Graeter's For All

Anyone who talks to me for two minutes about ice cream will learn that I am utterly faithful to Graeter's.  I grew up with it in Cincinnati, eating it every single day after school... "chocolate chip in a cup with a cone on top and chocolate sprinkles, please."  The only time my order ever changed was in June, strawberry chip month (when they were still doing flavor of the month(s)).

last day of high school

Graeter's was founded in 1870 and is still today a family-run operation.  They make all of their 'scream in small batches - two gallons at a time using the French pot process - in a facility on Reading Road - a main artery in Cincinnati. When I moved to New York in 2002, people were just getting excited about Il Labratorio del Gelato.  I could not understand what was so special about this gelato.  Having grown up on Graeter's, it was pretty difficult to approve of anything else.  Throughout my years in New York and in all of my travels, domestic and foreign, I have always looked but never found anything that remotely compares to the creaminess and satisfaction that is Graeter's (Bi-Rite, I am sorry.  This includes YOU!) The chips in a scoop of Graeter's are incomparable.  Huge chunks of chocolate that form when liquid chocolate is poured into each batch are a dream - imagine getting a candy bar-sized block of brown randomly throughout your years of scoops.  It happens just frequently enough to keep you wanting more.

I always had dreams of opening a Graeter's franchise in New York, just to show people here what they were missing.  Sure, you can order it by the pint anywhere in the US, but there's nothing like getting a fresh scoop from the parlour.  Last week in Cincinnati, I had Graeter's everyday.  I even snuck it into the movie theater (When they say Irresistible, they mean it.).  Naturally, talk of Graeter's comes up almost everytime I am visiting my home town, so this time, when my friend Eric mentioned their big expansion plans, you can only imagine my surprise.  He pointed me towards an article to get the details. I'd always wondered why the businessmen behind Graeter's weren't expanding beyond the tristate (Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana), but apparently they were thinking the same thing I was.

After a year of negotiations and searching out sites (some outside of the Motherland), they decided to keep the product Cincinnati-based. They've recently broken ground for the new 28,000 sq foot plant, which, by 2010, will start producing enough Graeter's for the entire nation.  The ice cream shop plans to stock Kroger brand grocers throughout the nation.  They've already started shipping to Denver, Dallas and Houston.  Supposedly, nothing about the French pot press will change; they'll simply be making more room in both their freezer facility and blending area.  But who knows, are my dreams of having national access to Graeter's set up for failure?  Will there be reason yet to still return to Cincinnati for my fixes?  Will the entire line be ruined?  We'll just have to wait and taste.  But for now, I'm marking this as a joyous occasion - the more Graeter's, the merrier.