“I went to school at Miami, so I was very familiar with (Oxford),” he said. “I studied business and finance, so this had almost a serendipitous quality to it,” Graeter said.
The new store will be at 29 W. High St., in the former location of the Blink Boutique, said G. Alan Kyger, Oxford’s economic development director. That boutique closed in June 2014, having been the longtime home of the Miami Beach Tanning Salon years before that. Renovations of the building are under way.
The Graeter’s in Oxford will primarily be an ice cream store and will not sell baked goods like some of the Cincinnati stores do, but it will sell candy, Graeter said. The chain, which already has a Butler County location in West Chester Twp., has been expanding, adding stories in northern Kentucky, the west side of Cincinnati, Over the Rhine and in Chicago.
The Oxford location measures 2,000 square feet and will have 15 to 20 employees, most of them part time, Graeter said.
Oxford’s other ice cream locations include United Dairy Farmers, the Orange Leaf yogurt chain and Spring Street Treats, a local store that sells soft-serve ice cream. That would make Graeter’s the only location with a primary purpose of selling scooped ice cream, Kyger said.
Graeter said that he’s aiming for a May opening to attract Miami students before they leave on summer break, but “this will be a nice amenity for folks who live in Oxford year-round.”
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