Carvel is an American ice cream
franchise
Franchise may refer to:
Business and law
* Franchising, a business method that involves licensing of trademarks and methods of doing business to franchisees
* Franchise, a privilege to operate a type of business such as a cable television p ...
owned by
Focus Brands.
Carvel is best known for its
soft-serve
Soft serve, also known as soft ice, is a frozen dessert, similar to ice cream but softer and less dense due to air being introduced during freezing. Soft serve has been sold commercially since the late 1930s in the US.
In the US, soft serve is ...
ice cream and ice cream cakes, which feature a layer of distinctive 'crunchies'. It also sells a variety of novelty ice cream bars and ice cream sandwiches. Its slogan is "America's Freshest Ice Cream".
Carvel operates a chain of 320 ice cream outlets, mostly concentrated in the
Northeast United States
The Northeastern United States, also referred to as the Northeast, the East Coast, or the American Northeast, is a geographic region of the United States. It is located on the Atlantic coast of North America, with Canada to its north, the South ...
and Florida. It has locations across 20 states and Puerto Rico, located in high-traffic areas such as airports, malls, and sports arenas. The company also sells ice cream cakes in more than 8,500 supermarkets.
Since 2001, the corporation has been owned by
Roark Capital Group and operated as part of
Focus Brands. As of 2020, the Carvel corporate website reports "more than 400 franchise and foodservice locations in more than 20 states and over 10 countries."
Novelty ice creams
Carvel popularized various novelty ice cream items, such as the "Flying Saucer", a circular
ice cream sandwich
An ice cream sandwich is a frozen dessert consisting of ice cream between two biscuits, skins, wafers, or cookies. The ingredients are different around the world, with Ireland and Israel using wafers, and North America using chocolate cookie ...
, the "Icy Wycy", a paper cone of
sherbet on a stick, "Brown Bonnet" and "Cherry Bonnet," frozen vanilla ice cream on a sugar cone dipped in a sweet, waxy confection, the "Tortoni", a cup of vanilla ice cream covered with toasted coconut and topped with a maraschino cherry, and the "Lollapalooza", cylindrical ice cream on a stick covered with colored
sprinkles
Sprinkles are very small pieces of confectionery used as an often colourful decoration or to add texture to desserts such as brownies, cupcakes, doughnuts or ice cream. The tiny candies are produced in a variety of colors and are generally use ...
, as well as the "Mamapalooza" and "Papapalooza".
The mainstays of Carvel's line of ice cream cakes were 7- to 12-inch rounds, 10 x 14 and 12 x 17-inch
sheet cake
A sheet cake or slab cake is a cake baked in a large, flat, rectangular cake pan. Sheet cakes are usually 2 inches deep, although they are sometimes 3 inches deep. These single-layer cakes are frequently frosted, with decorations and ornamental ...
s, and the "Carvelog", a log-shaped cake made in a cylindrical mold. In addition to
Cookie Puss,
Fudgie the Whale and Hug-Me the Bear, there were special cakes for most major holidays, including a "Flower Basket" for
Mother's Day
Mother's Day is a celebration honoring the mother of the family or individual, as well as motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of mothers in society. It is celebrated on different days in many parts of the world, most commonly in th ...
, "Hoot The Owl" for June
graduations
Graduation is the awarding of a diploma to a student by an educational institution. It may also refer to the ceremony that is associated with it. The date of the graduation ceremony is often called graduation day. The graduation ceremony is al ...
, "Dumpy the Pumpkin" and "Wicky The Witch" for
Halloween, "Tom the Turkey" for
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Philippines. It is also observed in the Netherlander town of Leiden ...
, "Seamus The Leprechaun" or "Cookie O'Puss" for St. Patrick's Day, and
Santa Claus or a "Snow Man" for
Christmas
Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. A feast central to the Christian liturgical year ...
. Most of these were made from one of a limited number of molds; the Santa Claus cake had a two-pointed hat because the mold was ordinarily inverted and used the rest of the year to make Fudgie the Whale, who had a tail. Their primary differences from products available year-round were the designs on the icing.
Carvel introduced the Lil' Love ice cream cake on March 30, 1998. The commercials, which first appeared in its introduction, show small children in special situations, such as losing a
baby tooth, starring in a class play, getting an A in a school class, and getting new glasses (sung to the tune of "
Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay
"Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay" is a vaudeville and music hall song. Its first known public performance was in Henry J. Sayers' 1891 revue ''Tuxedo'' in Boston, Massachusetts. The song became widely known in the version sung by Lottie Collins in London music ...
"). A mother presents the new cake to celebrate. All ads carry the tag line ''Surprise someone special tonight.''
History
Carvel was founded and operated by
Tom Carvel for its first 60 years. In 1929, Carvel borrowed $15 ($ today) from his future wife Agnes and used it to buy and operate an
ice cream truck
An ice cream van ( British) or ice cream truck (North American) is a commercial vehicle that serves as a mobile retail outlet for ice cream, usually during the spring and summer. Ice cream vans are often seen parked at public events, or ne ...
. Over
Memorial Day
Memorial Day (originally known as Decoration Day) is a federal holiday in the United States for mourning the U.S. military personnel who have fought and died while serving in the United States armed forces. It is observed on the last Monda ...
weekend of 1934, Carvel's truck had a
flat tire
A flat tire (British English: flat tyre) is a deflated pneumatic tyre, which can cause the rim of the wheel to ride on the tire tread or the ground potentially resulting in loss of control of the vehicle or irreparable damage to the tire. The mos ...
in
Hartsdale, New York
Hartsdale is a hamlet located in the town of Greenburgh, Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 5,293 at the 2010 census. It is a suburb of New York City.
History
Hartsdale, a CDP/hamlet/post-office in the town of Green ...
. Carvel sold his custard at the site of the breakdown. Within two days Carvel had sold his entire stock, much of it partly melted. He realized that a fixed location and soft (as opposed to hard) frozen desserts were good business ideas. In his first year, he grossed over $3,500. By 1937 he had a custard stand at the Hartsdale site, with a
freezer
A refrigerator, colloquially fridge, is a commercial and home appliance consisting of a thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump (mechanical, electronic or chemical) that transfers heat from its inside to its external environment so th ...
which allowed him to make his own frozen custard. By 1939, gross was over $6,000.
In the early 1940s, Tom Carvel traveled, selling custard at carnivals, while his wife Agnes ran the Hartsdale location. During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
he ran the ice cream stands at
Fort Bragg in
North Carolina
North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and ...
, gaining expertise in refrigeration technology. He invented and patented a freezer, the "Custard King", and in 1947 sold 71 freezers at $2,900 each. Some freezer purchasers defaulted on payments on the units. Upon investigation, Carvel found that they were running their businesses inefficiently, choosing poor locations and not always maintaining high health standards. Carvel decided that the best course was to participate in running the operations of his freezer customers. He later claimed this led him to develop the concept of franchising.
Franchising and advertising
In 1949, Carvel began franchising under the name "Carvel Dari-Freez". By the early 1950s, the company had over 50 stores. New franchisees undertook an 18-day training program at the "Carvel College of Ice Cream Knowledge", and were sent an in-house magazine called "The Shopper's Road". In addition Carvel provided building plans for franchises, which were initially stand-alone glass fronted stores.
In 1955, Tom Carvel began to record his own
radio commercial
In the United States, commercial radio stations make most of their revenue by selling airtime to be used for running radio advertisements. These advertisements are the result of a business or a service providing a valuable consideration, usually ...
s.
An unsubstantiated anecdote relates that he was driving in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
, and heard a commercial for a new Carvel's store which did not mention the new store's location. Convinced he could do better, he drove to the radio station and did the next commercial himself. True or not, from 1955 onwards, Carvel recorded nearly all of the chain's advertising, eventually maintaining an in-house production studio at the headquarters offices, and becoming something of a regional celebrity.
Carvel's commercials stood out and raised
brand awareness primarily through their lack of sophistication. Carvel had a distinctive "gravelly" voice, lacking the "slick" sound of most professional voice-over artists, and all his narration was unrehearsed. His wording was conversational, with commercials frequently ending with the words "Thank You". Television commercials, aired primarily in the "tri-state area" of
New York,
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
and
Connecticut
Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...
, began in 1971. Accompanied by the familiar Tom Carvel narration, footage showed the products, and employees in the stores; very few graphics or effects were used.
Promotions were part of Carvel's practices from their earliest days. In 1936, they had a "Buy One Get One Free" promotion, and in later years had various contests. They were an early adopter of corporate sponsorship of various events and tie-in promotions, including a tie-in with the
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. They are one of ...
.
A long-running and well-known campaign was the "Wednesday is Sundae at Carvel!" discount.
Further developments
![Carvel, closed](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Carvel%2C_closed.jpg)
In 1956, Carvel transformed the Hartsdale location into their first "Ice Cream Supermarket" by adding freezer cases containing pre-made cakes and novelty items which customers could choose and purchase.
In 1955, Carvel began its "lease back land offer" program, in which a potential investor could buy land, build a franchise, then lease it back to the corporation.
Carvel experimented with various ice cream vehicle options for most of its early history. Vehicle concepts included a scooter (circa 1957) and a custom truck, the "Carvehicle", for which they applied for several patents (circa 1958).
A dispute with franchisees came to a head in 1962. Independent owners attempted to buy products from outside the corporate supply chain (in conflict with their contracts), maintaining that the company was deliberately overcharging them. Carvel argued that the franchisees were trying to use inferior ingredients. As well as the immediate impact on corporate cash flow, this hurt the corporate image, reducing the chain to 175 stores. When the corporation tried to enforce this contract, the
Federal Trade Commission sued them for
restraint of trade. Legal proceedings reached the
Supreme Court of the United States in 1964, with the corporation emerging victorious.
In 1967, the corporation bought the Westchester Town House Motel, on Tuckahoe Road in
Yonkers, New York
Yonkers () is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States. Developed along the Hudson River, it is the third most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City and Buffalo. The population of Yonkers was 211,569 as en ...
and renamed it the Carvel Inn, converting it for use as corporate headquarters, while still operating it as a hotel, providing them with a conference center for the annual franchisee conventions.
During the late 1970s, Carvel attempted to distinguish itself from other purveyors of soft-serve ice cream by claiming that its ice cream machines did not infuse the product with air, unlike the competition. During the 1970s, when dieting and fitness became more popular, Carvel began offering a low-fat frozen dessert called Thinny-Thin ("Thinny-Thin, for your fatty-fat friends"), and a frozen yogurt product called Lo-Yo. From 1973 to 1975, Carvel published a promotional
comic book
A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...
.
In 1983,
Saturday Night Live
''Saturday Night Live'' (often abbreviated to ''SNL'') is an American late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Dick Ebersol that airs on NBC and Peacock (streaming service), Peacock. ...
parodied Carvel's ad campaigns during its season 9 episode 7 show, with
Joe Piscopo
Joseph Charles John Piscopo ( ; born June 17, 1951) is an American actor, comedian and conservative radio talk show host. He was a cast member on ''Saturday Night Live'' from 1980 to 1984, where he played a variety of recurring characters. His f ...
portraying Tom Carvel becoming increasingly troubled by a franchisee's line of X-rated Christmas cakes shaped like breasts, buttocks, testicles and penises. The same year, the
Beastie Boys released their first single, ''
Cooky Puss
"Cooky Puss" is the debut single by Beastie Boys. The song is their first hip hop recording, their first release featuring band member Adam Horovitz, and their final release to feature drummer Kate Schellenbach. It was released in 1983 as a ...
'', which included audio of the rap band making prank phone calls to a Carvel store.
By 1985, there were 865 stores with an income of over $300 million.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s,
Howard Stern
Howard Allan Stern (born January 12, 1954) is an American radio and television personality, comedian, and author. He is best known for his radio show, '' The Howard Stern Show'', which gained popularity when it was nationally syndicated on terr ...
used a vocal harmonizer to imitate the "outer space" voice of Cookie Puss that was used in Carvel's TV advertisements. Stern also made frequent references to longtime co-worker
Fred Norris
Eric Fred Norris (born Fred Leo Nukis; July 9, 1955) is an American radio personality and the longest-tenured staff member of ''The Howard Stern Show'', aside from Stern himself. He first met Howard Stern while working at WCCC-FM, a radio stat ...
's cluelessness and cheapness in having once given his mother a Cookie Puss cake as a Mother's Day gift.
In 1989, an aging Tom Carvel sold the corporation to
Investcorp for $80 million.
In 1991, its headquarters was moved to
Farmington, Connecticut
Farmington is a town in Hartford County in the Farmington Valley area of central Connecticut in the United States. The population was 26,712 at the 2020 census. It sits 10 miles west of Hartford at the hub of major I-84 interchanges, 20 miles ...
. On December 11, 2001,
Roark Capital Group, a private equity firm, purchased a controlling interest in Carvel Corporation from
Investcorp. Investcorp became a minority share holder.
![Carvel co-branded 2018](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Carvel_co-branded_2018.jpeg/1200px-Carvel_co-branded_2018.jpeg)
Carvel was for most of its history a regional business, most strongly based on the east coast of the United States. As the business climate has changed, so has some of the focus of the brand. There are, as of 2018, approximately 418 retail franchises and food service locations,
far fewer than at its peak. Carvel branded products are available in approximately 9,500
supermarkets. Celebration Foods has pushed the brand's presence from 30 states in 2004 to 49 in 2008, allowing them to form merchandising partnerships with national brands, such as ice cream cakes featuring
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin at ...
's
M&M's
M&M's (stylized as m&m's) are multi-colored button-shaped chocolates, each of which has the letter "m" printed in lower case in white on one side, consisting of a candy shell surrounding a filling which varies depending upon the variety of M&M ...
characters. Focus Brands is based in
Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
, Georgia, Celebration Foods is based in
New Britain, Connecticut.
In August 2007, Abdul Faghihi, the owner of the original Carvel location in Hartsdale revealed that he had applied for permission to knock down the store and develop a retail strip on the property. The Hartsdale store was closed on October 5, 2008. In March 2009, the store was demolished to make way for a Japanese restaurant.
In 2015, Carvel started to open
co-branded
Co-branding is a marketing strategy that involves strategic alliance of multiple brand names jointly used on a single product or service.
Co-branding is an arrangement that associates a single product or service with more than one brand name, o ...
stores with
Auntie Anne's
Auntie Anne's is an American franchised chain of pretzel shops founded by Anne F. Beiler and her husband, Jonas, in 1988. Auntie Anne's serves products such as pretzels, dips, and beverages. They also offer Pretzels & More Homemade Baking Mix fo ...
and
Cinnabon.
there were 371 Carvel franchises worldwide, with 324 in the US.
See also
*
List of dairy product companies in the United States
This is a list of dairy product companies in the United States. A dairy product is food produced from the milk of mammals. Dairy products are usually high energy-yielding food products. A production plant for the processing of milk is called a dair ...
*
List of frozen custard companies
This is a list of notable frozen custard companies that manufacture or purvey frozen custard. Frozen custard is a cold dessert similar to ice cream, but includes a significant amount of eggs, and it typically has a denser consistency.
Frozen cus ...
References
External links
Official websiteSmithsonian Institution Carvel archives pageHoovers Company Factsheet
{{Fast-food chains of the United States
Companies based in Hartford County, Connecticut
Economy of the Eastern United States
Regional restaurant chains in the United States
Dairy products companies of the United States
Restaurants established in 1929
Ice cream parlors in the United States
Frozen custard
American companies established in 1929
Ice cream brands
Farmington, Connecticut
1929 establishments in New York (state)
2001 mergers and acquisitions