The Velvet Ice Cream Company

About The Velvet Ice Cream Company

Working together as a family, each generation of the Dager family has contributed to Velvet’s success, and today is no different. With Joe as chairman and his daughters running the day-to-day operations, Velvet continues to grow. The fourth generation of the Dager family, Luconda, President, and Joanne, Vice-President, continue to carry on Joseph Dager’s dream. With the help of Joseph’s sons Ed and Charlie, Velvet Ice Cream grew into a thriving business. In the 1930s, Velvet built a manufacturing plant behind the confectionery and began selling ice cream to near-by grocery stores and restaurants expanding into Columbus in 1937. Eventually this booming business outgrew its space in downtown Utica and in 1960 it was time to move. By this time, the third generation of Dager’s, Joe and Mike, were playing a major role in running the company. Ed Dager, 2nd generation president of the company, started looking for Velvet’s new home. They found the perfect site to support Velvet’s growth on the outskirts of Utica. The site had an old gristmill built in 1817. The Dagers thought the mill was a great representation of the old-fashioned goodness and loving care that Joseph Dager put into his hand-cranked ice cream. With that, they restored the historic mill and it not only became their new headquarters, it became their trademark and appears on Velvet Ice Cream’s packaging to this date. This year marks 103 years of business for Velvet Ice Cream. Founded in 1914 by Joseph Dager, four generations of Dagers have since run the company, which is located in Utica, Ohio on 25 acres of the perfect combination of wooded countryside and rolling, pastoral farmland. Still family-owned and operated, Velvet produces and distributes more than five million gallons of ice cream every year from its headquarters on the grounds of Ye Olde Mill. Ye Olde Mill also houses an ice cream and milling museum, a restaurant, playground, picnic area and catch-and-release fish pond.More than 150,000 people visit this family-fun destination every year to learn about Velvet and enjoy a delicious taste of ice cream history! Named by Frommer’s as one of America’s 10 Best Ice Cream Factory Tours, Velvet’s Ye Olde Mill welcomes 150,000 visitors each year for tours, tastings and events. The annual Ice Cream Festival (May 27-29, 2017), group tour experiences and school learning field trips are among the many draws to Ye Olde Mill, which is open to the public April 01-Oct. 31.