: Right. So I did. So the first year I was just kind of getting—learning and getting things going. I remember the first hit I got was in the Oakland Tribune and the Queen of England came and she ate at Trader Vic’s. And we made the rum raisin for Trader Vic’s so I put out a release that the Queen was eating—

01-00:54:00 Geraci: Dreyer’s.

01-00:54:01 McIntyre: —a treat made by Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream and it made a little thing about this big in the Oakland Tribune. I remember running through the office like, “Oh, look what we got.” Anyway, so we got started. Let’s see. So in ’83, ’84. So it would have been around 1984. And John Harrison had also joined the company. So there was John Harrison, John Sommerville and I all joined the company about the same time.

01-00:54:43 Geraci: Oh, okay.

01-00:54:44 McIntyre: I was first. I came in April and I think John and John came in June. Somewhere around there. So John Harrison was working over in quality control and flavor development. He was doing both. You haven’t met him yet but [he has a] kind of deep voice, [is] good looking and knew stuff about ice cream. Occasionally things would come your way, like channel two called and wanted to do a story just on ice cream. It was like maybe ice cream month. I’m not remembering exactly why. But they wanted to come to the factory. So John, I asked him if he would host them and tell them what they’re seeing on the manufacturing floor. So they came. He did such a fabulous job. I was thinking, “Wow. He’s really good at this. So he can be my spokesperson.” John said, “Well, don’t just settle on John. Maybe you should interview. Interview other people.” So we got a video guy to come in one day and I asked questions. So we chose three people. One was the plant guy, plant manager, John and then one other guy. I don’t remember who it was. Anyway, John clearly stood out from everyone else. He was just really good. So that year the Chronicle wanted to a story, too. So I said, “Well, I can arrange to have you talk with our spokesperson.” So they came over, interviewed him about ice cream, about his job, what he does and the title of the thing was, “The man who gets paid to eat ice cream,” because product quality control is the tasting part and all that.

01-00:56:50 Geraci: Is tasting.

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01-00:56:53 McIntyre: And that hit in early ’85 and that same day the article came out we did like fifteen interviews in one day. All the broadcast was calling. “We’d like to talk to John.” They even woke him up at his house that morning wanting to do a piece. And literally we were like, “Really? This is big.” So it just snowballed into—it was like amazing. And he became the man who gets paid to eat ice cream.

01-00:57:31 Geraci: We’ll take a little break right here.

[End Audio File 1]

[Begin Audio File 2]

02-00:00:06 Geraci: Vic Geraci. Today’s date Wednesday, May 18, 2011. Seated with me is Diane McIntyre, interview number one. This is tape number two. When we left off, we were talking about public relations seems to almost—started to really kick up for you now.

02-00:00:24 McIntyre: Yes.

02-00:00:24 Geraci: You had John doing this tour. Let’s continue from there.

02-00:00:27 McIntyre: So John got all the press about being the man with the million-dollar—or the man who gets paid to eat ice cream. So then we did all the interviews we could do to kind of milk that. For days people were calling to schedule interviews.

02-00:00:45 Geraci: It is a fascinating concept with the idea we have of ice cream being a treat. This playful thing.

02-00:00:52 McIntyre: Right. But he gets paid to eat it every day.

02-00:00:53 Geraci: And you get paid to do that.

02-00:00:55 McIntyre: Exactly. It’s like a dream job. In fact, no matter where you go, and I would say that most everyone who works at Dreyer’s would say this, that you meet people and their first thing is, “How can I get to be your taster?” because it’s a dream job. Really. So after that kind of died down, then I started thinking I wonder if I could use that press to get press in other cities. So I drafted letters and I attached the article, the Chronicle article, and said, “Wouldn’t you like

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to meet the man with the million-dollar taste buds?” No, I hadn’t done that yet. “Wouldn’t you like to meet the man who gets paid to eat ice cream?” And so I would do it by city so that he and I could get on a plane and go. I would line up interviews for like three days. Lo and behold, my phone was ringing and people wanted to meet him. And it was like, “Wow, this is fun.”

02-00:01:57 Geraci: This caught on.

02-00:01:58 McIntyre: Yeah. So we went to LA first and then we went to San Diego. In San Diego, he and I still remember—we still talk about it. But he was on this program where they do this thing where you hear the person’s voice but they don’t tell you who he is, what he does, and people call in and say, “Is he—“ you know how you get clues?

02-00:02:27 Geraci: Right.

02-00:02:28 McIntyre: Does he do it in a building or whatever. And eventually they get close enough to try and figure out what he does. And he has that deep booming voice which kind of threw people off, I think, because they assumed he was in broadcasting or something like that. But we still laugh about that program. Once they identified him, then it went on for an hour. It was an hour long radio program. So that was one of our bigger hits in the beginning. And after a while, we got to the point where we were getting a little spoiled and it’s like, “Well, we won’t do some of these smaller ones. We’ll do just the bigger ones.”

02-00:03:07 Geraci: You became selective.

02-00:03:09 McIntyre: So basically his tour grew to fifty markets he would do in a year.

02-00:03:18 Geraci: He was on tour most of the time then.

02-00:03:20 McIntyre: Oh, yeah. Eventually he didn’t have time to do his quality control or flavor development so they hired other people so that he could be our spokesperson. And in each market, we wouldn’t even go if we didn’t get at least five interviews. And that would either be TV, radio interview or a newspaper interview.

02-00:03:50 Geraci: Just getting the timing right. This is really crucial because this is just at the point where you’re in the great race to be national, to beat Breyer’s.

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02-00:04:01 McIntyre: Right.

02-00:04:02 Geraci: So this is a big move.

02-00:04:03 McIntyre: And he would go in to markets. We didn’t ever go to markets we weren’t in. But they would get pickup from national stories and things like that that would appear. But we would sometimes go to fairly new markets for us and just this concept of an ice cream taster—and to listen to him talk about how he tasted, like starting with the vanillas and how you line it up like you do when you’re a wine taster. You go from the vanillas to the stronger flavors to the chocolates to like the mint chips and then he would have this technique he called swirl, smack and spit.

02-00:04:43 Geraci: Just like in wine.

02-00:04:44 McIntyre: Just like in wine. And it was so interesting and it was just something that people remembered. People recognize him now, today, but in these new markets it made a real impression. So I think even in those new markets, those impressions counted for more than they do in some of our existing markets. But—

02-00:05:09 Geraci: Now, in coordinating all this, are you also working with marketing? Like with Delaplane over in the DSD? Because these are all—are you—

02-00:05:17 McIntyre: We all had to work together because we had to have access to the product. So we would have to go to the distribution center to pick up the product that he was going to take with him to each interview. So if he was going to radio stations, he would always bring along the ice cream so that he could show how he cuts the carton open. He would always carry this big long machete knife that had a handle on each end that he cut the carton with and even that was quite a show. And that machete gave us more trouble than you can imagine when we were trying to catch flights to go from one city to another.

02-00:05:55 Geraci: And why do you need a machete, right?

02-00:05:57 McIntyre: Right. And, “You think you’re going to carry that on [the plane]?” You can’t even carry a box cutter now. It was like this long thing. But yes. The sales guy sometimes delivered it for us. But it was fun because we got to go to each market and we got to meet—it’s one thing to hear people’s voices but you got to meet the guys, most of them were guys, that were the managers in each office. They loved the idea they were getting the press, too, for their market.

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There isn’t anyone at Dreyer’s, in my opinion, that isn’t a hard, hard worker. And it was nice to get to meet them but you all feel like you’re working toward one goal, especially then. Because it was tough in those new markets. Those guys were working long hours compared—because I knew Dreyer’s and I had ridden routes in Dreyer’s land because we’re all supposed to ride routes and get to know how it works. And you’d go to these new markets and Dreyer’s was nothing compared to what those guys in new markets were doing. So it was a good experience to kind of see it all and work with everyone. Because you’re right. We had to work with the brand people to know what we were going to be talking about, which ice cream flavors we wanted to—which products we wanted to promote. And then—

02-00:07:28 Geraci: And particularly in that it may vary from market to market.

02-00:07:30 McIntyre: Oh, it did. It did.

02-00:07:31 Geraci: Yeah.

02-00:07:32 McIntyre: For a while we had different products. We had flavors. In Dreyer’s you didn’t have an Edy’s land.

02-00:07:38 Geraci: Right. The partner’s brands all coming in.

02-00:07:41 McIntyre: Exactly. And then sometimes we would do special events, too. We tried to make the most of what we were doing when we were in each market. So we would have special events sometimes. John would do training sometimes with the route salesmen. And to do that, we had to be there like at 4:00 am when— before they went out on their routes. So we tried to make the best use of everyone’s time when we were going to be in a market. And it got to the point where I couldn’t do his tour and be with him. So he started going on his own after I figured out if I’m back home I can be lining up the next markets. But I couldn’t do that if I was traveling with him.

02-00:08:26 Geraci: How old were your kids by then, too? They had to be—

02-00:08:28 McIntyre: Let’s see. This was ’85, ’86. Well, we got going around ’86. So they were born in ’71 and ’74, They were in their teens.

02-00:08:47 Geraci: Okay, so they were older.

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02-00:08:48 McIntyre: Lower teens. Yeah, but—

02-00:08:50 Geraci: I know. That’s just—

02-00:08:51 McIntyre: I go on a trip and it was like get my own stuff together, get a babysitter for them, get their stuff together. It was hard. Traveling is hard when you have— and there’s no one else at home. But they were still young enough teen that I wasn’t faced with the parties while I’m gone kind of thing. But that came later.

So anyway, I started like not traveling with John. And that was asking a lot of him because he had to schlep to get the ice cream and then schlep around on his own. He didn’t have a car. Believe me, I was not paying for a car to take him place to place. And we did that for a few years and then I had to bright idea to insure his taste buds for a million dollars since he was so popular. And then the whole thing started all over again.

02-00:09:54 Geraci: Where do you go to insure someone’s taste buds?

02-00:09:56 McIntyre: I called around. The one you most commonly think of is—

02-00:10:00 Geraci: Lloyd’s of London.

02-00:10:01 McIntyre: —Lloyd’s of London. They wouldn’t insure anything unless you didn’t publicize it. And my whole purpose was to publicize it. So I found AIG Life and they did it. So we just paid a policy every year and so we started off at 250,000, a quarter of a million. So everything started all over again with the quarter of a million dollars. And I milked that for probably eight years and then we did—we upped it to a million and then it was like brand new all over again. So—

02-00:10:44 Geraci: Recycle the idea like every so often.

02-00:10:46 McIntyre: Yeah. So John became famous. He was in Time Life Magazine. He’s been on United Air for a segment. He’s been on Regis & Kelly, Oprah. So it’s been a ride. And then he retired this last year.

02-00:11:10 Geraci: That’s amazing.

02-00:11:12 McIntyre: Yeah, yeah.

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02-00:11:13 Geraci: I bet for him in particular. He never expected to be a spokesperson as he came into Dreyer’s.

02-00:11:18 McIntyre: No. And he is—

02-00:11:21 Geraci: He’s a quality control person.

02-00:11:22 McIntyre: His dad was in the ingredient business and had supplied—we’d bought their ingredients for a long time and that’s how he got the entrée and John Thomason asked him to join the company. But he’s very knowledgeable. And that’s what was so great. He wasn’t like a trained spokesperson. It was ingrained in him. He already knew the answers. He was just fabulous. So he helped me a lot. Like we were a really good team. We’re still very good friends.

02-00:11:57 Geraci: Okay, we’re talking like 19—I notice—well, and then in 1990 you developed a—what did you call it? A crisis communication plan.

02-00:12:08 McIntyre: Right.

02-00:12:09 Geraci: You need to talk about that. [laughter]

02-00:12:10 McIntyre: Yeah. You always hope that you’ll never need it. But it’s good to be prepared.

02-00:12:20 Geraci: Did something prompt this?

02-00:12:22 McIntyre: Well, little incidents. Because I was also in charge of consumer relations, so I would see like if we had—get complaints about something in the ice cream. Foreign objects, we called them, in the product. So I was aware of those. We don’t get a lot of them. And we would investigate to see. Sometimes a little screw falls off the equipment and somehow ends up in it. But I just knew from talking with other people that you should be prepared and should have a plan in case something really blows up. So we had a couple incidents where—at the plants. We had ammonia leaks that could potentially have been something that media could have been there and you need to have answers and be prepared for that. And then product recall kinds of things. You need—

02-00:13:21 Geraci: Because that is the beginning of the era of—now we’re very used to product recall but it was just really beginning to be an issue.

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02-00:13:29 McIntyre: And we didn’t have a plan. So I found out after talking—somehow our insurance lady mentioned to me that we could use a percentage of our insurance premium to work with this company to build a plan. So it involved going to several—taking this person, this guy, to several of our plants kind of just to see how we operate and then he and I worked together to build a plan to customize it for Dreyer’s. Have we ever used it? Because it’s been updated many times since the first one. We have but it’s never really—there’s no way you can accommodate for everything in a plan.

02-00:14:19 Geraci: It’s really hard to plan for future disaster.

02-00:14:19 McIntyre: Right. But is it a good check list to measure against? Yes. So I just felt like it was something we should have. And it’s a good insurance policy.

02-00:14:32 Geraci: Going to say I would imagine your insurers would feel much better knowing that there is some sort of—because that’s one of the things they have to worry about also.

02-00:14:42 McIntyre: We do get asked occasionally. I don’t ever give the whole thing but I have had to provide it to—either someone we’re going to be working with or whatever has asked if we have one.

02-00:14:56 Geraci: Well, especially now that the United States probably has more food safety laws. I could see where the federal requirements now that—

02-00:15:00 McIntyre: Right.

02-00:15:03 Geraci: Especially as you were growing across the nation. You had to meet each individual state’s requirements.

02-00:15:11 McIntyre: This crisis plan was more of a communications plan in the event of. And I had like Swiss cheese releases and things that I could immediately access if I needed them.

02-00:15:27 Geraci: What do you mean by Swiss cheese releases?

02-00:15:29 McIntyre: You fill in the blanks to make it—

02-00:15:32 Geraci: Oh, okay. Okay.

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02-00:15:32 McIntyre: —relevant for whatever state. I do remember we did have a couple of—there weren’t product recalls because they weren’t mandated by Food and Drug but we withdrew some product. And that’s what’s great about this organization. We knew exactly where that product was and you’d send out a note and say, “We have to withdraw this product.” And I’d work with the QA people to do this because they were kind of in charge and I was a support person. But our guys can go out and do whatever we have to do because we go to stores regularly.

02-00:16:13 Geraci: This is pre the bar-coding days, too, isn’t it?

02-00:16:15 McIntyre: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

02-00:16:16 Geraci: Today with bar coding it’s easier to identify exact location.

02-00:16:20 McIntyre: Oh, yeah. Right. No. This was based on the code that was on the bottom of the carton that we stamp in. But they can get it done really quickly. It’s amazing how quickly when we need to.

02-00:16:37 Geraci: Oh, that’s good. And then it says in 1990 you also launched a consumer engagement strategy, which you called the assistant ice cream taster contest.

02-00:16:50 McIntyre: Right.

02-00:16:50 Geraci: Let’s talk—

02-00:16:51 McIntyre: Those were still fun. We still hear from some of these assistant ice cream tasters that were in our early groups. I told you that whenever you go anywhere people say, “Can I be your taster? How do I apply for your job, the job as your taster?” And so we decided that we’d have a contest where people could enter to become our official ice cream taste—assistant ice cream tasters for a day. And this was a day and age you didn’t send it in, email it in. You had to like actually write it out and submit it. And we would get thousands of entries. I don’t specifically remember like for the last one that we did but the first one we got 25,000 entries.

02-00:17:43 Geraci: Oh, my goodness.

02-00:17:44 McIntyre: And we would pick from the best. We would have our employees help us narrow it down because basically I’m reading all of these entries. And then it

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was hard. They were all very, very good. I remember once I get this box and it was from a woman named Edy and she lived in Edy’s Land and it was a mannequin’s arm, right arm, and her entry was, “I’d give my right arm to be an Edy’s ice cream taster, assistant ice cream taster.” She won. She got that.

02-00:18:19 Geraci: That’s ingenious.

02-00:18:19 McIntyre: Yeah. And some lady knitted a sweater with the headquarters picture on the back. Amazing entries. So we would bring them all here to Oakland. And I had enough trouble being able to bring cameras into the plant in the very beginning, I think I mentioned it to you off camera. But here I was dragging like twenty-five people here to go through the plant. But basically they tasted a lot of the new flavors that we were thinking of introducing and they basically served a purpose because they helped us decide which of those flavors they thought were the best ones for us to introduce. So they loved it and we had a big graduation dinner at the end and Rick would present all of them with an assistant ice cream taster certificate. It was a fun event. Really fun.

02-00:19:21 Geraci: Now, are you using that? Get that information into the media?

02-00:19:27 McIntyre: Oh, yeah.

02-00:19:27 Geraci: To cover this.

02-00:19:28 McIntyre: So then we would send out a release to the markets that all of these people had come from saying that they were selected as a taster, assistant ice cream taster, kind of what they did with their day. Usually then the media would go talk to them directly and do a big story. There was one lady, I remember from Washington State, and she was on the front page of their newspaper. Big pictures wearing her t-shirt she had gotten. It was amazing.

02-00:20:00 Geraci: That’s great indirect advertising.

02-00:20:01 McIntyre: Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was amazing coverage. So I think we did that for about ten or twelve years we did one annually.

02-00:20:12 Geraci: That’s super. As we’ve moving through your career a little bit here. And then in 1994 you created the company’s—the Dreyer’s/Edy’s company website.

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02-00:20:22 McIntyre: Yes.

02-00:20:23 Geraci: Yeah.

02-00:20:24 McIntyre: That’s another amazing story.

02-00:20:26 Geraci: To listen to your past problems with computers, that must have been a challenge. [laughter]

02-00:20:32 McIntyre: [laughter] It’s still really funny. No. Well, it was that time when companies were just starting to build websites and I felt like we were becoming at a disadvantage because we hadn’t made any strides in that direction. So I actually worked with the husbands of two of our employees. So the husbands didn’t work for us but the wives did. They were into computers and website development and that kind of thing, even in its infancy. They were sort of just getting started themselves. So I paid them like almost this and—because I had no budget really for this. And we built the Dreyer’s and the Edy’s websites. And then I thought we should try to get icecream.com because that was a sort of thing to have kind of the generic name for whatever category you were in. So someone owned it already and I dialed the number and this woman answered. And I said, “I notice you own icecream.com but you haven’t built anything on that site yet.” It wasn’t finished out. And she said she owned a little ice cream parlor up in Canada somewhere. And she said, “Yes, I just haven’t gotten to it.” I said, “Would you be interested in selling it?” And she said, “Well, what would you be willing to pay for it?” I said, “Well, if I buy it from whatever agency it was that was giving you URLs, I’d get it for 200, so like 250? Two hundred dollars, 250?” She said, “Well, I guess so. I guess I could do that.” I said, “Fine. I’ll send you the documents tomorrow.” Then the phone rang in the morning and it was her husband and he said, “We’re not going to sell. We’re not going to sell it for $250.” And I said, “I understand. What do you think is reasonable?” And he said, “Five thousand.” So I said, “Oh, all right. Let me think on that and I’ll give you a call back,” because I didn’t have $5,000 in my budget. I think I borrowed it from something else. It was like robbing Peter to pay Paul. But anyway, I got back to him and said, “Okay, we’ll pay $5,000.” But today you’d be paying—

02-00:23:06 Geraci: I was going to say, in comparison to what you would pay for a URL today, 5,000 is—

02-00:23:13 McIntyre: Right. Our marketing VP I think was Bob Johnson then. And nobody blinked an eye that I was doing this. And then I told them I bought icecream.com and I said, “Darn, I had to pay $5,000 for it.” It was like, “Okay, as long as you got

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the money.” And you’re right. I’m like the least tech-savvy person in the company. I hope to god I’ve gotten a little better but yeah, we built a website.

02-00:23:48 Geraci: Well, this is the beginning of the era when all corporations are building websites.

02-00:23:53 McIntyre: Right, right.

02-00:23:54 Geraci: So that’s just keeping you competitive then.

02-00:23:56 McIntyre: It was, it was.

02-00:23:59 Geraci: What types of things did you have on that initial website?

02-00:24:01 McIntyre: We did a list of products, obviously, the nutritionals, the ingredients. We had our history, kind of the background stuff on the company. What I really wanted in particular was a flavor finder. That was a little more complicated kind of backend stuff. But basically people could put in what flavor they’re always looking—because we would hear, “I can’t ever find whatever at my store.” So you love mint chip. Enter mint chip and it spits out where mint chip’s been delivered in the last ten days. So—

02-00:24:49 Geraci: By this time the company had gone to its full computerized version for the scan and direct.

02-00:24:56 McIntyre: Yeah.

02-00:24:57 Geraci: So you knew where all your product was.

02-00:24:58 McIntyre: Right, right.

02-00:25:00 Geraci: Oh, that’s crazy. You just type right into that.

02-00:25:02 McIntyre: Yes. There was some fun things on there, like flavorology. Like if you want mint chip, what’s that say about your personality? But just some fun things that—

02-00:25:17 Geraci: Ice cream astrology.

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02-00:25:18 McIntyre: Yeah. And some fun pieces but then the basic information that they would want to know about the company and about our products. It wasn’t a destination site but it’s amazing how many people do cruise and enter ice cream. And ice cream would take them to either Dreyer’s or Edy’s.

02-00:25:40 Geraci: Since you had bought that domain name.

02-00:25:42 McIntyre: Right, yes. Right.

02-00:25:43 Geraci: That gave you—

02-00:25:45 McIntyre: And then—

02-00:25:45 Geraci: As in, then you’re going to get a lot of traffic.

02-00:25:48 McIntyre: And then you have the complication, too, of, okay, if they live in Edy’s Land they’re not going to want to see Dreyer’s stuff. So we basically had to build two, the Dreyer’s website, the Edy’s website, and the way to figure out when they came from icecream.com, where they were coming from, was we had a map and we’d say, “Click on your state.” And then that way we knew which website to direct them to. But the Dreyer’s Edy’s thing has been—it’s an issue. It complicated our lives for even today still.

02-00:26:21 Geraci: Let’s talk a little bit about that. How did it complicate—

02-00:26:24 McIntyre: Because when you do advertising, you have to do two different versions. When I do PR releases, I have to do one for Dreyer’s, one for Edy’s and one for Dreyer’s and Edy’s if you’re sending it to national publications. So it costs you more money for practically everything you do because of that.

02-00:26:47 Geraci: Whereas if you just had the one name—

02-00:26:50 McIntyre: Right. But if we had one name it would have to be Edy’s because we can’t market Dreyer’s in the east.

02-00:26:57 Geraci: East. Yeah, in the east.

02-00:26:59 McIntyre: And then we lose that whole loyalty that Dreyer’s has built over time.

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02-00:27:07 Geraci: You also lose the context of that’s where it started.

02-00:27:11 McIntyre: I know. Yeah. I don’t know—

02-00:27:14 Geraci: So given that, I guess, that was really the only thing that could be done, was to have the dual campaign.

02-00:27:19 McIntyre: Right, right. So we lived with it. We made it through but—

02-00:27:25 Geraci: It just added work to your load.

02-00:27:26 McIntyre: Yeah. Because I work on the Häagen-Dazs brand now and I just see how much simpler it is with just the one name.

And if people want coupons. Say they’re having an event and people are coming from all over the country and they want coupons. Which coupon do you give them? Because they’re not going to know who they’re giving something to, where they’re from if they have gift bags. So it’s just an example.

02-00:27:55 Geraci: Something to keep you on your toes.

02-00:27:56 McIntyre: Now, in working at that time, I noticed you had some input into a flavor.

02-00:28:02 Geraci: Yes, I did.

02-00:28:04 McIntyre: I’m very proud of that, actually.

02-00:28:04 Geraci: This is, what, in 1997? Yeah.

02-00:28:05 McIntyre: And this is associated with the foundation. I’m president of our foundation.

02-00:28:10 Geraci: When was the foundation created?

02-00:28:13 McIntyre: Originally when I started I mentioned that it was just kind of a donations program.

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02-00:28:16 Geraci: Right, donors, yeah.

02-00:28:16 McIntyre: So we had a little money and then we donated product. And then we officially formed the foundation in 1986. Eighty-six, yes. And one of my first jobs when I came to the company, besides answering consumers letters, was Gary and Rick wanted to sort of formalize the donations program into something a little—maybe not doing so many little things but maybe doing one big thing instead. So I looked at options for things that would fit for Dreyer’s that we could possibly do. One was a book mobile. There would be a Dreyer’s book mobile that would travel around. And then the other was a community bus. So I presented both ideas and they decided they liked the bus idea. So I contacted school districts and said, “We want to give you a bus.” Transportation had become an issue then for schools. We thought, “Who wouldn’t want a bus to help?” Nobody wanted to manage the bus, nobody wanted to worry about a bus driver and I couldn’t find any school districts that would take it. So we decided we’d do the bus on our own. So I talked to bus companies. I learned a lot about buses. Again, something new. And then there was this whole thing about if it’s going to pick up school kids then it has to have this SPAB certification. School pupil—school pupil something bus. I forget what the A stands for.

02-00:30:02 Geraci: Highway patrol, then special inspections.

02-00:30:04 McIntyre: Yes, yeah. Right. So anyway, we ended up buying a bus. I hired a driver and the driver did the scheduling and I promoted it. So we got the word out about it. It operated out of Union City and then our Union City mechanics worked on the bus. They had actually recommended what kind of engine would be comparable to our trucks and things like that. So once again we were all pitching in to work on a project. Actually, the bus started before we had officially formed the foundation. The bus started in late 1984 and we just discontinued the program last year.

02-00:30:56 Geraci: What exactly was the bus doing?

02-00:31:01 McIntyre: It would pick up any non-profits. So it did a lot of field trips, school field trips. But it would take boy scouts. We reserved it for a number of days for senior groups but as long as they were non-profit the bus was free of charge.

02-00:31:16 Geraci: For the community itself?

02-00:31:17 McIntyre: Yes, yeah. Yeah. People loved it. And I have pictures. There aren’t any in here. But had giant ice cream cones on the outside of it and then the brown

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and white stripes on the top of the bus and it was called the rocky road community bus. But we had to turn so many people down because it was just—it was free and schools were, even then, were having trouble with getting transportation. So it became very, very popular with teachers. And it lasted until just this last year, so 1984 to 2010.

02-00:32:02 Geraci: Twenty-six years.

02-00:32:04 McIntyre: Twenty-six years. And for a while we had three buses. We had one in Southern California. This one was the first one. One in Southern California and one in Maryland. And the budget to operate the bus was a lot and insurance was the biggest hurdle. Because we weren’t a bus company, so we didn’t get any efficiencies of scale. So we discontinued the one in Maryland after a little while and the one in Southern California and kept this one. We sold the bus basically to Black Tie Transportation and he operated it for us. It still was the Dreyer’s rocky road bus but he had those efficiencies of scale that we didn’t have. So that was a good relationship, too. It was like ten years that he did that.

02-00:32:58 Geraci: Oh, that’s good. That’s a good community. Anyway, we got started on, we were talking about, a flavor that you got to work on.

02-00:33:04 McIntyre: The flavor.

02-00:33:04 Geraci: You—

02-00:33:05 McIntyre: So through the foundation, one of our sales guys, Bob Wilson, wanted me to meet with the Girl Scouts. He set up a lunch. And his idea was that the girl scouts would sell Dreyer’s certificates while they’re going around selling cookies. So I said, “Okay, I’ll—”

02-00:33:26 Geraci: Ice cream and cookies go together.

02-00:33:27 McIntyre: I know. And that’s what his thinking was. So we met for lunch and immediately, once he threw that out on the table, you could tell they were a little concerned with the idea that the girls were selling—it’s one thing to sell their own cookies but to be selling something else that we—

02-00:33:46 Geraci: A corporate product.

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02-00:33:47 McIntyre: Right. They just were a little uneasy with the whole idea. But we’re sitting there talking and they’re talking about the thin mints and the woman says, “Thin mints are the third best selling cookie in the country.” And I said, “You mean like annually? These cookies that you only sell for how many, two months out of the year, sell—are the third best selling cookie of ones that are sold all year long?” And she said, “They are.” And I was like, “Really?” And so then I mentioned that we had—on occasion we had regional flavors. Because she was from here, around here, Oakland, the Oakland whatever their divisions are. And I said, “We have occasionally had some regional flavors and I wonder. That would be a fabulous flavor with the mint chip cookies in— are they thin mints? Thin mints—

02-00:34:50 Geraci: Thin mints.

02-00:34:50 McIntyre: —in our ice cream. So I came back and it just so happened that the guy who worked on flavor development, the marketing guy, was going to be doing a concept test where they go to consumers and say, “What do you think of this combination?” So he put it in as a concept idea and it came out on top. So we did it and it ended up being national, it wasn’t just regional, and we still have them today. They’ve expanded it beyond just the thin mints.

02-00:35:22 Geraci: They do.

02-00:35:23 McIntyre: I think we do S’mores and tag along or one other one.

02-00:35:27 Geraci: Do you buy the cookies then from the Girl Scouts then to—

02-00:35:33 McIntyre: Yes. Yeah.

02-00:35:33 Geraci: Oh, so that’s good for them as —

02-00:35:35 McIntyre: Oh, right. Yeah.

02-00:35:35 Geraci: —an organization. Oh, that’s cool.

02-00:35:39 McIntyre: Yeah. So anyway, I was very happy that worked out.

02-00:35:43 Geraci: So you’ve left Dreyer’s with your own flavor stamp.

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02-00:35:48 McIntyre: I know. And shortly after I was here, at our annual dinner—we used to call it something else but now it’s the ice cream ball—I got the special flavor award. And that was for when I was still doing consumer letters. My goal when I did consumer letters was to get a third letter back. So I get a letter, someone’s complaining. And I write back and I want that third letter that would come and say, “It was so nice to get a personalized letter. Thank you and whatever.” So my goal was always to see that there was that third thank you. So anyway, that’s—

02-00:36:34 Geraci: When we think about corporations today, we think about the whole idea—it’s the you dial it up and you have to push all the numbers to get to—and you never do talk to anyone.

02-00:36:43 McIntyre: No, I know.

02-00:36:46 Geraci: To get a response is really—

02-00:36:47 McIntyre: Right.

02-00:36:49 Geraci: That means a lot to people.

02-00:36:50 McIntyre: Yeah. So this guy, I can’t remember, he was from some major corporation and he had written in about don’t even remember what now. But anyway, he had written a letter back but it didn’t come to me, it went to Gary or Rick. So they gave me this award for my—because literally it was hard. I was working on the campaign and I still had all these letters to do. I sometimes would go home, get my kids, bring them back and they would sleep in the stinky room I was in.

02-00:37:20 Geraci: That’s right. The stinky room.

02-00:37:22 McIntyre: And they would bring their sleeping bags so I could keep caught up. I would work most every weekend for some time because it—when I wasn’t just doing consumer and I was doing the other things, there was just never enough time in the day.

02-00:37:39 Geraci: Do your kids today have great stories about the stinky room?

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02-00:37:42 McIntyre: Oh, yeah. And then one year, without thinking about it—because I ordered the Christmas gift. That was another employee thing. And I’d ordered these round Dreyer’s insulated like—what do you call them?

02-00:37:59 Geraci: Like a cooler?

02-00:38:00 McIntyre: Coolers, yeah. But they were big. They were like this tall, round, looked like a carton and they came in a box. It was about like this. So I asked if I could wrap them here and make extra money. If my kids helped me, we could do it. Well, I didn’t realize how many of these things there were. It was like two trailerfuls. We came for weekends in a row to like—that was another thing. So we wrapped them up in the manufacturing building upstairs in this dark, dusty area which is where—the only place there was room for all this.

02-00:39:41 Geraci: To store and all that, right.

02-00:38:43 McIntyre: We earned some extra money for Christmas. They never forgave me for that. They never forgave me.

02-00:38:53 Geraci: [laughter] But they got Christmas presents out of there, right?

02-00:38:56 McIntyre: [laughter] They did but there were so many things that they’ve had to do with me. When we do special events, I would drag them along with me to do those. Because we used to have a portable—we called it the kiosk and Ed Archer— you talk with Ed Archer?

02-00:39:17 Geraci: No, I haven’t.

02-00:39:17 McIntyre: Oh, is he on your list?

02-00:39:19 Geraci: Not now but we’re going to be adding some people to the list.

02-00:39:22 McIntyre: Okay. He should be on your list.

02-00:39:23 Geraci: Ed Archer, ask him.

02-00:39:24 McIntyre: Anyway, he’s the driver of the antique truck. And then he would haul this kiosk around on a trailer. So we were doing this event at some park and we

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would unload this kiosk. He had this thing where he’d jack it up off the trailer on one side and then he’d jack it up on the other side and he’d kind of do back and forth like that until he got it high enough to like drive the trailer out and then set this thing down. It wasn’t like a tent. It was this portable—

02-00:40:00 Geraci: Portable building and all.

02-00:40:03 McIntyre: —building that had water and all that. So he and I did so many events with that thing. But I was always sure it was going—it would be like this and—

02-00:40:11 Geraci: [laughter] Waiting for it to tip over, right?

02-00:40:15 McIntyre: Yes. [laughter] Anyway, we had quite some time but my kids always were with me for events like that. And then when Bob Johnson was marketing VP, he had these costumes built that were—they were round and they were characters and somebody had to wear one of these at one of the sales meetings. So I volunteered my son and he had to put on these leotards. To this day, I still get—

02-00:40:51 Geraci: “Mom, you scarred me for life,” right?

02-00:40:53 McIntyre: [laughter] So it was a family affair working at Dreyer’s more often than not but—

02-00:40:59 Geraci: But I hear that from a lot of the people we’ve interviewed. It was a family affair.

02-00:41:02 McIntyre: Oh, it was. The picnics we used to have were so much fun. Not just because I planned them but they were—we’d always have the ballgame to kick it off and that was always like—Union City used to come and then Oakland. It was combined. And so it was the Union City team against the Oakland team. Gary and Rick always played. In fact, there’s a picture. When Gary retired, some of us spoke and one time he was running around third base and he slid and he tore up the whole backside and so I ran and got the first aid kit and I’m coming back down the hill to the ball field and there’s a picture of me like putting salve on—and he’s holding—it’s not a good sight. It’s not a good sight.

02-00:41:53 Geraci: That’s a very good—

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02-00:41:56 McIntyre: [laughter] But that’s how family it was.

02-00:42:02 Geraci: Well, that sounds good, then. I like the family stories out of this, though, because that really does get to the point of just how much the work culture really was embedded. The Grooves are more than just a set of rules. The Grooves are a lifestyle.

02-00:42:21 McIntyre: Yeah. And I don’t think I’m much different than a lot of other people. But what kind of keeps me going—I mean, a paycheck’s nice but it’s not the paycheck. Yeah, at the time I could have used every dollar I was earning. But I like strokes. I like when people recognize what I do. I like when people say, “You did a great job.” And they would do that often when it was deserved. And they did a lot of the walking around. You thought nothing of going into their office to talk to them about something.

02-00:43:02 Geraci: Well, they took pride in their open-door policy.

02-00:43:04 McIntyre: Right, they did. But people never—you didn’t abuse it but you never felt like you were intruding either when you wanted to—

02-00:43:15 Geraci: When you have something—yeah.

02-00:43:15 McIntyre: —say hi. Yeah.

02-00:43:19 Geraci: And then next thing I see here is you wanted corporate approval to add an 800 number to all packaging.

02-00:43:27 McIntyre: Right. That was a big deal. Companies were going toward the if you needed to reach somebody, it was right there on the package of who to call. And we were still—

02-00:43:41 Geraci: That takes your letter writing up another level, doesn’t it?

02-00:43:43 McIntyre: Oh, yeah. Yeah. People would see our address and have to send in a—

02-00:43:49 Geraci: Right.

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02-00:43:50 McIntyre: So I recommended that we do this. And we knew it was going to increase the number of contacts we were going to get and we had to get with it because there was going to be email and email was just starting to really take off. Email, written and telephone. So I went out. I was no longer going to be able to—and there was already—there was an internal team. I wasn’t still doing letters.

02-00:44:18 Geraci: All of them.

02-00:44:19 McIntyre: But I managed. So I think we had a team of four or five that were here internally. But anyway, once we did the 800 number, then we needed a call center. So I looked into different call centers, identified one that we would work with, Telerex. It was on the East Coast. So we had to get everything, infrastructure all set up. So I was traveling. I’d leave on Monday morning and come back Thursday night and then come into the office on Friday for about nine weeks to get it set up. But they had to input all of our letters. Literally, for the first two months I had them send me a copy of every letter that went out so that I could make sure. Because the way they were set up is that things got inserted. Kind of like my Swiss cheese thing, only by a computer. And I wanted to make sure every letter was saying what it was supposed to say and that things were printing out right and all of that. A big pack would arrive of everything that had gone out for that week. And it was a huge—for reports, for quality control, we’re still using the same categories I set up and some of the same letters, although we revised them.

02-00:45:46 Geraci: This had to increase your contact with the consumer a hundredfold. It’s very easy to pick up the phone and call.

02-00:45:55 McIntyre: Oh, yeah.

02-00:45:57 Geraci: It takes a little bit more thought to write something.

02-00:45:59 McIntyre: Right, right. Yeah. So and emails even easier than a phone.

02-00:46:06 Geraci: Even easier. Right.

02-00:46:08 McIntyre: So the bigger portion of our contacts are email and then phone and now written. Written’s hardly anything anymore. But yeah. We had to predict how much so I could estimate cost and all of that. So I was taking a guess but actually we were pretty close. But that was a big step for them to even

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consider investing. Obviously it was going to start costing more and more every year because every year it’s going to get more products you have.

02-00:46:43 Geraci: Well, and also because the company is getting larger and larger and larger.

02-00:46:46 McIntyre: Right. And the more products you have, the more the numbers out there. But we’re still with the same company and I think we just celebrated ten, twelve year anniversary. I don’t manage the call center anymore but it’s pretty much the same still.

02-00:47:04 Geraci: She says it with a smile on her face. [laughter]

02-00:47:09 McIntyre: [laughter]

02-00:47:10 Geraci: I imagine that—

02-00:47:10 McIntyre: It was a good challenge at the time, though. It was a good project.

02-00:47:20 Geraci: And then I notice on here in 2008 the launching of the Häagen-Dazs Loves Honeybees.

02-00:47:27 McIntyre: Yes.

02-00:47:28 Geraci: Almost a Ben & Jerryesque type thing.

02-00:47:32 McIntyre: In fact, our agency actually suggested some like high-level themes that would be a theme for Häagen-Dazs for that year. And when we did see the bees, we wondered if it might be too Ben & Jerryish. And then the more we looked into it and we saw how it really—because Häagen-Dazs is all-natural. How it really reinforced that whole all natural positioning—Ben & Jerry’s isn’t all natural.

02-00:48:06 Geraci: Well, it hasn’t been since it was sold.

02-00:48:09 McIntyre: Right. So we decided it was in a space separate enough that it wouldn’t seem like a, “Me, too.” And honestly, it’s one of the projects I’ve enjoyed working on most.

02-00:48:24 Geraci: Now, I take it this is in response to hive collapse.

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02-00:48:26 McIntyre: Yes. CCD.

02-00:48:27 Geraci: Right.

02-00:48:29 McIntyre: And the fact that bees pollinate one-third of all the foods we eat.

02-00:48:36 Geraci: In particular with nuts, with the almonds. That’s all bee pollination. That’s a major issue for California, being the number one almond producer in the world.

02-00:48:45 McIntyre: I know. So the more we got to know about bees and the more we got to know about how vital they are for everything. But for 50 percent of our flavors— they pollinate the ingredients that 50 percent of our flavors use. So it was kind of a good link for us. And it’s been a project I’ve not—well, I’ve had a lot of projects I’ve enjoyed but this one seems the most—I don’t know. I’ve identified the most with this one because of the cause, I guess. Häagen-Dazs never has had a cause that it’s supported before. So it was something new and I’d like to think we made a big difference. We certainly made hay with it when we first kicked it off because we had estimated we’d get hopefully like equivalent to what they had gotten for doing the American Idol flavors with Dreyer’s. So we were saying 150 million impressions and we got that the first week that we kicked this off. So I think it was the uniqueness of a company, first of all. There were no other companies that had really adopted the cause. And we’d donated money to research. And we built a separate website and we were taking kind of everything we could of the icon that Häagen-Dazs is and trying to help the bees. So there was an advertising campaign and the PR campaign. It was amazing. It was just an amazing project.

02-00:50:31 Geraci: Let’s backtrack a little bit because this is actually happening—at this point Nestlé owns—

02-00:50:38 McIntyre: Yes.

02-00:50:38 Geraci: —the company. Let’s backtrack to those last years of Rick and Gary, as things are—there’s a big transition going on.

02-00:50:47 McIntyre: Yeah. Meaning we knew that that was going to be happening.

02-00:50:54 Geraci: I mean, everyone is in—

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02-00:50:55 McIntyre: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. For those of us that have been here a long time, there was just so many things that—like at Christmas. Like Rick in his—

02-00:51:07 Geraci: Dressing as Santa Claus.

02-00:51:09 McIntyre: But only with the top because the pants were too big or something. I don’t know why he didn’t wear the pants. But just thank god the top was long enough. And just the fun, the fun of it all. And we worked hard. It’s not like it was just fun. It was everybody was working their asses off.

02-00:51:30 Geraci: Work can be fun.

02-00:51:32 McIntyre: Yes.

02-00:51:33 Geraci: That’s not a concept that’s not—that natural to many, many people.

02-00:51:37 McIntyre: I know.

02-00:51:37 Geraci: That work is fun. Going to work can be enjoyable.

02-00:51:42 McIntyre: Right. Yes. It’s true. You had talked earlier about the kind of people that they hired. I think everyone wrestled with kind of a work balance kind of thing that some of us aren’t inclined to do very good at that. Could I have spent more time with my boys because I was single and raising them on my own? Yes, but then they came with me to a lot of things and they were part of Dreyer’s. Not as much as I but it was part of them. But I don’t think in the end that was a bad thing. They got a lot of work from us but you’re right. It was fun at the same time and it was fulfilling and I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else. I wouldn’t have.

02-00:52:45 Geraci: Part of that is by the early 1990s, the Grooves is being formalized. It’s an idea that Rick and Gary have always—ideas that they’ve always used.

02-00:52:54 McIntyre: Exactly.

02-00:52:55 Geraci: Just formalized.

02-00:52:56 McIntyre: Right.

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02-00:52:57 Geraci: And formalized in particular because you’ve grown beyond the Oakland office. When it was just Oakland, it didn’t have to be rules. Once it grew beyond Oakland, there had to be something to hold the whole country—

02-00:53:09 McIntyre: Well, they never wanted it called rules or policies. The fact—

02-00:53:11 Geraci: Right. No policy book.

02-00:53:12 McIntyre: We didn’t even have a human resources group.

02-00:53:18 Geraci: Right. And so I can see the Grooves is part of that. It is a way to conduct yourself as a person. It’s a business model but it’s also a personal model.

02-00:53:29 McIntyre: But you’re right. You almost didn’t need the model because that’s the way everybody just was.

02-00:53:39 Geraci: Is that because of hire smart?

02-00:53:40 McIntyre: I think that’s—

02-00:53:40 Geraci: —as part of the model?

02-00:53:41 McIntyre: Right. Honestly, if anybody ever slipped through the interview process—I saw it happen a million times. Not a million but I saw it happen enough. But if anyone interviewed well and kind of thought, “Eh, I saw it written there but I’m not—it’s not going to need to work for me or apply to me,” they don’t last long. They don’t like it here because everyone else is so different here from them.

02-00:54:07 Geraci: I've heard the term used they self-select themselves out.

02-00:54:12 McIntyre: They do. I’ve seen it so many times over.

02-00:54:17 Geraci: It’s not a place that you go, “And I’m going to do my work and go home.”

02-00:54:19 McIntyre: Oh, no. You take it home with you. Literally. Because when I was in charge of consumer relations, there were calls that were urgent and a consumer wanted to talk to you, they called me at home. The answering service would.

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And I know the guys out in the field. They’re never off duty. But you didn’t mind. It was just doing your job.

02-00:54:52 Geraci: Jo telling me the story about when she goes—would go grocery shopping and she’s rotating cartons in the freezer.

02-00:55:00 McIntyre: Oh, yeah. And we all still do that, even now that we’re Nestlé owned. But yeah. Whenever I go to the store. And for a while we all had cards that would identify ourselves in case we needed to go in the back for something. But even over the holidays, when we know we’re going to have out of stocks, we all go—like I was up at 5:00 am, I think it was Labor Day or whenever, a recent holiday, and stocked stores for five hours. But that’s just always the way it’s been. But just pitch in.

02-00:55:40 Geraci: Pitch in. Now, with Gary and with Rick—there’s at least a time lapse between their transition. Rick leaving first and then Gary a few years later. It’s a new company. It’s a new time. You’re still here.

02-00:56:00 McIntyre: Yeah. There aren’t many of us. There aren’t many of us.

02-00:56:02 Geraci: That’s what I mean. I think the greater proportion of the people left.

02-00:56:08 McIntyre: Right.

02-00:56:08 Geraci: In fact, there were two waves. The wave that goes when Rick leaves and then the final wave, which is kind of the circle concentric to Gary.

02-00:56:17 McIntyre: Right. Yeah. And even since. Even since then. Well, Nestlé let some go. But many of the what we call long-termers—

02-00:56:34 Geraci: Long-termers. I like it.

02-00:56:36 McIntyre: We look at each other and we kind of smile because there’s probably in this building three left of long-timers. There were people that were here when Gary and Rick were here but I’m talking about people that have been here close to thirty years. And one of those is leaving shortly, I know, because that position got eliminated. So it’s a small little family still. [laughter]

02-00:57:10 Geraci: As you look back on it now, as you said thirty years, how do you summarize? You’ve put a good portion of your life into this company.

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02-00:57:25 McIntyre: Yeah. Actually, when you asked for the résumé and it was like I don’t even have a current résumé and I had to kind of start thinking back on everything.

02-00:57:31 Geraci: That’s just something in itself, that you didn’t even have a current résumé, which means you had no—

02-00:57:39 McIntyre: No. It’s been my life. Literally, on my résumé I didn’t even put my previous employment just because it was so long ago and it was nothing compared to this. I was a secretary. And to know that they believed in me enough to give me the chances that they gave me. And it’s not like they handed it to me. I worked hard for it. But it wouldn’t happen everywhere. They were just so generous. I don’t have words for what it’s been. The other day—

02-00:58:26 Geraci: Obviously it’s been good.

02-00:58:29 McIntyre: It’s been wonderful. The other day I was driving. Because my son, to this day, says, “Mom, how can you have worked somewhere for thirty years?” Because kids these days just don’t.

02-00:58:40 Geraci: Yeah. They’re much more mobile.

02-00:58:42 McIntyre: And I was driving. I got off the freeway and I was driving on that little road we take to get off of 24. And I was thinking, “I have been driving this road, this exact same road, for thirty years.” And it’s amazing. It doesn’t even seem like it. And I wouldn’t give up a day. I wouldn’t give up a day. And I know I’m crying and it seems like can she really be happy here but—

02-00:59:11 Geraci: Oh, there’s good tears. There’s happy tears. It’s okay.

02-00:59:15 McIntyre: But I miss the way it was because it’s very different now. And they have to because it’s a big corporation. But there’s no feeling. I feel like somebody could say, “You’re out of here tomorrow,” really.

02-00:59:42 Geraci: It’s a business now.

02-00:59:43 McIntyre: It’s a business and they’re in it for productivity and that’s what makes their decisions for them. And that’s not the way it was. And yeah, we still made money. We just have been worth something for Nestlé—But the decision- making is very different.

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02-01:00:12 Geraci: Good.

02-01:00:13 McIntyre: Yeah. They’ll watch me cry through the whole thing. I knew I [would]—

02-01:00:15 Geraci: Thank you very much.

02-01:00:18 McIntyre: I knew I would do that. Thank you.

02-01:00:20 Geraci: Oh, that’s perfect. That is perfect.

[End of Interview]

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