Cool-A-Coo, Where Are You?

When you’ve got an $80-million payroll, you’ve got to trim fat wherever you can. And at 20 grams per serving, the Cool-a-Coo must have seemed an easy shave.

This season, many longtime Dodger fans have dropped their jaws in disbelief upon forking over $2.50 to the roving ice cream vendor and receiving an It’s It passed down the aisle. What the heck happened to Cool-a-Coo?

For 27 years, L.A. fans scooped up an average of 4,000 of them a game. A compact sandwich of drippy vanilla ice cream pressed between oatmeal cookies and dipped in a thin gruel of chocolate, the Cool-a-Coo arguably rivaled the Dodger Dog as a signature stadium staple.

Over at Cool-a-Coo headquarters, a trailer office in Whittier, company president Leo Politis is holding up just fine. The last time the Dodgers stopped serving Cool-a-Coos, in the early ‘90s, the masses revolted. “They had boxes of letters from people,� he says. Cool-a-Coos returned.

Back then, Peter O’Malley “couldn’t do without Cool-a-Coos,� Politis offers. He even hooked up the former Dodger owner with a private stash of the treats. And one day, he introduced himself to O’Malley at the ballpark. “He said, ‘Very good, keep it up,’ � Politis recalls. As for new owner Rupert Murdoch, Politis says, “He wants to make money from everybody.�

Politis says he sold Cool-a-Coos to the Dodgers for 30 cents apiece, which the team resold for $2.50. This season, he says, they wanted to charge him for the opportunity to distribute the product there. “It wasn’t worth it,� Politis says. “I wouldn’t have made any money.� So along came It’s It, a slab of ice cream between chocolate chip cookies.

In the Cool-a-Coo factory, 30 employees still churn out 3 million Cool-a-Coos (as well as 200 other kinds of ice cream-related goodies) a year for sale in the western United States and in Politis’ native Greece. “Baseball is the No. 1 sport for selling any food,� Politis says, because it’s so slow. “By the time the player ties his shoe and moves his hat, you’re finished with your ice cream.�

Meanwhile, Dodger PR rep John Olguin says Cool-a-Coo and the team’s owners “could not reach a business agreement.� He confirms that sightings of Murdoch in the stands are rare. “He doesn’t hang out here by any stretch of the imagination,� says Olguin. So we take it he’s not involved in concessionaire decisions? “No, especially not on Cool-a-Coos.�