Greater's Ice Cream (12 page)

Graeter's Ice Cream has undertaken a fair amount of charity work, including the development of a new flavor for a special little girl.

In 2006, the Desserich family of Cincinnati received devastating news: Their five-year-old daughter, Elena, was diagnosed with brainstem glioma, a deadly form of pediatric brain cancer. She died a few months later.

The Desseriches were determined not to let their daughter's death be in vain, so they set up a foundation, The Cure Starts Now, to educate, aid and fund the research for a cure for pediatric brain cancer. As part of their first gala fundraiser, they approached the Graeters for a contribution.

Richard said the Graeter family was touched by the story and offered to sell the opportunity for one person to create a new ice cream flavor in Elena's name. The ice cream would then be sold at the retail outlets for one month, and a percentage of the profits would go to The Cure Starts Now.

The flavor, Elena's Blueberry Pie Ice Cream, went on sale in July 2008. It sold out in two weeks. “We had to scramble to make more,” Richard said.

The Graeters decided to make Elena's Blueberry Pie Ice Cream a permanent flavor, available by the scoop and by the pint at retail stores, select grocery stores and at their website, with a portion of the proceeds continuing to go to the fund. In 2009, Graeter's donated $15,000 to The Cure Starts Now. In addition to helping to raise more funds, they sell the Desseriches' book,
Notes Left Behind
, which is filled with the drawings and notes Elena left for her family in the months before she died, tucked into books on the bookshelf, between the dishes in the china cabinet and in briefcases and backpacks.

Despite the bright future for the ice cream, the future of the candy and bakery business remains in limbo.

“The candy business and bakery business have remained flat. We're really just trying to make it reasonably profitable in those areas,” Dick said. “We lost so much money that the ice cream business has carried the bakery business.”

The family is divided on what to do with the bakery and chocolate business, which is only available in the retail stores in Cincinnati owned by the family. Richard would like to see it go away, but Kathy wants it to remain. While Dick recognizes the bottom line, he also feels the bakery adds something to the Graeter's stores that customers can't find elsewhere.

“It lends a lot of mystique to our retail stores that you don't have at other stores,” Dick said. “Our stores are pretty neat stores. They're confectionary stores. You can find these three really really good products that you can't find somewhere else. We don't necessarily convince all the people of that all the time, but it is true.”

Glass cases at Graeter's in West Chester are filled with chocolate confections and fresh-baked cakes and pastries.
Courtesy of Ken Heigel
.

Richard takes a more logical approach. “I think we have a really great bakery,” he said. “The problem with the bakery line isn't the product. The problem is people have changed their shopping patterns. They don't go to stores anymore to get bakery products. They can get it at grocery stores. They can get it at the gas station. Either get people to your store or you need to take your products to them.”

Richard hopes to develop a line of Graeter's bakery products that could be sold in the freezer section of grocery stores, something customers could warm or bake at home that would be different, and perhaps even better, than what they can even get at Graeter's stores now.

The candy business, which has been a part of Graeter's since its inception, presents similar challenges. Kathy loves the chocolates, so much so that she'll only allow herself to eat the filled Easter eggs after the holiday for fear that she would eat too many of them every day if she had that unlimited supply.

But Graeter's hardly has an exclusive edge on the candy market. “Wholesale candy is a very competitive business,” Richard said. “There are a lot of big candy companies: Ester Price, Russell Stover.” Richard feels he can't compete with them, even though he knows his chocolate is better than both.

The new plant, he says, will focus strictly on ice cream, and, for now, candy and bakery items will still be produced at the Reading Road facility.

In looking toward the future, the fourth generation also is mindful of what previous generations brought to the business. “Each generation has its contribution,” Richard said.

The first generation created and then expanded the ice cream business. The second generation expanded to the bakery business. The third generation reinvested in the current business, closing stores that weren't profitable, expanding into franchising and getting into supermarkets.

“My dad, my two uncles and Kathy ran the business twenty or thirty years,” Chip said. “They made sure they didn't take a lot out of the business, and neither do we. We're making sure we can pass it on to the next generation.”

Richard agrees. “We inherited a business, or purchased a business, I should say, that was significantly better off than the one they inherited,” Richard said of his father, aunt and uncles.

“Our contribution is what's happening now, the next plant,” Richard said. “We're working with Kroger to sell Graeter's in other cities. Shipper business, getting ice cream over the Internet came up. Some things you keep the same, like the ice cream. Some things you change, like your store locations.”

“I don't see shrinking our retail footprint, but I don't see building fifty more stores,” Richard said.

Right now, 60 percent of the business is retail, 20 percent shipping and 20 percent grocery. With the projected expansion into new markets, Richard said in ten years he sees grocery sales being 50 percent of the family business. But he'll keep some products exclusive to the retail stores, partly to keep customers coming back but, again, as a matter of practicality.

“We do what we call bonus flavors, flavors just in our stores, something special that you have to come to Graeter's to get versus something you can get at Kroger,” Richard said. “A flavor has got to really hit it big to make it to Kroger now. Because we have to invest a lot. The development of the flavor is the easy part. The art, the packaging, all of that? That costs thousands of dollars, and it can take a year.”

The family says there are no more plans for additional franchises, either. “They have been successful, but at the same time you have a lot less control of the product,” Kathy said.

In fact, in June 2010, Graeter's Ice Cream bought back the Columbus and Dayton franchises owned by Maury Levine and Clay Cookery. The office in Cincinnati now operates all of the Ohio stores. While the Graeters were happy with the franchises, they saw the purchase as an opportunity to build the relationships with Columbus and Dayton customers. Richard also says buying back the franchise helped the family maintain control of the product and the brand.

When moving into ownership of the company, Richard knew it couldn't stay exactly the same and survive. “Growth can be your enemy. People say you have to grow or die. That's not entirely true to me,” Richard said. “We could have stayed as is for a while. But you can only do that if you keep the group small. Our challenge is to grow at a pace where we don't lose what's most important, which is the quality of the product.”

And like the generations before them, this generation is doing more than making a living for themselves. “We're custodians for our turn. It's our job to make it better, to keep it in the family,” Richard said. “Part of what I think is if you set up your kids with a big pot of money in a trust fund somewhere, what kind of life is that? But if you leave them a business that requires effort to keep going, you get a better person out of that. I think we all share the same sentiment.”

Chip echoes that idea: “We'd still like to keep it a family business. I want my kids to do whatever they want to, of course, but that opportunity will be there for them, that's the idea.”

Richard said he's received many offers from people wanting to buy the company. But unlike other small ice cream manufacturers that eventually sold to large corporations, the Graeters want to keep the company in the family. “If I had a nickel for every offer, I'd be rich,” he said. “We have never seriously considered an offer.”

The fifth generation of Graeters enjoys the fruits of the family business.
Courtesy of Graeter's Ice Cream.

Kathy is proud of where the business has been and where it's going. “I think it's great heritage to have something that's been in your family for 140 years this year,” she said. “A pretty amazing event actually.”

Even without the expansion efforts, Graeter's Ice Cream is reaching a wider market than ever, to a great degree on the wings of all the positive press.

Talk show and magazine mogul Oprah Winfrey was brief but complimentary in the recommendation of Graeter's from her magazine in 2002: “You haven't tried ice cream till you've had Graeter's. The butter pecan is Stedman's favorite, and mine, too.” Winfrey also talked about Graeter's on her television show the same year. The day after she mentioned Graeter's, the company shipped four hundred boxes of ice cream to people all over the country—up substantially from the forty they usually ship.

In June 2004,
Cincinnati
magazine declared Graeter's black raspberry chocolate chip ice cream one of the foods that “define” the city, along with Virginia Bakery Schnecken, Trauth Dairy's Sour Cream and Kroeger & Sons Sausages. Here's what the magazine wrote about Graeter's:

David Rosengarten, award-winning food writer and former restaurant critic for
Gourmet
magazine, declared Graeter's the best ice cream in his wildly popular newsletter. He originally had given the honor to a small restaurant in New York in 2002, leaving Graeter's out. He was overwhelmed with letters asking how he could not pick Graeter's. Here's what he wrote in a follow-up piece in 2005: