"second one's free ... "
"There's nothing quite like the hand-held sweetness of an It's-It: cool vanilla ice cream stuffed between two chewy oatmeal-raisin cookies, then covered in dark chocolate.
The treat is as intimately tied to San Francisco as sourdough bread, as much a part of local lore as Rice-A-Roni. Dating to the 1920s at Playland-at- the-Beach, the frosty wonder represents one of the oldest local institutions this side of Stanford University. It predates the Golden Gate Bridge. It was here before the Giants. Heck, the It's-It even was born before former Mayor Willie Brown.
"The It's-It is a true Bay Area tradition," says Charles Shamieh, president of the It's-It Ice Cream Co., the Burlingame company that took over the brand in the 1970s and has sated San Francisco's sweet tooth ever since. "We have fog, we have hills, and we have It's-It."
As summer descends on the Peninsula, taste buds everywhere are priming for the familiar goody and all of its associated rituals -- the chilly whiff of sweetness that rises from the package when you pull it open; the tongue- teasing twist of dry oatmeal with creamy ice cream; and the inimitable way that chocolate shell crumbles in your hand after the first bite. Sit down, Alice Waters; this is gourmet.
It's-It has been "What's-What" seemingly forever. When Playland-at-the- Beach opened in 1928, the sandwich culminated a Grail-like quest for the perfect ice cream treat. George Whitney, one of the park's most ubiquitous businessmen, was experimenting with ice cream novelties when he sandwiched freshly scooped vanilla ice cream between two oatmeal cookies and dipped it in chocolate. "It's-It!" he exclaimed for all to hear, and a legend was born instantly.
Until the 1970s, Whitney's invention was found only on Ocean Beach. But when Playland was demolished in 1972, the It's-It name was passed on to San Franciscan George Mavros. After a brief hiatus, Mavros resurrected the tradition of hand-dipping ice cream yummies from his tiny store on Ocean Beach. Demand soared; the poor guy couldn't keep up. Finally, in 1974, Shamieh and his brothers Jim, Bill and Chuck stepped in and purchased the It's-It name with big dreams for the future.
"We wanted to take It's-It to the next level," explains Jim Shamieh, now charged with marketing the product. "With Playland gone, we knew we had to bring it back and make it stay."
The brothers recognized it would be far too expensive to continue to make It's-It by hand, so they pooled money from family members and private investors and bought the equipment to build a factory. At first, the plant was on 11th Street in downtown San Francisco. In 1976, with business already booming, the Shamieh gang moved the operation to Burlingame, on the east side of the Bayshore Freeway south of San Francisco International airport.
Today, these nondescript buildings hide a buzzing operation that churns out 100,000 It's-It treats every double (16-hour) shift. The assembly line is like a scene from "Willy Wonka": Two by two, mechanical arms place oatmeal cookies on tiny trays, top each with a slice of vanilla ice cream, then cap it with another cookie before sending the goody into a deep-freeze. The sandwiches re-emerge hard as rocks, and pass on a conveyor belt through a waterfall of warm dark chocolate dubbed the "chocolate enrober."
From there, the chocolate-coated sandwiches are frozen again and directed through a packaging machine that wraps them individually in cellophane. Finally, a stocking-capped worker grabs the packaged items off a giant rotating turntable and places them gently into boxes for distribution. Elias Shamieh, a cousin, supervises the production line and says this last step is perhaps the most critical part.
"We always check the product to make sure it's of the highest quality," he says, adding that all of the line's 20 employees usually taste-test three It's-It sandwiches per shift. "(We) have ice cream whizzing by (us) all day long. Can you blame us?"
Depending on the day, It's-It workers sample treats with a variety of flavors: vanilla, chocolate, mint and cappuccino. Outside the factory, where most of us shell out $1 or $1.50 per taste, the products can be found everywhere. In supermarkets, the goodies are sold in "market packs," no-frills boxes that hold a trio of tasty treasures. At 7-Eleven and other convenience stores, they're sold individually. The company declined to state its annual sales figures.
The Coastside Market in Moss Beach is a popular spot for people to pick up It's-It sandwiches on their way to or from the beach. Owner Gibson Joseph says he started carrying the frozen treats 13 years ago after an overwhelming number of local customers who had eaten them as children requested them. He hadn't heard of It's-It until then, but he certainly knows it now.
"I buy a lot of ice cream," Joseph says. "Of all the bars (I sell), It's- It is great because it has a history and it's locally made."
As Joseph implies, It's-It is an easy sell for those old enough to have experienced Playland-at-the-Beach. For the younger generations, however, marketing the ice cream treats has proved to be more challenging. With a mix of their own trucks and standard distribution, the Shamieh brothers have tried to address this issue by delivering their product to 85 percent of the public school districts in Northern California. By the time Bay Area kids are 7, says Charles Shamieh, almost all of them have tried It's-It.
To further diversify the brand, It's-It Ice Cream also has introduced a quintet of other products: Chips IT, which is like the traditional It's-It sandwich only with chocolate chip cookies and no chocolate coating; Big Daddy, a square of ice cream between two chocolate wafers; the Super Cone, a sugar cone topped with ice cream, chocolate and roasted peanuts; the Super Sundae, a block of ice cream dipped in chocolate and rolled in roasted peanuts; and Carb Freeze, a carbohydrate-free version of the Super Sundae.
So many goodies, so little time. If only George Whitney could see his invention now.
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penfriday@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page F - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle"
:Monty
Which is weird because I'm fine with most sweet desserts. 
