Greater's Ice Cream by Robin Davis Heigel Read Free Book Online

challenging enough, during the same time it became clear that the company would have to begin replacing some of its aging French pots. Graeter’s was still using the same cypress wood vats, old tin bowls and maplewood paddles for scraping the ice cream from the sides of the pots. “We basically made ice cream on one-hundredyear-old antique ice cream machines,” Richard said.
    The family needed something new and more reliable that wouldn’t compromise the high-end, handmade quality of their ice cream. It proved difficult to find a suitable replacement.
    For a time, they turned to Alvey Washing Equipment Company in Cincinnati to make stainless steel vats to replace the cypress bowls. They switched from the maplewood paddles to a plastic composite. But the new version of the actual machine was harder to replace.
    When Dick attended a bakery trade show in 1978, he saw an ice cream maker made by an Italian company called Carpigiani that was similar to the French pot. Instead of ahand-operated paddle, it had a corkscrew scraper that turned automatically. The company bought one machine to see how it would work.
    The results were good enough that Graeter’s could achieve one of its long-term goals: making the ice cream in-store instead of just at the plant. The first place Graeter’s tried this was at the Colerain Avenue store.
    But ultimately, the Carpigiani machine didn’t work for Graeter’s. “We finally decided they weren’t heavy-duty enough for what we were doing with it,” Dick said. The machine was designed to make gelato, a slightly softer version of ice cream than what Graeter’s produced.
    But it did give them an idea of what they needed in a new French pot, and the company set to work at designing its own machine. “We probably reinvented that machine a couple of times,” Dick said. “I know we had to spend a million dollars over time, maybe more.”
    Graeter’s Ice Cream now manufactures the machines it uses for production today, still using the basic principle of the French pot. It doesn’t have a patent on the actual machine, though it considers the company that makes it to be proprietary information. Still, Dick said he doesn’t worry about anyone stealing the concept. “Nobody really wants to make product this way.”
    In the end, it’s the production that sets ice cream apart, according to Dick. All ice cream recipes, he says, are basically the same. “There’s no real secret recipe to ice cream. There’s cream, sugar and eggs,” Dick said. “I don’t care whether it’s Häagen-Dazs or Ben & Jerry’s or Graeter’s. It’s still cream, sugar and eggs.”
E XPANDING BY F RANCHISING
    With a number of retail stores running successfully, the Graeters decided to try expanding their business by franchising in the ’80s.
    In 1985, Graeter’s Ice Cream offered a license store to Lyle Brumfield. He was permitted to open one, at most two, stores in Kentucky, a new area for the company. When the arrangement worked well, the Graeters became more comfortable with the idea of a true franchise.
    In 1989, Graeter’s entered into a franchise deal with Maury Levine and Clay Cookery of Columbus. But it had taken the duo years and an inside connection to get the deal in place, though it had been their dream since just after college. “After business school, I went to work for P&G [Procter & Gamble],” Levine remembers. One of the first places new friends took him was to Graeter’s Ice Cream. “As soon as you taste it, you can instantly tell it’s better than anything else you’ve ever had. It’s a marketer’s dream.”
    Levine married Susan Sachs, who had roomed with Dick’s daughter Cindy at Miami University. Through his wife, Levine and Cookery met Dick and became social friends. After eight years, Graeter’s finally sold them the franchise. “I