Within a couple of years, she opened the company’s first satellite store and
all through the Roaring 20’s, the Great Depression, and World War II Regina
continued to grow the business. Called “boss” by all of the employees
(including her sons!), she expanded the business into a network of stores
that spanned Cincinnati. She continued to live above the McMillan street
retail store until her death in 1955. Louis Charles Graeter may have
founded the business, but Regina made it blossom. Undoubtedly, without her,
there would be no Graeter’s Ice Cream today.
Following her death, her sons Wilmer and Paul took over the business.
A few years later, Wilmer ushered in the third generation when his three sons, Lou, Dick,
and Jon joined the business, followed by their younger sister Kathy a few years later.
Over the next three decades they made the name Graeter’s synonymous with ice cream in
Cincinnati. Today, the Graeter family still operates over a dozen ice cream parlors in
Cincinnati, including the Hyde Park store that Regina opened in 1922. Graeter’s also has
ice cream parlors in Columbus and Dayton, Ohio, as well as in Northern Kentucky,
Lexington, and Louisville.
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