HOUSTON – Gallons of Blue Bell Ice Cream was delivered Monday to stores in Brenham and in the Houston area.
KPRC 2's Amy Davis was at the HEB in Brenham when workers started to stock freezers with Blue Bell. It didn't take long for customers to start buying ice cream, as the brand's Cookies 'n Cream flavor quickly sold out.
Trucks arrived just after 4 a.m., and HEB let customers to come in early at 5:45 a.m. Each customer was allowed to purchase a maximum four and a half gallons of ice cream.
KPRC 2'S Ruben Galvan was at the Randalls store in the Texas Medical Center when the Blue Bell truck arrived. Customers participated in a Blue Bell Challenge where they competed to see how much ice cream they could eat.
On Monday, Aug. 24, Blue Bell announced"Homemade Vanilla" as its first flavor to return to shelves. The starting lineup also included Dutch Chocolate, The Great Divide and Cookies 'n Cream.
Blue Bell said its products will re-enter parts of 15 states in five phases. The first of the five includes the Houston, Brenham and Austin areas, as well as parts of Alabama, including Birmingham and Montgomery.
The next phases:
- Phase 2: North Central Texas and southern Oklahoma
- Phase 3: Southwest Texas and Central Oklahoma
- Phase 4: The majority of Texas and southern Louisiana
- Phase 5: Complete the states of Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas and begin distribution in Arkansas, Florida, northern Louisiana and Mississippi. This phase will also include only parts of the following states: Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
Blue Bell has been in recovery mode since April, when the Texas company recalled all of its products after some ice cream was linked to 10 cases of listeriosis. Three people in Kansas died.
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