Throughout the years Winegar’s has stayed true to the family that is its namesake, even after nineteen years of selling coffee and ice cream.

The small family owned business of Winegar’s began in 1956 with a farm and milking cows. Over the years it evolved into an ice cream and coffee retailer.

Now, 19 years after opening their first storefront, the business has stayed true to the family and is still run by the brother-sister duo, Kori Winegar and Richelle Higdon.

It’s not rare to see family businesses in the area, but it is uncommon for them to span decades and generations. The business is into its third generation of Winegar’s.

According to Higdon, Kori Winegar and her family connection is one of the reasons for their success.

“It works out pretty well, actually, because we are opposite personalities,” Higdon said. “Together we make a good team.”

Kori Winegar also feels it’s their personal dynamic that has helped Winegar’s to grow and continue to be successful over the years.

“My sister and I get along well, she balances me,” Kori Winegar said, “I am the dreamer and she is the realist.”

Amongst the family and the employees, Kori Winegar is known as the “coffee guru.”

“I was the first one in the family that really took on the coffee and said ‘I want to try this and taste it, and figure it out,’” Kori Winegar said.

Kori Winegar believes there is such a thing as a perfect cup of coffee, but it’s hard to achieve.

“There is so much to [coffee], when it comes down to it,” Winegar said. “That is where a lot of people do not realize, the atmosphere alone can change how [espresso] shots are.”

Kori Winegar admits that when he first began he did not know much about coffee.

“I started like a lot of people, where I threw in a bunch of chocolate and caramel,” Kori Winegar said.

Winegar attributes his coffee knowledge to a good network of coffee professionals.

“I learned a lot from the roaster,” Kori Winegar said. “It is just a matter of caring. I care about our product.”

Kori Winegar said the perfect cup of coffee is dependent on the temperature of your espresso machine, the grind, the beans and how they were roasted.

“The espresso part of it, I want it to be a good sweet, caramelly flavor that you can taste, but it doesn’t linger in the back of your mouth,” Kori Winegar said.

For those who are not into espresso based drinks, Winegar’s offers an Extreme Bull 101 menu of flavored energy drinks. Kori Winegar mentioned that the initial idea for the flavored energy drinks came from a customer, but it was one of their Central student employees who made it what it is today.

“We had a team member who was searching for a project for school, and so we created the Extreme Bulls,” Winegar said.

The student employee, Samantha Faust, a recreation management alumnus, created the various flavors, processes and rewards cards.

“There were people who came in and wanted coffee but the [person with them] did not want coffee,” Kori Winegar said. “But they wanted something to get them going.”

Along with Winegar’s plethora of drink options, the ice cream is there for customers with a sweet tooth. The two sides of the business might seem conflicting, but Higdon feels that they balance each other out well.

“In the winter months when people are not into ice cream as much, we have the coffee,” Higdon said. “In the summer, it’s more ice cream [sold] than coffee.”

The first batch of the homemade Winegar’s ice cream was created over ten years ago in May of 1992.

According to Higdon the ice cream side of the business began when she had the idea to take the excess cream that was being laid to waste.

“My dad had this vision of ‘wouldn’t it be nice if we could use this cream and make ice cream,’” Higdon said.

Their first batches of ice cream were vanilla, chocolate and maple flavors.

“My grandpa used to make homemade ice cream himself,” Higdon said. “His favorite flavor of ice cream was maple nut ice cream, so we definitely had to do that right off the bat.”

Every member of the Winegar’s family has their own flavor of ice cream tailored to their likes.

“My dad loved chocolate chip cookie so we made ‘Gary Dough’ for him,” Higdon said.

The ice creams that aren’t named after members of the family get named by customers, Hidgon said. When they create a new ice cream they send it out to customers to see what they think it should be called.

Winegar’s is always striving to make the customer number one in their business.

“The customer, in my eyes, is my boss; they tell me what to do,” Kori Winegar said. “If I start making a bad product, they are going to fire me and go somewhere else.”

Higdon, Winegar and the entire team really view the customers as the best part of their job.

“I love building relationships with people and getting to know people’s names,” said Kevin Andrews, junior business marketing major and Winegar’s team lead. “I see people at the same time every shift, so I get to know them.”

The team at Winegar’s strives to make the atmosphere inviting.

“Whether you have family here, or you are a college student, we treat you like family,” Winegar’s team coach, Sara Jarmin, said.

Jarmin is a 2012 recreation and tourism graduate who worked for Winegar’s all through her college years and has recently moved back into the area.

Kori Winegar wants to bring that friendly, inviting atmosphere over to the new storefront as well.

“We were able to build it from the start up, and so we are able to think the process through from a customer standpoint and from a team member ‘helping the customer’ standpoint,” Kori Winegar said.

The new Winegar’s store is set to open Feb. 14 and will be much larger than the University and Alder location. The building will be 2,400 square feet in the front with a 1,000 square foot eating room, that is rentable, behind.

According to Andrews the new location will provide twice as much seating as the current location and the double drive-thru windows will speed up the drink ordering process.

“It gives us more space to try new things,” Andrews said.

The new location is only the tip of the iceberg for Winegar’s.

“I have a dream of taking our ice cream to hospitals,” said Kori Winegar. “And taking it to children’s hospitals just to watch the kids smile.”

A history of Winegar’s

The story of Winegar’s (WHY-neh-gars) ice cream began with Truman Winegar, grandfather to current brother-sister owners Kori Winegar and Richelle Higdon. Truman Winegar opened his farm in 1956 with just milking-cows. By 1960, he started to sell the milk to the public.

In 1972, Truman Winegar’s son, Gary Winegar, took over the farm and began producing two-percent milk. After buying bottles in 1982, their milk was sold in local stores such as Albertsons, Super 1 Foods, and the 18th Street Deli.

The business went into a new frontier in 1992; ice cream. According to Higdon, both her and her father Gary Winegar had always wanted to use the leftover cream from their milk production and decided to use it for ice cream.

The first flavors were vanilla, chocolate and “Nutty Truman,” in honor of Higdon’s grandfather.

Their first retail location at 7th and Main opened in 1996, where they sold coffee and ice cream. For four years, Winegar’s did it all; made coffee, ice cream, milked cows and bottled it.

According to Kori Winegar, they sold the cows in 1996 and stopped bottling milk in 1997. The regulations for a dairy farm required the Winegars to install a lagoon for the manure, and the family did not feel right having one put in when their farm was so close to Mt. Stuart School.

Kori Winegar also said that the first year they didn’t have to leave right after Thanksgiving dinner to go milk cows felt “off.”

After the farm was sold, the Winegars focused their efforts on their ice cream and coffee business.

Since 2007 they’ve been selling from the corner of Alder and University Way, and they plan on opening their newest location, connected to Jerrol’s on university, Feb. 14.

For further information check out Winegar’s on Twitter. https://twitter.com/WinegarsEburg