Del's

Last updated
Del's Lemonade & Refreshments, Inc.
Del's sign.png
Del's Lemonade Container 2011.jpg
Paper cups of Del's Lemonade
Restaurant information
Established1948
Owner(s)Bruce DeLucia
Food typeFrozen Lemonade
CityCranston
StateRhode Island
CountryUnited States
Website www.dels.com

Del's is a brand of frozen lemonade typically found in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts during the summer months. Del's lemonade is available in 20 states. [1] Frozen lemonade is a kind of slush. It is made from water, concentrate, and real lemons in an ice cream machine. In Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts "Del's" is synonymous with frozen lemonade.

Contents

History

Del's was founded by Angelo DeLucia, who originally received the recipe for lemonade from his father, Franco DeLucia, who brought the recipe to the United States from Italy. [2] Angelo then developed a machine to dispense their product.

The first Del's stand was a small, pushable cart in Cranston, Rhode Island, in 1948. [2] Soon afterwards, Angelo started using "Del's Trucks" to serve the beverage anywhere in the state. The company still uses the trucks today in addition to its storefront locations.

In 1993, the Rhode Island legislature made an attempt to select an official state beverage. Del's lemonade and coffee milk were chosen as "finalists"; however, coffee milk was eventually chosen as the official state beverage. [3]

The 2011 television movie Lemonade Mouth , a Disney Channel Original Movie adapted from the book of the same name by Massachusetts author Mark Peter Hughes, prominently features "Mel's Frozen Lemonade", which the author has indicated is a parody of Del's.

A Del's Lemonade stand in San Francisco Dels-stand.jpg
A Del's Lemonade stand in San Francisco

Angelo DeLucia died of prostate cancer on September 6, 2007. [4]

Products

There are seven main flavors of the popular drink: lemon, watermelon, peach-mango, blueberry, cherry, grapefruit, and blood orange. There are occasionally extra seasonal flavors, like tangerine. [5] Coffee was once a flavor but has not appeared on the menu for many years. Del's also sells other various products such as pretzel sticks, candy, and popcorn as well as many different Del's branded products in its gift shop located at its corporate office location, as well as online. [6]

In partnership with Del's, the Narragansett Brewing Company produces a shandy called Del's Shandy. [7]

Distribution

Del's operates franchises selling their prepared product, with 20 locations in Rhode Island, the most of any state, as well as locations throughout the US, and even internationally. Trucks selling the product are often seen at popular beach locations in summer months. The Del's "take-home" mix and non-frozen variety of lemonade can be found in grocery stores throughout the world.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cuisine of New England</span> Northeastern US food culture

New England cuisine is an American cuisine which originated in the New England region of the United States, and traces its roots to traditional English cuisine and Native American cuisine of the Abenaki, Narragansett, Niantic, Wabanaki, Wampanoag, and other native peoples. It also includes influences from Irish, French-Canadian, Italian, and Portuguese cuisine, among others. It is characterized by extensive use of potatoes, beans, dairy products and seafood, resulting from its historical reliance on its seaports and fishing industry. Corn, the major crop historically grown by Native American tribes in New England, continues to be grown in all New England states, primarily as sweet corn although flint corn is grown as well. It is traditionally used in hasty puddings, cornbreads and corn chowders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Autocrat, LLC</span>

Autocrat, LLC (now named Finlay Extracts and Ingredients USA (Finlays)) is a company manufacturing coffee and tea extracts based in Lincoln, Rhode Island, United States. The company's coffee syrups are often used to make coffee milk, which became the official state drink of Rhode Island in 1993. The company's name change occurred in 2015, and its retail products remain marketed under the Autocrat brand name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lemonade</span> Lemon-flavored drink

Lemonade is a sweetened lemon-flavored drink.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coffee milk</span> Drink made from coffee syrup and milk

Coffee milk is a drink made by mixing coffee syrup or extract with milk, in a manner similar to chocolate milk. Since 1993, it has been the official state drink of the U.S. state of Rhode Island.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minute Maid</span> American beverage company

Minute Maid is an American product line of beverages, usually associated with lemonade or orange juice, but which now extends to soft drinks of different kinds, including Hi-C. Minute Maid is sold under the Cappy brand in Central Europe and under the brand "Моя Семья" in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Minute Maid was the first company to market frozen orange juice concentrate, allowing it to be distributed throughout the United States and served year-round. The Minute Maid Company is owned by The Coca-Cola Company, the world's largest marketer of fruit juices and drinks. The firm opened its headquarters in Sugar Land Town Square in Sugar Land, Texas, United States, on February 16, 2009; previously it was headquartered in the 2000 St. James Place building in Houston.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iced coffee</span> Coffee served chilled

Iced coffee is a coffee beverage served cold. It may be prepared either by brewing coffee normally and then serving it over ice or in cold milk or by brewing the coffee cold. In hot brewing, sweeteners and flavoring may be added before cooling, as they dissolve faster. Iced coffee can also be sweetened with pre-dissolved sugar in water.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newport Creamery</span> Restaurant chain in Rhode Island and Massachusetts

Newport Creamery is a chain of restaurants in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts. Since its first restaurant opened in 1940, it has been primarily known for ice cream and, later, the "Awful Awful" milkshake. The company is based in Middletown, Rhode Island.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Four Loko</span> Line of alcoholic drinks

Four Loko is a line of alcoholic beverages sold by Phusion Projects of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Four Loko's recipe formerly included caffeine. Phusion operates as Drink Four Brewing Company. Four Loko, the company's most popular beverage, debuted in the United States market in 2005 and is available in 49 states, and in 21 countries including Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay, The Bahamas, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, China, Canada and some countries in Europe. The name "Four" is derived from the original drink having four "key ingredients".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beer in the Caribbean</span>

The beers of the Caribbean are unique to each island in the region, although many are variants of the same style. Each island generally brews its own unique pale lager, the occasional stout, and often a non-alcoholic malta beverage. Contract-brewing of international beers is also common, with Heineken Pilsener and Guinness Foreign Extra Stout being the most popular. The beers vary between the islands to suit the taste and the brewing method used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Two Dogs</span>

Two Dogs was a ready-to-drink beverage that was first introduced in Australia in 1993 and went on to become available throughout the world. It was a lemon flavoured alcoholic beverage that is widely considered to have been the "world’s first brewed alcoholic lemonade", paving the way for similar products such as Hooper's Hooch and Mike's Hard Lemonade.

KickapooJoy Juice is a citrus-flavored soft drink brand owned by the Monarch Beverage Company. The name was introduced in Li'l Abner, a comic strip that ran from 1934 through 1977. Although Li'l Abner's Kickapoo Joy Juice was an alcoholic drink, the real-life beverage is a lightly carbonated soft drink.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hard soda</span> Alcoholic beverage

Hard soda, also referred to as flavored beer, adult soda, fermented soda, mature soda and alcohol soda, is a type of alcoholic beverage and craft beer that is manufactured in the style of a soft drink. It has gained recent prominence in the United States after the success of the Not Your Father's Root Beer brand manufactured by Small Town Brewery. As of late May 2016, at least 39 hard soda brands exist in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chameleon Cold-Brew</span>

Chameleon Cold-Brew is an American coffee company based in Austin, Texas. It is known for its cold brew coffee and is credited as the first fair trade and organic cold brew company in the United States. In 2014, Chameleon Cold-Brew was given the Best Coffee award by BevNET.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">White Claw Hard Seltzer</span> Brand of hard seltzer

White Claw Hard Seltzer is an alcoholic seltzer water beverage manufactured by Mark Anthony Group. The beverage was introduced in 2016 and is sold in 12 various flavors.

References

  1. Perreault, Denise (July 23, 2014). "Del's lemonade folks squeezed from festival again". The Valley Breeze. Retrieved 2015-06-07.
  2. 1 2 Armitage, Helen (19 December 2015). "The 10 Best Spots For Frozen Lemonade In Rhode Island". Culture Trip. Retrieved 2020-09-16.
  3. Lukas, Paul (2002-11-13). "The Big Flavors of Little Rhode Island". The New York Times. Retrieved 2018-07-23.
  4. "Angelo DeLucia 1928-2007". tribtoday.com. Retrieved 2020-09-15.
  5. "Flavors". dels.com. Del's Lemonade. 6 August 2019. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
  6. https://dels.com/shop/ [ bare URL ]
  7. "Del's Shandy". Narragansett Brewing Company . Retrieved 2014-07-22.

41°44′06″N71°28′39″W / 41.735057°N 71.477442°W / 41.735057; -71.477442