Carvel was founded and run by Tom Carvel for its first 60 years. In 1929, Tom Carvel built and began operating a frozen custard trailer. For Memorial Day weekend of 1934, Carvel borrowed $15 from his future wife Agnes to buy a load of frozen custard to sell to holiday vacationers. When the truck suffered a flat tire in Hartsdale, New York, Carvel started selling his custard at the site of the breakdown, the parking lot of a pottery store. Within two days, his entire stock, much of it partly melted, had been sold, and Carvel realized that both a fixed location and soft (as opposed to hard) frozen desserts were potentially good business ideas. In his first year there, he grossed over $3500. By 1937 he had a custard stand at the Hartsdale site, with a freezer which allowed him to make his own frozen custard. By 1939, gross was over $6000. The original Hartsdale store was closed on Sunday, October 5, 2008.
In the early 1940s, Tom Carvel traveled, selling custard at carnivals, while his wife Agnes ran the Hartsdale location. During World War II he ran the ice cream stands at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, gaining additional expertise in refrigeration technology. He soon invented and patented his own freezer, the "Custard King", and in 1947 sold 71 freezers at $2900 each. Some of the freezer purchasers defaulted on payments on the units, and upon investigation, Carvel found that they were not running their businesses efficiently, choosing poor locations and not always maintaining high health standards. Carvel decided that the best way to correct the situation was to participate in running the operations of his freezer customers; he later claimed this led him to develop the concept of franchising.
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 and Connecticut, 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.
In 1989, an aging Tom Carvel sold the corporation to Investcorp for over $80 million. In 1991, headquarters was moved to Farmington, Connecticut.
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 was for most of its history a regional business, most strongly based on the East Coast of the USA. As the business climate has changed, so has some of the focus of the brand. There are, as of 2005, approximately 530 retail franchises, far fewer than at their peak. Carvel branded products are available in over 9500 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's M&M's characters. Focus Brands is based in Atlanta, GA, Celebration Foods is based in New Britain, Connecticut.
In August 2007, the current owner of the very first Carvel store in Hartsdale revealed that he had applied for permission to knock down the store and develop a retail strip on the property.
In October 2008, the current land owners where the first Carvel stands stated they need to put a larger restaurant on the property to make back their investment and the first Carvel store would be closing.
In late March 2009, the Hartsdale location (first Carvel location) was completely demolished. A Japanese restaurant will replace the iconic birthplace of franchising.
6 янв 2010
