Graeter's

Graeter's

File:Graeters.jpg
Company type	Restaurant
Industry	Restaurant
Founded	Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S. (1870)
Founder	Louis C. Graeter
Headquarters	Cincinnati, Ohio , U.S.
Number of locations	47 stores (2009)
Area served	Greater Cincinnati and surrounding areas.
Key people	Louis C. Graeter (Founder) Chip Graeter, Bob Graeter, and Richard Graeter (Owners)
Products	Ice Cream, Pastries, Candies, and much more.
Revenue	US$35,000,000
Website	graeters.com

Graeter's is a regional chain of shops offering ice cream, baked goods, and candy which originated in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1870. Their super premium, thick ice cream has been featured on Food Network, and has earned them many dedicated fans, including Oprah Winfrey.

"French pot" process

Graeter's ice cream is made in a French pot batch process. The ice cream mix is placed into a chilled, spinning French pot. As the cream freezes on the sidewall of the pot, a blade gently scrapes the pot's sidewalls, folding the slowly freezing cream into itself. It takes about 20 minutes to freeze a two-gallon batch. For flavors that include chocolate chips, liquid chocolate is poured into the pot, and freezes into a thin shell on top of the ice cream. A worker uses a blade to break up this shell and mix it into the ice cream, resulting in Graeter's famous huge dark chocolate chips.

Each batch of ice cream is only about two gallons (7.6 L) and is thus very labor intensive. The resulting ice cream is so thick that it must be hand-packed into pints (473 mL). The ice cream is sold in pint containers at Graeter's stores, and at food markets, including Giant Eagle grocery and Meijer; Kroger, also a Cincinnati-based company, in the vicinity of Graeter's stores as well as in the Dallas–Fort Worth and Houston areas; King Soopers stores (a division of Kroger) in Denver, Colorado; and in Northeast Ohio at Heinen's Markets in Cleveland and Acme Fresh Market stores in Akron. Because of the small batches and high amount of labor involved, Graeter's pints are more expensive than other brands of premium ice cream, such as Ben & Jerry's and Häagen-Dazs.

Like most super-premium ice creams, Graeter’s has a high butter fat content, between 16 and 18%. On her show in July 2002, Oprah Winfrey said: "You haven't had ice cream till you've had Graeter's. The butter pecan is Stedman's favorite, and mine, too." The company was then overwhelmed with phone and Internet orders. Today, Graeter's ships about 40,000 packages of ice cream to fans across thhe country every year.

Graeter's stores also receive ice cream in two-gallon tubs, which they scoop to make ice cream cones, ice cream sodas, and milkshakes. Graeter's also sells its ice cream online , and offers fresh baked-goods and hand-dipped chocolate.

Graeter's locations

Graeter's has stores located around Cincinnati, Columbus, and Dayton in Ohio, and around Lexington, Louisville, and Northern Kentucky. A shop opened in the Kings Island amusement park in 2005. A shop is opened in 2009 in Harrah's Horseshoe Southern Indiana casino; it is the second store in Indiana, after one in New Albany. There are three franchisees, each of which makes the ice cream in local plants. These serve the stores in Columbus/Dayton, Louisville, and Lexington/Northern Kentucky, respectively.

In 2004, Graeter's began selling its ice cream at LaRosa's, a local pizzeria, in a small personal size. Three flavors are available in the dining room, for pickup, or for delivery.

Graeter's opened its second Newport, Kentucky, retail outlet on August 3, 2007. The 1,800-square-foot (170 m²) location at 342 Monmouth St., at the corner of Fourth and Monmouth in the historic James Taylor Jr. Bank Building, is one block from Newport on the Levee. This is Graeter's second retail outlet in Newport.[1]

On October 15, 2007, Graeter's returned to its historic roots in Downtown Cincinnati when it opened a new store on Fountain Square in the heart of the city.

External links

• Graeter's official Web site