How a young UC Davis graduate invented Dole Whip, a Disney theme park staple

Kathy Westphal spent more than 40 years creating foods eaten around the world, crafting everything from slushee drinks to calorie-rich meals designed to treat acute malnutrition in developing nations. Yet she’s best known for her first project after graduating from UC Davis in 1982, a frozen treat that spread from Disney parks to the rest of the United States.

At just 24, Westphal invented Dole Whip in the company’s San Jose laboratory. The dairy-free pineapple soft serve (other flavors such as raspberry, lime and mango came later) started out at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in 1984 and became a universally beloved fixture at the company’s California and Florida theme parks before landing in grocery stores last year.

Disney adults and children alike devoured Dole Whip at the amusement parks, giving it a cult following that inspired countless imitators before Dole began selling the fruity concoction at large. Carmichael cafe Nature’s Goodness tops their housemade oat milk soft serve with a dollop of Dole Whip, while Old Sacramento’s Boxcar Eats serves three flavors to heat-stricken tourists.

“It was designed to be this refreshing true fruit. Not a candy flavor, just a real refreshing, juicy, sweet-tart (dessert),” said Westphal, now semi-retired in Atascadero. “Vanilla ice cream is nowhere near as refreshing as something cold and fruity.”

A year prior to inventing Dole Whip, Westphal (then Kathy Smith) was a food science major making mint ice cream with UC Davis’ food tech club, the only club member of legal age to buy the necessary crème de menthe.

The ice creams were mostly for fun, but the students used the food science department’s pilot plant, and Westphal got good at making frozen desserts. Dole awarded her a scholarship during her senior year, then hired her upon graduation.

Westphal’s first project was to create a fruit-forward, just-add-water soft serve mix that didn’t require refrigeration. It was the kind of task the company might have otherwise assigned to an intern, she said.

After much trial and error, Westphal landed on the formula. Dole employees then took 46-pound cubes of her pineapple juice concentrate to a facility that reduced it to juice crystals, then shipped those to a Chicago company to mix with sugar, binding gums and coloring.

The mixture was placed in secure pouches and shipped to Disney World, where employees combined it with water in giant buckets and poured the resulting solution into soft serve machines. That’s still the way it’s done today, Westphal said.

Westphal went on to work for Venezia Italian Foods before spending the final 30 years of her career at Mattson, a food and beverage consulting company based in the San Francisco Peninsula.

She didn’t realize that Dole’s “Rodney Dangerfield of desserts,” an internal nickname for the lack of respect management gave it at the time, was a national phenomenon until about a decade ago. Even 15-20 years ago, most people she told about her creation didn’t know what it was, she said.

Today’s version of Dole Whip has more artificial ingredients but tastes mostly the same, if bit icier and faster-melting, Westphal said. No other dessert would do for her retirement party last summer.

“I just think its really cool that it’s kind of a thing now,” Westphal said. “Of all the things I’ve worked on, it’s surprising that that’s the one that lasted ... and it seemed to become popular later in its life.”

What I’m Eating

Rejoice, downtown Sacramento workers: an excellent new breakfast-and-lunch spot has emerged on the ground floor of affordable housing development 7th & H Apartments. Little Morocco Cafe, opened by Moroccan immigrant Jamaleddine Kabbaj in February, celebrates the North African nation’s cuisine with trademark touches of warm hospitality.

The halal restaurant (menu boards are designed to look like Islamic arches) doubles as a caffeine bar, where a small espresso corner plays second fiddle to cups of mint-infused green tea poured from ornate silver kettles. Couscous is a Friday-only special, along with mahi mahi in spiced cream sauce, but tagines and kebabs are available throughout the week along with Moroccan-influenced salads and sandwiches.

That tea pairs great as a breakfast pick-me-up with baghrir ($4.50), a trio of miniature pancakes soaked in honey and butter. Made with semolina flour, they’re left unflipped in the pan to fill with spongy air bubbles.

Dates and harissa-tossed chickpeas add some flair to Little Morocco Cafe’s green and quinoa salads. The Marrakech chicken sandwich ($11) is an unassuming gem served with krinkle-cut fries: lemon-marinated shredded chicken, salty green olives and a touch of heat meld beautifully together on the chewy baguette.

France has bœuf bourguignon, Mexico has birria and Morocco has tangia ($17), the name of both the beef dish and the clay pot in which it’s cooked. Two slow-cooked hunks of tender, stringy beef were bathed in a delicious yellow sauce made with preserved lemon, saffron and cumin.

Little Morocco Cafe

Address: 716 7th St., Sacramento.

Hours: 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Friday.

Phone: (916) 246-0009

Website: https://www.littlemorocafe.com/

Drinks: Tea is the house drink, but there’s a coffee bar as well, and refreshing mint and strawberry lemonades for the summertime heat.

Vegetarian options: All breakfast items and salads are meatless, but only the Berber veggie delight sandwich (grilled eggplant, zucchini, red bell peppers and harissa aioli on a baguette) and Friday couscous among the heartier items.

Noise level: Quiet.

Outdoor seating: None.

Openings & Closings

▪ Saffron, a sit-down kebab house with Persian and Afghan influences, opened Aug. 2 at 1392 E. Main St., Suite B in Woodland. Look for items such as kalubi pulao (slow-cooked basmati rice pilaf with lamb, raisins and carrots) or grain bowls with koobideh kebab meat.

▪ Pier 50 Sushi Bar opened Monday at 330 Palladio Parkway, Suite 2045 in Folsom’s Palladio shopping center. It’s the second location (an Arden Arcade iteration opened in March) for the all-you-can-eat Japanese concept owned by Fukumi Restaurant Group.

▪ Nash + Tender just opened at 8451 Elk Grove Blvd., Suite 10 in Elk Grove’s Laguna 99 Plaza. Armando Rodriguez’s halal hot chicken joint — not to be confused with Nash & Proper — has preexisting locations in Stockton and Lodi, plus a former location in Folsom that closed last year.

This story was originally published August 15, 2024 at 5:00 AM.