Graeter's

First generation

Graeter's was founded in 1870 by Louis Charles Graeter, who was of German ancestry, with his wife, Anna. At first, he sold the ice cream at the Court Street Market at the base of Sycamore Hill in Cincinnati's Pendleton neighborhood. At the time, ice cream was considered a novelty, but the business quickly gained a following in the neighborhood. The business established a storefront on Sycamore Street. By 1883, the business employed three men and had two wagons delivering ice cream. Around that time, though, Louis Graeter stepped away from the business, taking $1,000 and leaving it in debt. His brother, Fred Graeter, maintained the business after Anna left, bringing it out of debt. Louis Graeter spent time in Stockton, California, where he remarried for a time and eventually returned to Cincinnati around 1900. It was around this time that the ice cream business began producing its product in French pots. Louis Graeter married a third time, to Regina Berger, the daughter of a prominent Cincinnati businessman with a strong reputation in the community. Together, Graeter and his new wife set up a home at 967 East McMillan St. in the Walnut Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati producing and selling ice cream on the bottom floor of the property.

Second generation

Louis Charles died in 1919 at 67 after being hit by a streetcar, and his wife took over the business while continuing to raise their two sons, Wilmer and Paul. It was at this time that she sought to expand the business, growing the size of the McMillan Street location and opening a second location on Walnut Street in downtown Cincinnati, followed by a third at 2704 Erie Ave. in the Hyde Park neighborhood. By 1929, the shop had locations in Norwood, Madisonville, Avondale, and Pleasant Ridge as well. In order to support the volume of ice cream being produced, the business in 1937 opened an ice cream and chocolate production plant in a former printing press facility on Reading Road in Mount Auburn.

While business remained steady through the Great Depression, the shop faced challenges during World War II thanks to the nationwide rationing of sugar, as well as lack of available manpower. But the shop grew with the population boom after the war and it opened new locations in the Oakley, East End, and Bond Hill neighborhoods after suburban sprawl began in those areas. Still, it closed other store locations as demographic shifts prompted relocation of business.

After World War II, and with new manufacturing processes and the proliferation of the refrigerator, Graeter's faced challenges from competitors who could mass-produce ice cream. Among its competitors was Aglamesis Bro's, another family-owned business opened in Cincinnati, as well as United Dairy Farmers, which grew quickly. Graeter's and Algamesis Bros., in particular, are routinely considered to be rivals in Cincinnati, though the companies are different in size and the style of ice cream they make is different. The invention of soft serve also allowed large national chains like Dairy Queen, Carvel and Tastee-Freez to grow as well. During this time, the shop began operating a bakery with an increasing variety of goods as an added service, and stopped selling toys and other novelties.

Third generation

Regina Graeter died in 1955. Wilmer bought Paul out of the business, causing some tension within the family. Wilmer's sons, Dick, Lou and Jon were brought in to help with the business. Younger sister Kathy became highly involved in 1965, though another sister, Carol, never worked for the company beyond childhood. The ice cream business slowly gained traction and local popularity through the 1960s. The shops began selling pints that could be taken home. In this time, it faced particular competition from upscale brands with more flavors of ice cream sold in pints that could be taken home, including Baskin-Robbins, Häagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry's. Still, the company maintained a strong following in Cincinnati in the 1970s and 1980s that prevented these brands from making as strong a retail presence in Cincinnati.

Graeter's first began selling pints of ice cream to stores in the 1970s, most notably a shop in Washington Market Park in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Manhattan, New York, although pints there sold for $8.85, compared to $2.50 at Graeter's own Cincinnati stores. In 1987, a deal with Kroger allowed Graeter's to sell its ice cream inside the supermarket chain. Eventually, its distribution grew to over 2,000 Kroger stores. Graeter's has been marketed in some of Kroger's other brands as well, notably including King Soopers in Colorado. With these deals it has sought to build a national brand awareness and can now be bought in retail stores in 48 states. In some cases this has been successful, such as in Denver where, after a few weeks after introducing 12 flavors, the company was selling five gallons of ice cream a week.

Still, the business had limited growth in the 1980s, primarily because of the popularity of frozen yogurt, in chains including TCBY, brought an appeal for healthier frozen desserts. In this time it also invested in new equipment as well, first testing equipment from Cincinnati-based Alvey Washing Equipment before trying equipment created by Italian company Carpigiani, but eventually opted to bring its "French Pot" production in-house, though it did not patent the equipment.

Fourth generation

By 1989, the company produced 100,000 gallons of ice cream annually and generated $5 million a year in revenue. Jon Graeter retired from the business after an accident that year, and Kathy was brought into the business, as were Bob, Chip and Rich Graeter, sons of Lou and Dick respectively and the fourth generation of the family in the business. Wilmer died in 1991. However, undertaking succession planning with the help of University of Cincinnati experts, the business was not fully transferred to the fourth generation for over a decade. Graeter's built a $2 million expansion onto its Reading Road production facility that doubled the building in size to 25,000 square feet (2,300 m2) in 1994, borrowing $1 million in the process but adding production space for ice cream, candy and more storage. After 1994, the chain began shipping pints of ice cream outside of its store footprint as well, using dry ice-packed containers via United Parcel Service, which allowed it to ship anywhere in the United States. By 2010 they were generating $3 million a year in business, with the largest number of shipments being made to California. The business incrementally began allowing its ice cream to be sold in restaurants in country clubs as well.

"French pot process"

Louis Graeter initially stirred the ice cream by hand in a metal pail in a wooden bucket filled with ice and salt, a painstaking and expensive process owing to the rarity of ice and salt at the time. This required it to be eaten almost immediately. Eventually, though, the business developed what it later called the "French pot process," developing a hand-made, cylindrical metal bowl that sat inside a wooden bowl filled with ice and salt. This pot would then be filled with a mixture of cream, sugar and eggs. The pot would then be attached to a motor and spun, forcing the mixture to the sides of the bowl where it would freeze, being scraped off by paddle until it came together. The ice cream must be made in small batches of 2.5 US gallons (9.5 L; 2.1 imp gal) at a time, then hand-packed into cartons. This results in an ice cream that is more dense and contains 20 to 25 percent air mixed in during the freezing process, as opposed to other styles where 50 percent air is mixed in. Consequently, a pint of Graeter's ice cream weighs 1 pound (0.45 kg), and can be almost twice the weight of other styles. With 14 percent milk fat and high-quality ingredients, the ice cream falls in the "superpremium" segment of the ice cream market.

Graeter's ice cream is made using the French pot method. All their ice creams are created from an egg custard base. After pasteurization, the flavorings are added. The custard and flavoring mixture is placed into two-gallon French pots. The pots are then spun in −14 °F (−26 °C) saltwater, while a blade scrapes the cream that freezes against the sides of the pot. After 15–20 minutes of immersion in the saltwater, any larger additives are mixed in, such as cookie dough or chocolate chips. Ice cream is hand-scooped into pint containers. Graeter's makes 3,200 US gallons (21,000 imperial pints) each day. The shop markets that its ice cream is still made by hand.

Ice cream flavors

Initially, the shop offered only vanilla and chocolate flavors in a dish or a cone. It began offering seasonal strawberry, lemon, and peach flavors when the fruits were in season, expanding them to year-round flavors thanks to cold storage capabilities. Graeter's considers eight flavors, including black cherry, coffee, strawberry, butter pecan, and several sorbet flavors, as its original menu.

Graeter's sources its dairy products from nearby Louis Trauth Dairy and Smith Dairy, and later made both of them distributors of its ice cream. It has retained its recipe of cream, sugar, eggs and flavorings, and has avoided changing the recipe during health trends or amid competition from healthier frozen treat brands, or those using artificial sweeteners. Though it is gravitated to more all-natural ingredients in recent years, including substituting beet juice instead of food dye and sourcing dairy products from hormone-free cows. There are some exceptions, such as vanilla that is imported from Madagascar. It has continued to out-sell Ben & Jerry's and Häagen-Dazs ice cream at Kroger locations in the Cincinnati market, making the city the only place in the country where those brands are not top sellers in the supermarket.