There is no other it besides It's It

For those who aren't informed, the original It's It is a heavenly mix of two oatmeal cookies with fresh vanilla ice cream sandwiched between them. It is then covered in a decadent dark chocolate.

It's It was first created by San Franciscan George Whitney in 1928 as a sweet snack for visitors to that city's now torn down Playland-At-The-Beach. The brand was revived and improved upon by current president Charles Shamieh and other private investors in 1974.

Shamieh, 57, oversees an ice cream empire which has It's It and other ice cream snacks in stores throughout the West and also available for sale by the case on the company's Web site.

With only an It's It sign visible from Highway 101 marking the location, It's It produces up to 100,000 ice cream sandwiches daily in its production plant. Despite such a high volume, Shamieh said only the freshest ingredients are used.

"We bake our own cookies daily," said Shamieh. "We also process our own ice cream using milk that we get from local farmers."

The creation of an It's It involves the oatmeal cookies being delivered from a company-owned commercial bakery in Suisun City. While these are being processed, the milk, fresh from a co-op of farmers stretching from Santa Rosa to Stockton, is slowly cooked and settled over a two-hour period or so to give it maximum consistency. It is then homogenized, chilled and transferred to a holding tank to be mixed with flavorings like the ultra popular vanilla, chocolate, mint or coffee.

The next day, the flavored and chilled milk is run through a freezer to make it into actual ice cream, of which 1,200 to 1,400 gallons are made daily. It then moves along to an ice cream cutting machine which takes off just the right amount for creating individual serving sizes. Each freshly-cut chunk is then placed on one oatmeal cookie and topped by another before being enrobed in a dark chocolate coating.

The chocolate, fresh like everything else in the process, comes from Union City's Blommer Chocolate.

The final It's It, after another day of rest in a freezer, is shipped off to a store and ultimately into the mouth of a sweet-toothed consumer.

The It's It plant churns out other products daily besides its namesake. There are old-time classics like the Super Sundae, an ice cream bar dipped in chocolate and rolled in roasted peanuts and the Big Daddy, a vanilla ice cream and dark chocolate wafer ice cream sandwich.

There's also a new treat on the block.

It's It, said Shamieh, recently embraced the low-carb craze with the release of their Carb Freeze ice cream bar. This health-conscious treat, dipped in chocolate and rolled in roasted peanuts like the Super Sundae, is produced using a sugar substitute and has five grams of carbs.

"Some of our distributors indicated there was a demand for a product like this," said Shamieh as he talked about the two-month-old product.

Low-carb craze or not, It's It still knows where its fan loyalty lies and why.

"When you say the name," said Shamieh. "It evokes either curiosity (for those who have never heard of it) or sweet memories. For us, once you have a formula which works like this has, you don't mess with it."