By Kathleen McCann & Bobby Tanzilo Senior Editor/Writer Published Oct 18, 2017 at 9:02 AM

Season's eatings! The weather may be getting colder, but Dining Month on OnMilwaukee is just cooking up, dishing out your winning picks in this year's Best of Dining poll. Dining Month is brought to you by Fein Brothers, your premier food service equipment and supply dealer in Wisconsin since 1929. Congratulations to all of the winners, and happy eating for all those who voted! See all the winners for the month so far here.

Enjoy this excerpt from the book, "Milwaukee Frozen Custard," written by Kathleen McCann and OnMilwaukee's own Bobby Tanzilo:

Leon Schneider wasn’t the first to open a custard stand in Milwaukee, but he was one of the most influential. Even today, nearly a quarter century after Schneider’s death, his Leon’s drive-in on South 27th Street is a draw for locals and Milwaukee visitors alike.

Schneider was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, but his father, Joseph, was a tradesman whose work forced the family to move often during the Depression. Landing in Milwaukee, Leon attended Boys Tech High School.

"When Paul Gilles opened [Gilles Frozen Custard] in 1938, my father was his night manager," recalled his son Ron Schneider, who took over operation of Leon’s when Leon retired.

"My father had a day job; he was a cookie salesman. I think he worked for National Baking. After that, he ended up traveling with a carnival, selling frozen custard out of a concession trailer. I think he did that for two seasons. Their circuit was from the Gulf Coast to the Canadian border and then back. They did that twice a season. They’d play a fair, and then they’d move on to the next one and the next one."

Leon’s Frozen Custard opened on May 1, 1942, in a 30-by-20-foot building that was expanded in 1946. In 1955, it was augmented with the canopy and fluorescent lighting that you can still see today at the drive-in, which hasn’t changed in any marked way since then.

"He had a little money, borrowed a little money, had a silent partner, initially, and they bought the property and built the store," said Schneider.

"He lived in Wauwatosa. He chose 27th Street because it’s U.S. 41 – it’s the highway. You’re coming and going to Milwaukee, and 41 is the way you went. He figured he needed the traffic. That’s still true today. You’ve got to be where people can find you. It’s impulse buyers. Traffic is exactly what you want."

Leon kept things simple, starting out with vanilla frozen custard, adding chocolate in 1948 and butter pecan four years later. These are the only three flavors that are regularly served (a fourth rotating flavor is added on weekends).

"When he opened the store here, his dream was [to] take home 200 bucks a week," said Schneider. "That was his dream. He never dreamed it would become as successful as it did."

Expanded operation

In 1947, Schneider gave his mother, Anna (Duex) Schneider, permission to open a Leon’s Frozen Custard in Oshkosh (pictured above) with his brother Jack, an arrangement that decades later would lead to a trademark infringement lawsuit. But for many years, the two locations looked similar, used nearly identical machines, bought the same mix from the same supplier, used the same bags and had employees wear the same hats.

In the late 1940s, Leon opened another Milwaukee store, at Oklahoma and Clement Avenues in Bay View (which became Park Frozen Custard, 1122 West Oklahoma Avenue), that lasted but a few years. He also had a stand in Sheboygan, at Calumet Drive and North Avenue, and another at 2929 Roosevelt Road in Kenosha (now a drive-in called Andy’s, pictured below). Leon even opened a Leon’s right across the street from the original Leon’s on 27th Street to help accommodate the brisk demand.

"His initial dream was to have Leon’s Frozen Custard located the complete length of Highway 41, from northern Wisconsin all the way down to Miami," said Schneider. "We had five stores years ago. Trouble is, my dad found instead of running a custard stand, he was running a shuttle service to make sure all the stores had employees."

Welcoming competition

Much like the owners of the groundbreaking Kohr’s company in Pennsylvania, Leon and his son have been eager to help prospective drive-in operators get up and running, presumably in the hopes of selling them machines. Among those Leon helped was Elsa Kopp of Kopp’s, the founders of Trudy’s and the Town Pride stands and Al Lach of Al’s. When a permit was pulled to build the Kitt's Frozen Custard stand on Capitol Drive in 1952, Schneider's name appeared on it.

"People [wanting to open a stand] would ask for help, and he’d help them," Schneider told Agri-View.com. "He’d be hired to scout a location and he designed the building and equipment and trained management."

But it wasn’t always just business, according to Karl Kopp, Elsa Kopp’s son and owner of Kopp’s.

"Leon Schneider was just a saint," he said. "He was just a churchgoing, good man. He would help you do this and do that. The other thing that he did, that probably a lot of people don’t know, is … my dad was sick [with Parkinson’s disease]. Nobody could help him. Leon said, ‘I know a doctor in Iowa. Maybe he can help. He’s a really good doctor.’ Me, my sister, my dad and Leon all piled in Leon’s car and we drove to Iowa."

Today, Schneider said he is willing to train potential competitors in how to run a successful custard stand.

"I offer two weeks of training here in the store, for two people. I say, ‘You come down here, and you’re going to start at the bottom and learn exactly the way we do it, just like we train an employee. Then, as we go along, you can ask me questions, take notes. When you’re done, you should be able to move into your store and open up. Then, once you’ve been trained, if you call me with a problem on the phone, I can help you on the phone."

Ingrained tradition

Some believe that this assistance, which mirrors similar help provided by other custard stand owners in Milwaukee, is part of why frozen custard has become such an ingrained tradition in the city.

"[Leon] would welcome the competition," said Schneider. "He felt that the more people who did a good job with the product, the more the product would become known. This would help us. A bad store down the block does us no good, because if that’s the first place the customer stops to try frozen custard, [and he] eats lousy product, when he’s driving by here, he’s not going to stop."

Despite periodic rumors that Leon’s is closing – so strong in 1994 that the daily newspaper ran a front-page story debunking the idea – Leon’s stands strong. And even on a winter’s day, folks belly up to the window to order frozen custard.

"Originally we had one service window and carhops," recalled Schneider. "Then we had two service windows. Then we had four service windows. When the demographics of what we were selling changed, we went back to two service windows. I went back to four service windows about ’79."

What’s the secret to Leon’s success?

"We never strayed from our original premise, which is sell frozen custard … and do it as well as we can," Schneider told the Milwaukee Journal in 1991. "That’s our focus."

The authors of "Milwaukee Frozen Custard" will do a book talk on Thursday, Oct. 19 at 7 p.m. at Historic Milwaukee, 235 E. Michigan St. Details can be found here.

Kathleen McCann & Bobby Tanzilo Senior Editor/Writer

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.

He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.

With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.

He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.

In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.

He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.