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About Genre Action Rating Rated 'E' for Mild Cartoon Violence, Includes online features that may expose players to unrated user-generated content Summary You are Joe Danger, the world's most determined stuntman. You live to thrill the crowd and break World Records. Take on your friends or race against your rivals – the reckless Team Nasty. You laugh in the face of danger, and it laughs back, as you bounce from boulder to boulder, on fire, towards that pile of mousetraps. Freeze the game at any point and edit your level however you want it.
Once you are finished, share the joy.
Joe K. Anderson admits to being a green mint chocolate chip man. But son Tom Anderson leans more toward butter pecan.
While the St. Charles father and son may not agree on a favorite flavor, when it comes to naming their brand, it's no contest. Colonial Ice Cream wins-spoons down.
The Andersons' loyalty to Colonial Ice Cream is easy to understand. The company, and a turn-of-the-century dairy before that, have been the Anderson family's bread-and-butter (make that milk and ice cream) for more than 91 years now.
Today, from its St. Charles headquarters, Colonial Ice Cream Inc. operates a wholesale ice-cream business and seven restaurants along the Fox River Valley, from Aurora and Naperville on the south end up to Elgin and Crystal Lake on the north. There are two St. Charles locations and one in Geneva.
Tom is Colonial's president, and represents the third generation of the family-run company. Joe K. is chairman of the board. Together they oversee 350 employees.
Colonial's sales exceeded $8 million in 1992, an enormous leap from the $100 grandfather Simon Anderson scraped together to buy a horse-and-wagon dairy in 1901.
How the family has kept the business strong in an era of corporate buyouts and a fickle restaurant-going public is a lesson in change. How the family has lent a hand to better their community over the years is a lesson in civic responsibility.
Sengoku 3 snk. According to Tom, the spirit that has carried the company may best be captured by a symbol that does not appear on Colonial ice cream cartons, restaurant menus nor even on the company's logo. But it's hard to miss on Joe's office wall.
'It's a coyote, the survivor,' Tom tells a visitor, as he points to a framed print depicting the wild creature. Alert to danger and aware of the slightest movements of the pack, the coyote's instincts have indeed equipped the species for survival.
'That's how my dad sees himself. He's a survivor,' said Tom. And no doubt Joe has witnessed and contributed to the greatest changes in the business, spanning the generations of his own father, Simon, and now his son Tom.
Born and raised in St. Charles, Joe is the kind of man whose voice arrives in the room well before he does. He's gregarious-and tall, 6 feet 6 inches from the top of his trim, gray crew cut to his shoes.
Stewart Nichol is a retired marketing manager who for the last three years has worked part time at Colonial, helping run the ice cream side of the business. A St. Charles native and former neighbor of the Andersons, Nichol recalls being a school boy in the late 1930s when Joe would deliver milk to the children at the old Evan Shelby School. 'Everybody could hear him come in. The milk was in little glass bottles carried in metal containers, and they would be clinking and Joe would be saying hello to everybody,' Nichol said.
Joe took over Colonial in his mid-20s.
'I was thrust into it as a young man,' said Joe, now a 74-year-old grandfather who spends half the year in Florida. 'I wouldn't say I was reckless, but I had no fear of something failing because you didn't know the word failure at 30 years of age.'
Hardly sounding like he regrets many youthful decisions, Joe explained his business philosophy: 'Too conservative and you'd never get anything done. Like Shakespeare said, `If you don't take it at the high tide, you'll wallow around in the shallows the rest of your life.' So I've high-tided it.'
On the other hand, Tom, 50, seems to follow a more practical, cautious path. Like his dad, Tom is outgoing, but the younger Anderson appears more reserved. On chilly days, he wears a conservative trenchcoat and hat (with a Colonial calling card conveniently tucked inside.).
When asked about the hat, he remarks sensibly that without a hat, people lose a lot of body heat.
Tom's comments about business show a more conservative bent as well. 'When you're in a battle for position, you do not want to be the first people over the hill,' said Tom, whose primary responsibility has been the restaurant end of Colonial, while Joe has tended the wholesale division.
'You want to get something that is different but not revolutionary,' Tom said.
That the management styles of father and son complement each other is certainly a contributing factor to Colonial's success.
'Tom's as good a manager as I've ever known,' according to Nichol. 'But Joe trained him for 25 years.'
Ski across snowy slopes, and avoid trees and wooden posts on the course. Explore the vast regions of outer space, and jump across rotating platforms to avoid falling into nothingness. Running fred game. Whether you run for fun or survival, your adrenaline will be pumping!Arcade running games bring you to familiar worlds where you must cross streets and logs without getting hit. You can replay any track to try to earn a faster time. You can pick up items and coins for points, and execute flips and combos for bonus rewards.
(Tom's brother Charles, 47, has also recently joined the firm as office manager after 20 years in the office machine support service business.)
For proof of Colonial's success, Nichol suggests looking in the Chicago phone book.
'You won't find many 100-year-old companies, especially with the same management.'
Nichol may be right. At 91, Colonial Ice Cream Inc. has had a colorful history. Simon Anderson was 12-years old when his father, Olaf, died. Anna, Simon's mother, did her best to support six children, taking in laundry and selling milk to neighbors.
When Simon was old enough, he delivered milk from the Anderson's farm on the Fox River to his mother's customers. Then in 1901, Simon bought the small Atkins and Nichol Dairy, and founded the Anderson Dairy Company. In horse-drawn milk carts, drivers rattled around the Fox Valley delivering Anderson's milk.
The company first dipped into the ice cream business in 1917, the year before Joe was born, when Simon purchased a local ice cream factory. For cooling and curing purposes, ice was harvested from the Fox River annually.
Expansion came in the mid-1930s, when the company rented vacant stores strictly for the summer season at $50 per month. From these locations, including Downers Grove, Dundee, Elgin, Elmhurst and Westmont, Colonial tried its hand at selling milk and ice cream treats.
Difficult challenges hit the company beginning in 1939, when Simon died of a brain tumor. Eldest son Paul Anderson took the reins. World War II brought sugar rationing and presented Colonial with a hardship exceeded only by the death of Paul.
The summer shops were stopped, but after nine months of military service, the local draft board called Joe home from the war to take over the leaderless business. His brother Warren ran the mechanical operations.
As with the rest of the nation, things in the post-war years began looking up. In 1945, the dairy was sold so the company could concentrate on ice cream production. But within a few years, Joe was ready to pursue a new direction. Colonial needed a steady, year-round outlet to sell ice cream, particularly in the cooler months when sales dropped.
'Dad saw through the years that to sell ice cream we had to go to a convenience store operation or the other way was to run a sandwich shop with ice cream,' said Tom.
So Colonial opened The Snappy Shack on West Main Street in St. Charles in 1957, selling hamburgers for 15 cents each or seven for $1. And, of course, this, the company's first restaurant, sold ice cream as well.
A 1963 fire at the ice cream plant destroyed the production line and could have devastated Colonial. But Joe recalls at the time telling his wife, Merle, 'It's okay to shed some tears for the public, but don't have a heart attack. It could be the best thing that ever happened to Colonial.'
Once the business found an outside packer to produce ice cream to Colonial's formula, Colonial ceased ice cream production. Since then, there has been no looking back. While Colonial still sells wholesale to grocers and other customers, today the ice cream is made in Rockford.
That burden lifted, the company turned more heavily into food service.
'My dad got us in the restaurant business. Then I became the restaurant manager/partner,' said Tom, who finished his business degree at Augustana College in Rock Island and joined Colonial's corporate office in 1964. 'Now (the restaurant end) has evolved into 80 percent of what we do.'
The five Colonial Cafe restaurants are full service, and the two establishments in downtown St. Charles and Geneva remain primarily ice cream shops.
It's no wonder that generations of Fox Valley residents have come to know the Colonial name through the years.
How many sweethearts have shared a Colonial ice cream soda? How many birthday parties and Little League championships have been celebrated over dishes of Colonial ice cream?
How many have dared to tackle the Kitchen Sink? As the name implies, the super sundae has just about everything in it: two whole bananas, six scoops of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream, three toppings, whipped cream, nuts and a cherry. And it's appropriately served in a stainless steel sink fixture.
'Every kid dreams about having a mountain of ice cream with all the toppings,' said St. Charles Mayor Fred Norris.
In fact, Norris recalls one of his first teenage jobs as being a member of the Colonial crew.
'Joe always told the new kids, `Make anything you want,' ' said Norris, laughing. 'We'd go up there and make these concoctions with every kind of topping. We'd gorge ourselves on it. But that would be the only time you'd ever do it.'
That little bit of psychology worked out well. Yet Joe does recall some detractors from his early days as president.
'They thought Joe Anderson was crazy. They agreed that I'd either go broke or be a millionaire,' he said with a degree of satisfaction. 'I didn't go broke, so that's okay.'
(Joe also made a tidy sum by subdividing for residential development some of the 400 acres of farmland he owned west of St. Charles.)
According to Joe, Colonial's success has always rested with the company's ability to change.
'We have never hesitated to try an idea that might work, and a lot of them didn't. (He cites the failed Colonial smorgasbord restaurants in De Kalb and Elgin in the late '50s as an example.)
'But enough have (worked) to make it reasonably successful after all these years.'
Colonial repeatedly has shown loyalty to the community, too. 'Joe is one of our `stem winders' in St. Charles. He can rally people together to support civic activities,' said Max Hunt, St. Charles resident and a business owner in Mundelein. 'Tom is also very supportive of the community.'
The Andersons' combined list of accomplishments include involvement with the Salvation Army, Boy Scouts, Kiwanis Club, Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce, school board, National Ice Cream Retailers Association and groups working to rebuild a Pottawatomi Indian statue along the Fox River in St. Charles and construct a new gazebo in nearby Lincoln Park.
'If you want something done, you don't go out and find someone with nothing to do, you go out and find the Anderson boys with all of their activities,' Mayor Norris said. 'It seems like every cause they hook themselves up with becomes a resounding success.'
For their efforts, both Joe and Tom have received the St. Charles Chamber of Commerce's Charlemagne Award, the highest honor given for community service.
The ice cream business has been good on a personal side as well. Joe met his wife, Merle, at Colonial's Roxy Palace of Cream in West Chicago back in the 1930s. Now, five children and 16 grandchildren later, they have homes in St. Charles and Clearwater, Fla., and a ranch in Arkansas.
Likewise, Tom's wife, Cris, admits that when she met her ice cream man on a blind date in 1971, she melted. A native of Brazil (where her brother is a congressman), Cris was attending school in the States at the time. Tom's brother Paul, who is also married to a Brazilian, set up the blind date.
Tom and Cris have three children: Suzana, 19; Clinton, 17; and Sonia, 14, all of whom have done odd jobs for Colonial.
But will that fourth generation follow the family footsteps into the executive offices one day? It's definitely possible, Tom said.
'I'm proud to hear my children saying `This isn't all bad. Maybe it's something for us in the future.'
Tom also points to his pride in the company in general. 'It's a compliment to the whole team that we have adapted and changed when everyone says the restaurant business is so tough,' he said.
Then, almost thinking out loud, he added, 'I guess that's the survivor .. the coyote on the wall.'