The Ozark Empire Fair wouldn’t be the same without Lulu.
Pineapple Whip Inc.’s hula girl mascot traces her roots to the fair in the mid-1970s, when Dan Fortner sold his first pineapple-flavored frozen treat.
Lulu is back for another 10 days at the Greene County Fairgrounds through Aug. 2.
“People expect us to be there,” says co-owner Mike Fortner, one of Dan’s two sons now running the business.
While the fair isn’t terribly lucrative for the Pineapple Whip operators, Mike and Chris Fortner have kept the tradition alive, and this year, it’s with a twist.
Already known for mixing three additional flavors mango peach, strawberry kiwi and grape the Fortners are attempting a Pineapple Whip float, dubbed The Blue Lagoon, for the 2014 Ozark Empire Fair.
Mike Fortner expects to serve 5,000 whips this year at the fair.
“That’s a lot of Dole pineapple juice,” he says, keeping the other ingredients, except for sugar, close to his vest.
With three stands operating April through mid-September, plus occasional traveling jobs, the company last year served roughly 81,600 single servings at $2.50 apiece and another 12,750 to-go pints at $4 apiece. Pineapple Whip’s 2013 revenue came in at $255,000, and Fortner says the company is on pace for $300,000 in sales this year.
The season started with a bang. On opening day, the wait for whips approached 30 minutes, he says, and April sales finished 70 percent above the opening month last year.
“It’s kind of a rite of passage into summer,” Fortner says, noting the record activity was aided by social media buzz. “We’ve really tapped into a demographic of college and high school students.”
Grass skirts While the family mixed up the first batch decades ago, Lulu’s been shaking her grass skirt atop the Pineapple Whip stands for about 27 seasons.
Growing up in the A&W drive-in restaurant business with their dad, it was a natural extension for the Fortner brothers to help organize the Pineapple Whip brand in 1987.
“We started hearing people say they wished they had access to Pineapple Whip more than just 10 days a year,” Mike Fortner says. “We knew it was probably a seasonal product, so we came up with the idea of putting it in concession trailers.”
They built four trailers to start, and after the first year rolling them out, Dan Fortner gave some fatherly advice: “He said, ‘I think you need something to get people’s attention.’ He came up with the hula girl,” Mike Fortner says. “He actually engineered her and we’ve built four or five of them since then.”
What about that famous grass skirt? It’s made of Weed eater string. During the dressing process, roughly 7,500 feet of string is uncoiled and pulled tight by tractor for two weeks at the family’s farm before getting cut to length.
Today, Lulu is known to photo-bomb selfies customers post to Twitter and Facebook.
This summer, Springfield-based O’Reilly Automotive Inc. (Nasdaq: ORLY) invited Lulu and her pineapple treats to the company’s employee picnic.
“That’s just an icon here in Springfield,” says Mary Fox, O’Reilly’s distribution administrative services manager and one of three people on the picnic organizing committee. “So many people around here identify that with summer fun.”
Last year, O’Reilly moved the picnic to Jordan Valley Park from the fairgrounds, and roughly 2,300 team members returned to the center city park July 12. Pineapple Whip staff members served up about 1,600 whips as O’Reilly employees splashed in the fountains, skated inside Mediacom Ice Park and later took in a Springfield Cardinals game.
“It was a scorching, hot day. At any given time, I looked over and the lines were halfway down the water trail,” Fox says. “Of all the things we did this year, that was the biggest hit.”
Fortner says the company hauls the trailers to a handful of corporate events and annual shows each year. Days before setting up at the Greene County fairgrounds, the Fortners were in Pittsburg, Kan., serving roughly 2,400 whips at the July 18–20 Four State Farm Show.
Pineapple Whip charges about $500 for the on-site service, plus the cost of product. Fortner says product also was served at events for Digital Monitoring Products and Citizens Memorial Healthcare, as well as a couple weddings this year. O’Reilly plans to bring back the whip for next year’s staff picnic.
Whip around the South At the stationary locations, Fortner says the company typically pays $400 a month, plus utilities.
While the business model is simple, he says securing trailer sites can be tricky. The company had to exit a popular South National Avenue spot after CVS began building a pharmacy adjacent to the Price Cutter lot off Republic Road. He also had been scouting the Vatterott College lot on South Campbell Avenue and Primrose Street but ran into a zoning issue.
“Maybe we can get that spot next year,” Fortner says.
Outside of Springfield, Pineapple Whip has sold licenses in Arkansas and North Carolina, but its greatest expansion potential rests in the rights sold to Brett Overman, CEO of National Disaster Solutions Inc., who is branding the concept in south Florida as Island Whip.
“He wants to expand across the south, where there’s a longer season. He’s talking about Louisiana and Texas,” Fortner says, noting the founders structured the deal to receive a set amount per location upfront, annual royalties in the 5 percent range and a five-year consulting contract.
“We’ll get a share of whatever he creates. He can go anywhere he wants to go.”
Operating costs are usually fixed, but this year the Fortners invested in new equipment, the Italian-made soft-serve machines. Pineapple Whip bought two Carpigiani machines at $20,500 apiece.
“We’ve tried American machines, and they just don’t make our product like we like to see it, fluffy and soft,” Mike Fortner says.
The company has been profitable for years, he says, but the last three seasons have really charged profits. Even as sales start to wane in July, Fortner expects profits to remain double from where they were a few years ago.
“People maybe have had enough. We’re still profitable through the rest of summer, but our big bang is the first few months,” he says. “When it gets cool in the fall, not so much. Usually by mid-September, we’ve had enough ourselves and we’re ready to goof off a bit.”[[In-content Ad]]
With its third time appearing on the Dynamic Dozen list – Springfield Business Journal’s countdown of the fastest-growing companies in our community – Keep Supply took home the top honor.
