January 10, 2009

In 1932, Ray Yarnell purchased the Grisham Ice Cream Company and founded Yarnell’s Ice Cream Company in Searcy (White County). Yarnell’s had sales in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Tennessee and was the only remaining ice cream company in Arkansas until the company ceased operations for a time in 2011. In November 2011, Schulze and Burch Biscuit Company of Chicago, Illinois, acquired the Yarnell’s plant and most of the recipes at auction for a reported sum of $1.3 million. The company relaunched the Yarnell’s brand in April 2012, with a new mascot, “Scoop,” and a fifty-six-ounce “sqround” box (square with rounded edges).