It’s the tale of two Gifford’s this month after a Maine ice cream company with a similar name purchased Silver Spring-based Gifford’s Ice Cream and Candy.

Gifford’s Ice Cream, based in Skowhegan, Maine, bought Gifford’s Ice Cream and Candy on Oct. 12, said Lindsay Gifford-Skilling, vice president of sales with Gifford’s in Maine.

“It was basically, to be honest, the next logical step for growth for us,” Gifford-Skilling said. “Over the years, there’s been quite a bit of confusion over the two names. We just thought it would be in everyone’s best interest for there to be one Gifford’s.”

Gifford’s opened its first store in Silver Spring in 1938, and, at one point, it had stores across Washington, D.C., and its suburbs. The company has changed owners over the past 70 years. In 2010, the company sold its storefront scoop shops to a separate owner. The owner of the shops filed for bankruptcy protection later that year and closed its storefronts, said Neal Lieberman, one of the owners of Silver Spring Gifford’s.

Gifford’s in Maine is working out the sweet details. Gifford-Skilling said the company will eventually bring Gifford’s in Silver Spring under its label, and, for the short term, it does not plan to open ice cream stores or stands in the Washington area.

The company also is dealing with the question of ice cream formulas, she said. Gifford’s in Silver Spring makes a heavier ice cream and sells 20 flavors. Her company makes a slightly lighter ice cream in around 50 flavors, Gifford-Skilling said.

“As far as what that’s going to look like as far as formulas, we will be getting input from customers and distributors and going from there,” Gifford-Skilling said.

Lieberman bought the Silver Spring Gifford’s with his partners in 2004. He said he will remain in Silver Spring representing Gifford’s, along with employees from the Maine Gifford’s.

He said the two companies have been in talks for the past four years about company trademarks.

“Going back 50, 60 years ago, they were Gifford’s and they were up in Maine, and we were Gifford’s in D.C., and there was no Internet, and neither company was distributing far out of their territory,” Lieberman said.

Under the new deal, the two companies will be combining their food service sales to places such as restaurants and hotels, but the Silver Spring Gifford’s would still run its sales to grocery stores separately, Lieberman said.

“Now we will have more great products to sell,” he said. “We think it will be a good fit.”

Gifford-Skilling’s family has been making ice cream almost as long as the Gifford's in Silver Spring. Her great-great grandfather made ice cream at his dairy farm in Connecticut in the 1950s. The family moved to Maine in the early 1970s, where her grandparents bought a dairy and ran a milk home delivery service.

The Maine Gifford's started moving back to the ice cream business in 1980, when it opened an ice cream stand in Skowhegan. It opened a second stand in 1982, and the family sold the milk portion of the business in 1983 to another Oakhurst Dairy in Maine and decided to concentrate on selling premium ice cream, Gifford-Skilling said.

The company still uses some of her great-great grandfather’s recipes, and owns five ice cream stands in Maine. It also sells to grocery stores, colleges, hospitals and others throughout New England, Gifford-Skilling said.

With the purchase of the Silver Spring Gifford’s, Gifford-Skilling said her family’s company will look into expanding in the Mid-Atlantic region.

“We are kind of just taking it all in and seeing what might make sense for us,” she said.

ktousignant@gazette.net