Turkey Hill (company)

American based food and beverage company

Turkey Hill Dairy, or simply known as Turkey Hill, is an American brand of iced tea, ice cream and other beverages and frozen desserts distributed throughout the United States and internationally. The company, which is headquartered in Conestoga, Pennsylvania, was a subsidiary of Kroger from 1985 until it was sold to private equity firm Peak Rock Capital in 2019. The company is operated independently from Turkey Hill Minit Markets, a chain of more than 260 gas station convenience stores that pays homage to Turkey Hill's history while highlighting its ice cream and iced tea making processes.

Turkey Hill Dairy began in 1931 during the Great Depression, when farmer Armor Frey began selling bottled milk to neighbors from his sedan. Frey's family obtained the farm directly from Thomas and Richard Penn, sons of William Penn, and the sheepskin deed to the farm refers to "turkeyhill". Armor sold the dairy to sons Glen, Emerson and Charles Frey in 1947. Milking the cows and delivering milk to customers provided these three families with a satisfactory income. the dairy began making ice cream, which sold well in Lancaster County, and in 1981, they started selling the ice cream through a few independent stores in Philadelphia. Despite the new ownership, the Frey family was heavily involved in the day to day operations of the company, as Charles Frey, the youngest of company founder Armor Frey's sons, remained as president. Charles was succeeded as president by Quintin Frey (son of Emerson Frey) in 1991. On May 28, 2013, the Kroger Company announced Quintin Frey's retirement.

In 2011, Turkey Hill partnered with PPL Renewable Energy and the Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority to purchase the electricity generated by two General Electric wind turbines on the Frey Farm landfill adjacent to the company's manufacturing facility. The wind turbines are capable of producing enough power to supply 25 percent of the company's annual electricity demand.

In 2012, Turkey Hill Dairy produced of frozen dairy dessert, of iced tea and other drinks and of milk. Since 2000, Turkey Hill has been among the nation's top selling brands of refrigerated iced tea and, in 2011, was the fourth largest producer of ice cream, Specific product lines include Premium Ice Cream, All Natural Ice Cream, and No Sugar Added, frozen dairy desert (a vegetable oil based product similar to ice cream) and sherbet. Traditional flavors are made with a manufacturing process that includes cold bottling, cold shipping and cold storage in stores.

Other Turkey Hill beverages include fruit drinks, including lemonade, fruit punch, and others, milk (fat free, 1% lowfat, 2% reduced fat, whole milk, and 1% low fat chocolate milk), and egg nog distributed during the Christmas and Easter seasons. Camden Riversharks, and the York Revolution, all of the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball. Additional sports partnerships have included Major League Soccer's Philadelphia Union, Major League Baseball's Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees, and the National Football League's Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers. The company's relationships with the Philadelphia Phillies, New York Yankees, Philadelphia Eagles, and Pittsburgh Steelers included the manufacture of official team ice cream flavors.

The Turkey Hill Experience is a opened in June 2013.

The Turkey Hill Experience is located in a former Ashley and Bailey silk mill, part of which was originally built in 1899. The location had several owners and uses in the decades that followed. It was abandoned in the late 1970s after the Tidy Products company stopped using it as a sewing factory. The building was vacant for more than 25 years before Turkey Hill began to work with a developer to renovate it for new uses. Two similar industrial mill buildings, the Ashley and Bailey Company Silk Mill in West York and the Ashley and Bailey Silk Mill in Marietta, have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.