Ted Drewes Jr., the proprietor of two venerable St. Louis frozen custard stands that drew national acclaim for shakes so thick they are served upside down, and that were embraced locally as city institutions on the order of the Cardinals or the Gateway Arch, died on Aug. 26 in St. Louis. He was 96.
His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his grandson Josh Dillon.
Known for his easy charm and folksy manner, Mr. Drewes took over the family business after his father died in 1968. Ted Drewes Sr., a St. Louis native, had opened his first frozen custard stand in St. Petersburg, Fla., in 1929 while working for a carnival; he returned to St. Louis and opened his first outlet there the next year.
Putting in 80-hour work weeks overseeing the company’s stands on the city’s south side — one on South Grand Boulevard, the other on a stretch of Chippewa Street that was once part of Route 66 — the younger Mr. Drewes navigated the company for decades through evolving consumer tastes and an onslaught of competition from chain ice cream and fast-food franchises.
Despite the challenges, the small company did big business. It has sold roughly 150,000 gallons of custard per year for decades. Locals who crowded the stands during muggy Midwestern summers learned never to confuse the Ted Drewes product with regular ice cream.
“We’re not soft ice cream,” Mr. Drewes said in a 1981 interview with The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “We’re soft, and we’re ice cream. But what you’re really talking about there is ice milk. We’re richer. Frozen custard has more eggs and butterfat, and in our case a little honey.”
Word of Ted Drewes custard spread nationwide. In a 2004 article in The New York Times, R.W. Apple Jr. called it “a paragon among iced desserts” and observed that its formula, which includes at least 10 percent butterfat and at least 1.4 percent eggs by weight, “makes it smooth as a newborn’s cheek.”
In the scorching summer months, patrons formed lines that wrapped around the walk-up stands for Ted Drewes cones, sundaes and cups, as well as the famous shake known as the concrete, which is served inverted to show off its gravity-defying properties. Concretes account for roughly 70 percent of the stands’ business, Mr. Dillon said, and have attracted prominent devotees over the years.
The acclaimed chef Danny Meyer, a St. Louis native, included his own riff on the famous frozen custard at his Shake Shack chain. Another celebrity chef, Bobby Flay, extolled the glories of the concrete in a segment of the Food Network show “The Best Thing I Ever Ate.”
“Few people have played as big and sweet a role in shaping the identity of St. Louis as Ted Drewes Jr.,” the city’s mayor, Tishaura O. Jones, said in a statement after Mr. Drewes’s death.
Theodore Raymond Drewes Jr., one of three children, was born on Feb. 17, 1928, in St. Louis. His mother, Mildred (Schaefer) Drewes, worked as a carhop at the custard stands in the early days and remained active in the business.
His father was a prominent local tennis champion who won 15 Municipal Tennis Association singles titles between 1916 and 1935. “The reason Dad went into the ice cream business was so he could play tennis all year round,” Mr. Drewes told The Post-Dispatch. “That’s the difference between my father and me. I allowed myself to get captured by the business. He never did.”
After graduating from Normandy High School in 1946, Mr. Drewes, a standout in tennis, riflery, speed roller skating and table tennis, attended Washington University in St. Louis. He majored in economics, but grades were not his primary concern.
“I graduated from Washington U. with a degree in fun,” he joked in a 2015 oral history for the State Historical Society of Missouri. “My idea of going to school was to play on every intramural sport there was.”
He met his future wife, Dorothy Wehmeyer, in college. They married in 1950.
She survives him, as do his daughters, Christy Dillon and Cynthia Verseman; six grandchildren; two step-grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.
After graduation, Mr. Drewes went to work full time for the family business as it was facing notable challenges. “In the 1950s, Dairy Queen had really put a dent in our business,” he said in the oral history, “and there were a proliferation of eating places, so we were no longer the only drive-in in town, so to speak.”
Dairy Queen officials would later credit Mr. Drewes with the inspiration for the chain’s explosively popular Blizzard, an extra-thick soft-serve ice cream shake introduced in the 1980s and known, like the concrete, for its array of sugary toppings, including chopped-up Heath bars, M&Ms and Oreos.
“My dad was really downhearted, and he was thinking of retiring,” he said, “at which point I would have to go out and find other work. I had started working there at 14 years old, and it was really in my blood.”
In response, Mr. Drewes started a seasonal Christmas tree business in the parking lots of the custard stands that soon spread to parking lots around the city. In 1959, he introduced the gooey treat that would become to St. Louis what the egg cream is to New York.
Mr. Drewes had sampled a similar product at the Parkmoor, a popular St. Louis drive-in, and came up with his signature concrete after one of his customers kept pleading for a thicker shake, prompting Mr. Drewes to serve him an upside-down one.
“We charged a nickel more for a concrete,” he recalled in the oral history. “And after we had them for about five or six years, one day I talked to my sister Margie. I said, ‘Margie, what would happen if we charged the same for a concrete as we do for a regular malt?’ She said, ‘You know what would happen.’
“Well, what happened,” he said, “is that we ended up getting a lot of business, because that became our signature.”
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