The GREEK Immigrant Who Invented Soft Ice Cream and Founded CARVEL in The USA

Tom Carvel (Athanasios Thomas Karvelas) was born in Athens, Greece in 1906, and at the age of 4 he immigrated with his parents to New York.

In 1932, he borrowed $15 from his then girlfriend and future wife, Agnes Stewart, and bought a used truck from the back part of which, he sold ice cream. On May 30, 1934, on Memorial Day in New York, Tom Carvel, was driving his truck fully loaded with ice cream, when he had a flat tire, a damage that at the time stalled him on the roadside. The ice cream was slowly melting and Tom ran to the nearest shop (a pottery workshop) to get electricity and “save” the ice cream.

When he returned to his truck, he saw that many people had gathered and asked what kind of “soft ice cream” this was. Tom seized the opportunity, set up a bench and started selling ice cream. Until then, ice cream in the United States was exclusively hard, frozen, and his “new customers” were thrilled with this “innovation”.

Two years later, in 1936, he bought the pottery workshop from which he tried to get electricity, turned it into his first ice cream shop “Carvel” and soon refined his idea, thanks to his mechanical skills he built a machine which retained the – made in confectionery – ice cream in soft texture and patented the particular patent. Tom Carvel was the first man in the world to invent what we now know as “soft serve ice cream”.

After World War II, Carvel’s business evolved into one of the forerunners of the type of commercial development we call “franchise”. In 1947 he patented his own brand of chain, while establishing his own school, where he trained new employees.

The “Carvel” stores reached the number of 700, by 1981, and Tom Carvel wrote history in America. The “soft ice cream patriarch”, with his distinctive appearance, evolved into a cult figure on American television. Carvel’s ice creams have appeared in television series and episodes of The Simpsons, where there has been a mimicking episode. Likewise, in a sketch of the “Saturday Night Live” show.

Today, Carvel operates a chain of 341 ice cream outlets in the USA and Puerto Rico. The company also sells ice cream cakes in more than 8,500 supermarkets.
Tom Carvel passed away in 1990, at the age of 84.
Watch 1982 Letterman interview of Tom Carvel: