Ice Times With Lola

Two guys devoted to the frosty treat have brought it back with a little help from the free trade pact.  Good news for hot and thirst people - Lola’s back in town.

You remember Lola, don’t you?  Maybe you met her in a store down in old T.O., or nearby.

Tony Romanelli and John  Daniele did.  “I used to love Lolas,” says Romanelli, a 28-year-old with a construction business in Vaughan.

So he called his friend, the marketing consultant.  They got to talking.

And now - with a little help from market research, the North American Free Trade Agreement and some obliging Mexicans - the two of them have revived the Lola company.

Lola, for those who don’t recall was once a popular local summer treat - a pyramid-shaped hunk of flavoured ice wrapped in thick paper.

It came in five flavours - orange, cherry, grape, fruit punch and, yuck lemon.

Lola was sweet, thirst quenching and messy.  Lolas ran all over your shirt on a hot, sticky day.

A cheap thrill.

According to dusty government records, Lolas were made starting in 1959.  Originally they cost a nickel, then a dime, and by the early 1980s, they were an outrageous 50 cents.

Then, they disappeared.

What happened to Lola?  Romanelli wondered.

“A few year ago, I was sitting around with some friends, and we got talking about when we were kids.  Somehow, the conversation turned to Lolas,” he says.

“I called up John and he remembered them, too.”

Daniele, also 28, did some research and came up with a surprise.  “I did a corporate search for the name, and found out the registration had expired.”

Lo and behold, it seams Lola had melted into the sands of time.  Daniele isn’t  even sure when, or who owned it, but it apparently closed up about 15 years ago.

The two fiends agreed on their destiny: They would bring Lola back to life.

“We kind of got caught up in the romance of Lola,” says Daniele.

Daniele drew up a marketing plan, but reviving Lola wasn’t as easy as you’d think.

Oh, the essence of Lola itself was easy.  It’s an ancient recipe consisting of water (from Mexico but purified and tested with Canadian lab equipment), sugar, tartaric acid, artificial flavour, guar gum, carrageenan sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate and artificial colours.

Okay, it’s not health food.

“Hey, it’s a treat,” says Romanelli.

You can savor a Lola one of three ways - as a rock-solid hunk of ice, a slushy triangle of syrupy goo or, if you’ve left your Lola out in the sun too long, as a drink.  Just try to drink a melted Popsicle, he points out.

As of June 17, 1997 they had sold more than 613,000 Lolas, which has probably climbed to more than a million since the latest heat wave, Daniele says.

But living with Lola hasn’t been all fun.  For instance, difficulties arose when the two Lolameisters went looking for someone to make the packages.

First, they had trouble remembering exactly what the old ones looked like.  All the originals were slurped up long ago and thrown away.

Then Romanelli got lucky with Lola.

“I was working in someone’s basement as part of my construction business.  He had stuff packed in a carton downstairs that had been used to ship Lola’s.”

It’s Romanelli’s carton now.

But then they had to find someone to manufacture Lola’s package.

Pyramid-shaped drink cartons have actually been manufactured since the 1930s, Daniele discovered.  But Tetra Pak, the company which has cornered the market on coated paper drink containers, wasn’t persuaded that two guys from Vaughan taking a trip down memory lane were good candidates for a major packaging investment.

“They warned us that we’d need $1 million by the time we were up and running with one of their machines,” Daniele said.

He said no thanks, and then looked for companies that already had machines, which they could hire.

After searching the world, they found a firm in Mexico City that could do Lolas for a reasonable price.

“It was just when NAFTA was kicking in too,” says Daniele.  The free trade agreement, which took effect in 1994, meant they could send truckloads of Lolas from Mexico to Canada with a minimum of regulations and fuss.

The Mexican firm makes both the packaging and the Lola itself, shipping about two truckloads per week up here.  They’re stored in a Brampton warehouse and shipped to retailers shortly after.

Unlike ice cream, Lolas can be shipped in liquid form.

Romanelli and Daniele are marketing them both as individual treats and grocery-store six-packs.  Most of the big Ontario grocery chains have agreed to stock Lolas.

“And we just got work from Mac’s and Beckers that they want Lolas too,” says Daniele.

It’s basically the same old Lola as the one that may have brushed against your lips on a hot summer’s day a generation ago.  But in a nod to market research, Lola has a last name now.

Lola Iceberg.

Daniele did some market testing last summer and found that people under 25 and those who didn’t grow up in Ontario never heard of Lola and could use a descriptive prompt on the label.

Those over 25?  They lust after Lola, says Romanelli, pulling out a stack of fan letters with one hand - while he slurps a Lola.

Their favourite letter was from a woman who sings with a band but was suffering a life-threatening illness.  Lola helped nurse her back to health, she wrote them.

“After she got better, we went to see her band, and she told the crowd she’d sing any song we requested,” Daniele says.

“We asked for The Kinks song, Lola, of course.”