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Midwest ice cream icon ready for Colorado debut

By Joyzelle Davis, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published June 23, 2008 at 10:10 p.m.

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Graeter's Ice Cream

Graeter's Ice Cream

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Graeter's Ice Cream, a Cincinnati institution for 138 years, is making its Colorado debut.

Graeter's $4.99 pints in flavors such as black raspberry chip, mint chocolate chip and butter pecan are arriving on shelves at 30 King Soopers grocery stores in the Denver area, Boulder and Colorado Springs, marking the first time that Graeter's has been available anywhere outside Ohio and Kentucky.

Until now, Coloradans who wanted their Graeter's fix had to pay $80 to have six pints air freighted the next day.

"It's our very first test market and I'd love to expand it," said Richard Graeter, 44, executive vice president, who - along with his two cousins - is the fourth generation of Graeters to run the closely held company.

King Soopers parent company Kroger shares Cincinnati as a hometown with Graeter's, and has sold the company's pints in its Ohio stores for 20 years. Grae ter's recently expanded its production line and approached Kroger about distributing its ice cream in other markets.

Kroger recommended Denver, largely because it ranks the highest within the grocery store chain for purchases of "super premium ice cream," said Katie Wolfram, King Soopers' vice president of merchandising.

Wolfram said King Soopers "anticipates a good response" to Grae ter's rollout and would like to expand the line to other stores if sales are strong.

Graeter's has made ice cream the same way since 1870, using a "French pot" process in two-gallon batches that creates an ice cream so dense that each handpacked pint weighs nearly one pound. For flavors with chocolate chips, a layer of chocolate is poured into the pot, frozen into a shell and then cracked into chunks.

Graeter's will share shelf space with locally produced Denver premium ice creams, including Liks, Boulder Ice Cream and Espo's Gelato. Richard Graeter says he sees his ice cream as more of a competitor to multinational companies Ben & Jerry's and Haagen-Dazs than Colorado producers.

Ben & Jerry's and Haagen-Dazs "are corporate ice cream trying to pass itself off as authentic old world when they're mass produced," he said. "No one else is crazy enough to make ice cream the way we do on a mass scale."

Graeter's employs about 75 at its plant and another 600 at company-owned and franchised stores. The company doesn't disclose annual sales.

This will be the first time that Graeter's will enter a market without its accompanying scoop shops. Richard Graeter said the company doesn't have "plans right now" to open its own stores, but might consider it if Graeters can further boost production.

davisj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2514