The scent of sugar swirls through the streets of Ogden like a spell, drawing passersby to the corner of 21st Street and Grant Avenue – to the brick building topped with a towering neon sign that declares “Farr Better Ice Cream.” On a recent weekday afternoon, a seemingly endless stream of people, old and young, clamored into Farr’s ice cream parlor for a peek into glass cases filled with colorful tubs, gazing with sparkling eyes as if into a treasure chest.

The scene has changed little since the parlor opened nearly a century ago. Farr’s has been in business for even longer, celebrating its centennial year in 2020. Today, the company’s ice cream is found in supermarkets and ice cream shops across the Mountain West.

Farr’s is the only family-owned ice cream company left in Utah; President Mike Farr is the fourth generation of his family to work at Farr Better Ice Cream. It’s a good line of business to be in, he said as he surveyed the gleeful customers filling his ice cream parlor. The scene conjured memories of a conversation he had with his father about the family business as a teenager.

“My father once said to me, ‘The best thing about working where I do and doing what I do is that people like me.  They don’t want to go to the dentist. But they like to see the ice cream man.’ ”

Utahns’ fondness for ice cream certainly didn’t hurt the business, but it took more than that to survive 100 years and counting. Their formula for success has as much to do with family cooperation, resilience and consistency as it does with serving indisputably excellent ice cream.

Mike’s grandfather Dexter Farr gets the credit for Farr Better Ice Cream’s catchy name. He had heard customers comparing his ice cream with other companies’ offerings, and saying, “Farr’s is better.” Grandpa Dexter tweaked that expression to the punny “Farr Better Ice Cream” and filed a trademark.

Before they started making ice cream, the Farr family specialized in plain-old ice, with Asael Farr and his brothers establishing Farr Ice Co. in 1891. The business strategically evolved from natural ice harvesting to ice cream manufacturing and retailing in 1929, when they were able to expand their existing red brick factory into a combination manufacturing plant and ice cream parlor.

Farr’s continued to manufacture its ice cream in the original Ogden building until 2000, when the company purchased Russell’s Ice Cream and its factory in Salt Lake City. The original Ogden parlor is still going strong, and with the departure of production equipment from the building, it had the opportunity to expand.

This parlor, which opened at the dawn of Farr Better back in 1929, is a delightful blast from the past, having undergone few decor changes over the past half century. Stepping into the scoop shop, visitors are transported back to the 1950s, with retro diner-style tables and chairs, doo-wop music smiling through the speakers, and a stylish bar area reminiscent of the soda fountains that were all the rage in their heyday more than 65 years ago.

Unlike most existing establishments of its kind, it’s no replica. Unapologetically nostalgic, the old-school parlor is a living antique, teeming with history, spunk and a persisting legacy of friendly faces serving high quality ice cream to folks from all walks of life.

Mike said that some particularly enthusiastic ice cream fanatics travel across the country to their Ogden flagship store, just for a taste of their almost 700 flavors. Of course, they can’t taste them all in one visit, but always having something new to try is a big part of what keeps local patrons coming back.

The parlor tries to keep about 70 flavors in stock at any given time. There are certain standards that are always available, along with rarer varieties like Hula Pie, Brownies on the Moon and Black Licorice.

The parlor served only vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream when it first opened. Farr’s astronomical number of flavors have been added, bit by bit, over the course of decades.

As Farr’s gained popularity, providing moments of much needed joy to the community in the midst of the Great Depression, Dexter Farr knew he had to hire some help. He turned to Von Allred, a longtime fishing buddy and dairy scientist, who recruited his wife, Lola, to assist him in developing hundreds of new flavors.

Many of those flavors are still used today, though many of Farr’s modern recipes are developed by Mike himself, with the help of collaborators Lynn Russell, whose ice cream business the Farr family purchased back in 2000, and Rex Infanger, a prominent dairy food scientist. The three have each been making ice cream for decades and are a sort of dream team when it comes to cooking up fresh ideas.

When creating a new ice cream flavor, the visual component is just as important as the taste. The first question Mike always asks is: What’s going to be an appetizing color?

“In ice cream, color is everything,” he said. “When people go to an ice cream shop, they’re shopping colors.”

Getting flavors shop-ready isn’t always easy, though. One of Farr Better’s most popular flavors, Play Dough, nearly identically mimics the classic children’s modeling compound, but Mike says getting the shade of blue just right was a nightmare.

“We probably made 40 to 60 versions of it before we finally perfected the color,” he said. “Each flavor kind of has its own challenge.”

Once the color meets Farr Better standards, the company brings in a focus group to taste test the new flavor. There are some careers that seem too outlandishly pleasurable to be real: professional binge watcher, fortune cookie writer, video game tester. Ice cream taster might epitomize this category, and if you’re lucky enough to know Mike Farr, you might just get to try a dream job on for size.

Mike aims to get representation from a cross-section of ice cream eaters – “men, women, boys and girls. Older and younger – all sorts.”

First, they get a general opinion on the new flavor in question, before bringing in both popular and in-progress flavors for comparison. Sometimes, they’ll ask testers to blindly guess the flavors they’re tasting, in case they aren’t coming through as strongly or clearly as they need to be.

It can be a long process, Mike said.

“Once in a while, you hit the ball out of the park, and it’s done, and you say, ‘Wow, that’s great,’ ” he said. “Other times, you work with it. We have a new flavor, Brigham City Peach Cobbler – we must have worked on that thing for a year and half, maybe two years, to get it right.”

But when it’s right, it’s right. Some of their best-selling flavors nowadays are cookie dough, chocolate peanut butter and mint chocolate chip, the latter of which Mike is particularly fond of.

“Our mint chocolate chip is the best mint chocolate chip I’ve ever had anywhere in the country, or in Europe for that matter,” he said.

The reason his mint chocolate chip is so good, he said, is that Farr’s is the only manufacturer in the country that still uses genuine mint oil in the ice cream.

Mike doesn’t remember a time without ice cream – even growing up, his family home had an “ice cream cabinet” filled with as many as 12 different flavors of their trademark treat. His friends oohed and aahed at his privilege, and he was hailed as a hero when he’d bring ice cream to share with school classmates for special occasions. He didn’t even realize at the time how unique his life was, as he’d never known anything different.

Mike began working for his father at age 12, mowing the property’s grass and spraying down the parlor parking lot, but he never intended to commit to the family business as an adult. After graduating high school, he spent two years in Denmark and thought about coming home and becoming an attorney. But that was not to be.

“While I was in Denmark, I couldn’t get away from it,” he said. “I guess it’s in my blood. I’d meet people from the States or from Utah, they’d hear my last name and say, ‘Oh, like the ice cream!’ It kept coming back.”

Born and raised in the confectionery industry, Mike has witnessed drastic changes in both the company and the world of ice cream at large. What’s striking about the evolution of Farr’s is what an instrumental role the advent of grocery store refrigeration had on the success of its products. Though it may seem a given in the modern world, the frozen food section was once a luxurious novelty, with the invention of frozen vegetables launching an entirely new realm of consumer opportunity.

Farr’s was the first ice cream available in a Utah grocery store, Mike said. Employees would scoop ice cream into little cartons, put them in an insulated box and drive it to the Ogden train station to ship it on a passenger train.

“Dan Gardiner, who owned a chain of grocery stores in Salt Lake called Dan’s Market, would rush down, pick up the ice cream at the train station, and hope he could get it in his stores before it melted,” Mike said.

Farr Better Ice Cream products can now be found in thousands of grocery stores, convenience stores and restaurants across 17 U.S. states. They’re a household name in Utah – if a shop is selling ice cream in the state, customers are likely to come face to face with Farr.

Though the Farr Better logo has maintained its iconic recognizability, Mike notes packaging has seen big changes over the years. He remembers being 10 years old and his father coming home with a startling new idea: He was going to put ice cream in a clear, plastic 5-quart bucket with a lid and a plastic handle.

“It was crazy,” Mike said. “My mom laughed at it. Everything was in a square cardboard box – all ice cream, all brands, everywhere. Dad said, ‘This is the new thing. People want to see the ice cream; this is what we’re going to do.’ That was a weird deal, but it took off.”

Farr’s has never been afraid to pave a new way, and the company’s pioneering, optimistic mentality has certainly proved advantageous. That’s not to say it’s been smooth sailing since day one.

In 2003, a late-night ammonia leak in the Salt Lake City cold storage warehouse spoiled millions of dollars’ worth of inventory – a devastating loss. It was a freak accident with disastrous consequences, and when the insurance company denied their claim, Farr’s began a years-long legal battle that ultimately culminated in defeat. Many assumed Farr Better would not recover from the incident, but it was going to take more than that to take down the ice cream giant.

When asked how they were able to crawl out of such a deep hole, Mike cites his family’s willingness to roll up their sleeves for the wellbeing of the business, exchanging suits for smocks and getting their hands dirty in the factory.

“That’s where the great blessing comes in being a family business. You see out there?” he said, pointing to the Farr Better Ice Cream sign on the roof. “That’s my family’s name on the building. We found a way. I’m sure the average business never could have done it, but when your name is on the building, you find a way.”

While it’s clear Farr Better has seen a whirlwind of changes, challenges, and advancements over its century-long stint, there are two things that have remained constant: quality, and the ubiquitous delight provided by such a timeless treat.

“I have no idea what it is about ice cream that makes it special,” he said. “I remember standing out here in the store, and a car pulled up, and the kids jumped out and were jumping up and down saying, ‘We’re going to get ice cream!’ And then out steps the grandmother, and she’s jumping up and down, too.”

Ice cream transcends the barriers built between people. It represents a small moment of joy. Ice cream is more than a dessert – it’s an experience. And when it comes to experience, some might say that Farr’s is Farr Better.