A family affair with ice cream

By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- It was autumn 1962, and Eileen Roth Spisak was about to make the biggest business decision of her life.
When an accident took her husband's life, leaving Spisak alone to rear two teenagers, she decided to use the insurance settlement to buy a small Dairy Queen ice cream stand on Belmont Avenue.
On opening day, the Girard native recalls, she was so shy she hid in the back room, unable to approach the customer windows.
That was a lifetime of curly-topped ice cream treats ago for Spisak, 73, and her daughter Susie Roth Birkholtz, 53. Together the mother-daughter team has been serving up cones, sundaes and banana splits to customers on the city's North Side for 40 years.
"Mommy and I have seen it all," Birkholtz said, putting an arm affectionately around her mother and longtime business partner.
Beginnings
Birkholtz started working weekends and summers at the stand when she was 13, manning the windows at her mother's side from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. in the early days. Setting up for the day and cleaning up at night took time too, so 15-hour days were typical then.
Birkholtz said she didn't mind the long hours.
"I always knew we had to make a success of this place, for one, because I wanted to make my Daddy proud," she said, her voice breaking with emotion.
"And I also knew it was the only way we could have clothes on our backs and food on the table. Even now, I always remember that. "
Spisak's best friend, Liz Del Genio, also helped get the new owners' business off the ground, and her son Tim worked there briefly before heading off to a military academy in Illinois.
Before long, Spisak had conquered her shyness, and she began to make friends among the hundreds of regular customers.
She and her daughter learned how to take apart and reassemble the ice cream machines and other mechanical equipment in the store as part of the daily cleaning and sanitizing routine. When repairs were needed she became an expert in which one of a hundred tiny parts was causing the problem.
"We learned by the seat of our pants," Birkholtz joked, remembering the time she forgot to turn off the pressure on the chocolate ice cream machine during cleaning. "It was like a chocolate snake, spraying chocolate ice cream all over the ceilings, the floors, the walls, everywhere! What a mess!"
Second home
From Day One, the DQ stand was like a second home to the women and their families.
"Whenever the grandchildren would come to visit, they'd always go right to the box of spoons in the back room," Spisak recalled with a grin.
"They'd fill up the spoons because they knew they had to do a chore to get a treat, and that was the easiest chore they could find!"
Birkholtz met her husband, Fred, at the stand when both of them were in their teens. He was a very tall, very slim basketball player, and she teased that he could put on some pounds if he'd return daily for a chocolate milkshake.
He took her advice, but the pair didn't marry until many years later. They're celebrating their 17th anniversary this year.
These days, Spisak still works part time at the shop and handles daily bookkeeping. She finds time to go out with friends and to travel when the store is closed between mid-October and Feb. 1. She lives with her daughter and son-in-law Fred in their Liberty home.
Another family team helps Spisak and Birkholtz keep the business running -- managers and identical twin sisters Alyse and Aleen Clare of Youngstown.
The sisters started working at the shop 10 years ago as eighth-graders, dipping Dilly Bar ice cream bars in chocolate. Now 22 and students at Youngstown State University, they've learned all aspects of the business, resulting in a seamless transition whenever the owners must be away.
"We take them on vacations with us," Birkholtz said. "They're like family."
The shop also employs between six and eight teens each summer. "I think we've given almost every teenager on the North Side their first job," Spisak joked.
She said the owners look for friendly, upbeat workers and they insist their employees treat customers courteously. "There's a lot of competition out there, a lot of places where our customers can spend their dollar," Birkholtz said. "We make sure something is on special everyday, and we always try to be friendly and helpful."
Franchise
The owners said there are pros and cons to having a Dairy Queen franchise.
On one hand, the store benefits from the famous Dairy Queen name and from the company's prolific advertising and marketing campaigns. The advertising fees it pays the chain are far below the cost an independent store would face.
One disadvantage, though, is that the company controls what the shop owners can sell.
This season, Spisak said, Dairy Queen directed the Belmont Avenue store to stop selling its "secret recipe" banana-flavored soft-serve ice cream and its hand-packed ice cream selections. Company officials told the owners they want to keep the menu standard at DQ stores across the country.
"It was a big blow to us," Birkholtz said. "Our banana outsold chocolate three to one."
Cutting out the banana and hand-packed favorites, combined with the cold, rainy spring, has caused their business to drop 26 percent this season, they said.
Opening in May 1950, the Belmont Avenue Dairy Queen was among the ice cream franchise company's first Mahoning County locations. Spisak was the shop's third owner.
Slowing business
Business was at its peak in the 1970s, Spisak said, when Youngstown's steel industry was going strong. The North Side Pool, a city-owned swimming pool across the street from the DQ, was attracting 600 to 700 youths on summer days then, and most stopped off almost daily for an ice cream treat.
"Now, we fight every day to keep our heads above water," Spisak said.
The region's population is smaller since the mills closed down, and there's more competition for the consumer's dollar than there was 20 or 30 years ago. The DQ sees about 100 pool swimmers on a good day.
"One thing we've seen, though," she said, "is that no matter how bad things get, people still find time and money to treat their kids."
Mother and daughter said they still enjoy the work and the people they've come to know over the years. Many who have moved away from the area make it a point to stop by at what they call "my" Dairy Queen, they said.
And even after 40 years, Spisak and Birkholtz never tire of their mutual favorite Dairy Queen treat -- hot fudge sundaes topped with pecans.
vinarsky@vindy.com