Graeter's Ice Cream: A No Fluff Customer Experience

We have to coax our organizations to deliver genuine, compelling customer experiences.  Promotional fluff alone won't cut it.  In some organizations, the only marketing they do is caretaking for the customer experience.  The rest is driven by street buzz.  Case in point, Graeters.

Graeter's is a Cincinatti-based manufacturer of premium ice cream.  What's the street buzz on Graeter's?  To die for.  Prospective franchisees call the company daily.  Conglomerates have offered to make the current owners rich in a buyout.  Oprah made the company famous by raving about it.  And, having just tried my first pint, I'm thinking of defecting permanently from my tried and true Ben & Jerry's. 

My Graeter's experience began with my peering into the ice cream freezer at my grocery store.  After a couple of minutes, the dairy manager asked me if I had found what I was looking for.  I hadn't.  My beloved Ben & Jerry's was gone. 

He departed to the stockroom and returned with a pint of Ben and Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie.  I asked what had Uncles Ben and Jerry done to warrant taking away their shelf space.  He said, "Nothing, it's a great product, but we're carrying more Graeter's.  Graeter's is the best ice cream I've ever had.  Have you tried it?" 

Sacriledge, I thought.  But, my curiosity was aroused so I replied, "No. What so great about Graeter's?"

He said, "the company only uses the best ingredients and they make it in two-gallon batches.  They use the french pot method, which avoids the need for injected air and creates a dense, rich ice cream. It's packed it by hand.  Our purchasing manager got a couple of pints of Graeter's as a gift.  He tried and said, "We have to carry this."  He called Graeter's and asked for an order but the company told him that they didn't have any way to fill the demand."  I felt like I was in a TV commercial shoot.  The only thing missing was the hidden camera. 

Fast foward a few days to a phone call I made to Graeter's headquarters. "You didn't have any way to fill that order?" I asked company president, Rich Graeter.

"We make the product the same way we did 100 years ago. It's just cream and natural ingredients, no air, no preservatives.  The french pot process requires that the product by made close to the customer and is best consumed within days of production.  We could have shipped it, but we chose not to."

Mr. Graeter explained that the 140 year-old company didn't even brand its products, selling them in plain white containers, until relatively recently. 

Street buzz, part two....I told a colleague about my Graeter's experience.  He said, "People flying out of Cincinatti carry frozen Graeter's home with them.  It's that good."