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about 1927. The duo decided to see if customers preferred ice cream in a softer state, before it was completely frozen. When they found that it was a hit with consumers, they started looking for machinery that would make it possible. In 1939, they found the necessary equipment. They opened the first Dairy Queen in 1940, and the phenomenon took off from there.
    The competing story is that soft serve ice cream actually came from Thomas Carvelas, who was forced to sell partially frozen traditional ice cream on the streets in New York after he had a flat tire while delivering the fully frozen version. When customers loved it, he started making the softer version and selling it regularly. In this version of soft serve history, Carvelas actually invented the machine that creates the soft ice cream.
    By 1956, soft serve ice cream consumption was increasing by 25 percent a year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And by that year, the three major chains—Dairy Queen, Carvel and Tastee-Freez—had more than two thousand locations across the country between them.
    Another change Graeter’s had to deal with was not in terms of competition but in advances in technology. The invention of the home freezer made it possible for customers to store ice cream at home. “In the ’30s before the war most of the refrigerators had one little freezer compartment that wasn’t separate. You really couldn’t store ice cream. Any ice cream that you got you had to eat right away or you bought it out somewhere,” Dick said. “When freezers were separated from the refrigerators, that really led to all the frozen food business. That did change the business significantly.”
    Attitudes after the war changed, too, Lou said. “Everybody stayed home and watched TV.”
    Staying home and being able to eat ice cream at home led to the production of ice cream novelties such as the Cho Cho Bar, basically chocolate ice cream on a stick, which was sold for a nickel.
W ILMER ’ S W AYS
    As for their own childhood, Dick, Lou and Kathy Graeter, Wilmer’s oldest daughter, say they don’t remember actually eating that much ice cream. “I don’t think we did eat much ice cream when we were kids because I don’t think he brought it home,” Dick said of his father. “Ice cream was more of a treat in those days.”
    But Dick and Lou both remember their father being able to eat a large quantity of ice cream.
    What Kathy remembers most about her father is his work ethic. “He was always a very hard worker. He enjoyed what he was doing all the time,” she said. “He had a real appreciation for what the product is: unique, something special.”
    It was also Wilmer, Dick and Lou believe, who came up with the idea of adding chocolate chips to the ice cream. Those chips and the way they are added are one of the hallmarks of the Graeter’s Ice Cream enjoyed today.
    â€œHoward Johnson made the first chocolate chip ice cream. And everybody kind of copied from them,” Dick said. But the way Graeter’s adds chocolate chips to its ice cream is unique and hasn’t changed since they started doing it: melted chocolate mixed with a small amount of vegetable oil is added to the spinning pot of cream, sugar and eggs when the ice cream is almost completely frozen. (The vegetable oil guarantees the chocolate will melt in the mouth at the same temperature as the ice cream, Dick says.) It spins for a fewminutes to harden into a shell and then is scraped off by hand with a paddle into the ice cream, resulting in different size chunks. It is a process that can’t be duplicated by the big continuous freezers, Dick says.
    â€œThey have a fruit feeder that adds the chips at some point when the ice cream is partially frozen. But they can’t do it the same way we do it,” he said. “Ours comes out with actual pieces of chocolate of different sizes. You can’t