The Greek inventor of the soft serve ice cream
Athanasios Thomas Karvelas was born in Athens, in 1906, and at the age of 4 he immigrated with his parents to New York, and like most expatriates, when he grew up, he tried to earn a living by doing many different jobs, including being a drummer and a test driver for Studebaker cars.
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, as he was now called, 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”.
Soon, a huge queue was created, Tom sold the ice cream and brought out the huge $ 3,500 for the season, which today exceeds $ 65,000.
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.
This ice cream was special as all...
