Getting There

Overview

Ted Drewes is a family-owned frozen custard company in St. Louis, Missouri. The business was founded by Ted Drewes, Sr. in 1929. The shop on Chippewa Street (designated as a section of historic U.S. Route 66) is open much of the year, while the South Grand Boulevard location is open from mid-May through late August.

Its signature dish is the "concrete," a serving of frozen custard so thick that it is customarily presented to the customer upside down.

History

Ted Drewes started making frozen custard while working for a carnival and opened his first fixed location near St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1929. The first St. Louis shop began serving in 1930 on Natural Bridge Avenue near Goodfellow Blvd. Less than a year later, it was moved westward along the avenue. A second location was opened at 4224 South Grand Blvd. in 1931. In 1941, a third location opened at 6726 Chippewa Street, on one of the alignments of U.S. Route 66 through St. Louis. The Natural Bridge and Florida locations had closed by 1958, but the Chippewa and South Grand locations remain open.

For decades, the Grand Avenue location was the flagship store, serving what was then a densely populated urban area in the neighborhood of Dutchtown and near the neighborhoods of Tower Grove South, Gravois Park, Bevo Mill, Holly Hills, and Carondelet. The Chippewa location served as an outpost near the city limits for travelers heading to or returning from an Ozark weekend getaway.

Between the population shifting west in the city and Route 66 drawing more crowds, the Chippewa store became the flagship location. The South Grand location now opens only for the summer months.

In 2019, Ted Drewes celebrated 90 years of serving frozen custard.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ted Drewes", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0