You don’t know custard until you’ve tasted Kopp’s, a Milwaukee-area tradition.
By Anna Miller
Buddy Reinhart, of Milwaukee, Wis., can’t go out to lunch, pick up his dry cleaning or go to the doctor without being stopped. That is, if he’s still wearing his distinctive white uniform from his job as the general manager of Kopp’s, a family-owned custard joint with three locations in the Milwaukee area.
“I could go anyplace — the dentist, the hospital — and if I got my whites on, people will say, ‘You work at Kopp’s?’” says Reinhart, who’s worked at the greasy spoon for 47 years. “Everybody knows Kopp’s and it makes you proud when people say, ‘Oh that’s my favorite place.’”
And for many in the area and elsewhere, it is.
Meggie Wagner, a 25-year-old Milwaukee-area native, for example, says Kopp’s was the first place she drove to when she got her driver’s license at age 16. “As a kid, I went every couple weeks,” says Wagner, whose favorite flavor is grasshopper fudge. “You can always count on [my mom] to have a carton or two of the custard in the freezer at home.”
Bob Faw, a retired TV reporter in Chevy, Chase, Md., says a tub of Kopp’s custard is the first thing he looks for in the freezer when he visits relatives in the area every few years. “The custard there is worth the trip to Milwaukee,” he says. “Nothing back here even comes close.”
The restaurant, which has been in operation since 1950, is known for its bow-tied staff, its buttery burgers and of course, its custard. And while Kopp’s has maintained its familial feel and emphasis on quality over time, Reinhart says that the Glendale-based store that was once an “itty bitty” shop in downtown Milwaukee now dishes out more custard than any other individual store in the state.
‘Every year is better’
Kopp’s began in 1950 when Elsa Kopp, a German immigrant and mother of three, launched the store under the guidance of Leon Schneider, who owned a custard store across town and sold Kopp custard machines. “She worked morning ‘til midnight, every day, seven days a week,” says Reinhart. When her three children came home from school, they would help her too. One of those children, Karl, is the owner of Kopp’s today.
Over the years, the store has relocated and multiplied. It’s lived in various parts of the city and some of its outposts have been sold and resold. Others have closed. But today, three locations — Glendale, Brookfield and Greenfield, all suburbs of Milwaukee — stand strong under the Kopp family name.
Reinhart estimates the store today brings in millions of dollars, employs about 60 people and serves about 2,000 customers a day. “It’s grown leaps and bounds” since he first started working there in the 1960s, he says. “Every year is better and better.”
They’ve even started shipping custard overnight to customers who crave it in other parts of the country. “It’s not really a money maker,” Reinhart says, but it’s a nice gift for people like Faw, who got a shipment on his birthday, and Reinhart’s son, who lives in Arizona.
A secret recipe
Reinhart won’t tell you how the custard is made. “I can’t give ingredients because we have our own recipe,” he says. “If people could get it, then they wouldn’t pay us for it.” But he will tell you that the store gets its plain vanilla mix from a company in Appleton, Wis., and that the additional fixings and flavors are always of the highest quality. If the intended taste is lemon, for example, Kopp will have lemon extract shipped from Palermo, Italy, says Reinhart.
“Mr. Kopp never wanted anything cheap — he wanted the best,” says Reinhart. “He’s always said ‘give [the customers] a lot of stuff, and give them quality stuff.’ That’s the philosophy.”
Reinhart, who ironically doesn’t have a sweet tooth himself, says the richest flavor is turtle sundae. His wife’s favorite is caramel cashew. And his son? “That guy will eat anything,” he says.
Kopp’s used to just serve the classics,vanilla and chocolate. But today, it rotates through hundreds of flavors, offering two additional varieties each day. The creations are mostly dreamed up by Kopp and mixed in house, where plain vanilla mix is churned into creamy concoctions such as “maple syrup and pancakes,” “German apple streusel” and “midnight chocolate cake.” The method is one of trial and error: There’s no lab, no consultants, no market research. Just instinct.
“People don’t believe it because we’re so old fashioned,” says Reinhart.
But however the custard is made, and whatever it’s made with, it’s working. Faw, whose favorite Kopp’s flavor is eggnog, says he puts nuts, berries and sauces on the ice cream he buys at the grocery store. But Kopp’s custard doesn’t need toppings. “You don’t touch that stuff,” he says. “I’d put [Kopp’s] next to sex and skiing — it’s that good.”