The company behind Moose Tracks began as a three-way partnership that included political candidate Micah Beckwith’s father. (Lew Robertson/Getty Images)
It’s one of Republican lieutenant governor nominee Micah Beckwith’s favorite fun facts: “My dad created Moose Tracks ice cream.”
He’s made the claim at a three-way lieutenant governor debate, at the state GOP convention, and in news interviews.
But the corporate owner of Moose Tracks — vanilla ice cream with peanut butter cups and fudge — tells a different story online.
Numerous readers contacted the Indiana Capital Chronicle about the seeming mismatch.
Denali Flavors maintains the rights to the Moose Tracks branding empire, and licenses the recipe to manufacturers.
GOP lieutenant governor candidate Micah Beckwith. (Nathan Gotsch/Fort Wayne Politics)
Husband-and-wife entrepreneurs Wallace “Wally” and June Blume introduced the original Moose Tracks flavor in the mid-1980’s, the company said in a decade-old news release.
Wally Blume created the flavor in his basement — naming it after a nearby miniature golf course — and began selling it to local ice cream parlors, Food Republic reported.
Denali Flavors does not have contact information online and couldn’t be reached for contact.
The company behind Moose Tracks, however, began as a three-way partnership that also included Beckwith’s father, Jon Beckwith, and Linda Kilpatrick.
Hoosier newspapers identified the elder Beckwith as the inventor.
“(Jon) Beckwith created the Moose Tracks flavor and the name,” The Times of Northwest Indiana reported in 1997.
The younger Beckwith said the story goes back decades, to his grandfather’s 1960’s founding of General Container Co., a packaging business.
Micah Beckwith said that, after his uncle died in an early 1980’s car crash, his grandfather hired Blume as a salesman for the company.
The ice cream, he said, came out of a trip to Alaska in the late 1980’s.
“They went to Denali National Park. And they had this concept (of) hey, why don’t we take ice cream?” Micah Beckwith said.
He called it “dad’s brainchild” but acknowledged Blume “was a part of those early days.”
A screenshot of the company website shows Moose Tracks.
“I think Moose Tracks had kind of been talked about at some point before then, but Denali (Alaskan Classics) ended up … being that glue that held it all together,” Micah Beckwith added, describing the line as an “ecosystem” that happened to include Moose Tracks.
The line originally included 16 flavors, according to The Times of Northwest Indiana, which dated creation to 1993.
The Times Herald, however, reported that Jon Beckwith registered Moose Tracks and Denali Alaskan Classics in 1991.
The ownership trio broke up in the early 2000’s.
They’d split duties, and Blume’s approach was generating most of the company’s income despite his status as a minority shareholder, according to ProLine Communications.
The arbitrator, per ProLine President Bruce Freeman, suggested that one partner buy the others out.
Blume took out a loan from Michigan-based Bank One — reflected in a 2001 recordation form from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office — to fully purchase the business.
“Dad put his life’s blood into this,” Micah Beckwith told the Capital Chronicle. “… Relationships can sometimes get hard.”
“Dad didn’t want to see everything that he’s put in into the company over the last decade and a half just go down the tube,” he added. “So he sold.”
Blume and the elder Beckwith met again in 2002 litigation, sparring over the right to license an ice cream under the name “Moose Nuggets,” Michigan Lawyers Weekly reported.
Despite Micah Beckwith’s belief that his father “was treated unfairly,” he said, “We don’t lose sleep over it.”
The family started another ice cream flavoring company, Mackinac Flavors, with which Micah Beckwith says he remains involved.
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