Graeters Icecream!

Cincinnati is home to Graeter's ice cream. Graeter's, founded in 1870 by Louis C. Graeter, is a Cincinnati tradition with Graeter's French Pot ice cream, handmade chocolate confections and fresh baked goods found at locations all over the city. Today, the Graeter family, consisting of three grandchildren and three great-grandsons of Louis Graeter, still faithfully use the over one-century old recipes and methods of production in the Reading Road plant.

In the mid 1800’s, the Graeter family emigrated from Germany to a farm in Madison, Indiana. Louis left home at age 16 and came to Cincinnati, where he began making ice cream by hand at the base of Sycamore Hill. After meeting with success there, he moved up to Walnut Hills and where he began making candy in addition to ice cream at his new shop on the corner of Gilbert and Curtis. In 1879, Louis, his brother Fred and Fred’s wife Anna moved their growing ice cream and confection shop to 473 McMillan Street. They operated the business together until 1888, when Louis left Cincinnati for California.

Fred and Anna moved the shop in 1889 to Vine Street and continued the ice cream and confection business without brother Louis for the rest of the 1800’s. In 1899, Louis returned to Cincinnati and married Regina Berger, daughter of Anton Berger, who was president of the Julius J. Bantlin Company and the Calhoun Loan and Building Company. Together they opened a store on East McMillan Street which eventually grew into the modern day Graeter’s.

After Louis Regina and her two teenage sons Wilmer and Paul continued the tradition of quality Louis Graeter began back in 1870, and began opening additional stores in other Cincinnati neighborhood communities in the 1920’s. Finally, in 1934 the business outgrew its McMillan Street location and the family moved the manufacturing part of the business to its present day location at 2145 Reading Road.

Today Graeter's has stores located around Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton in Ohio, and around Lexington, Louisville, and North Kentucky.

(Source Graeters.com)