Ted Drewes Frozen Custard

Ted Drewes was founded in 1929 by Ted Drewes Sr., a Wisconsin-born former vaudeville performer who relocated to Florida and opened a frozen custard stand in St. Petersburg before moving the operation to St. Louis in 1929. The original St. Louis location was on Natural Bridge Road in north St. Louis; the iconic Chippewa Street location opened in 1941 and quickly became the flagship as Route 66 traffic on Chippewa drove substantial business. Ted Drewes Sr. ran the business through the 1950s and 1960s and gradually transferred ownership to his son Ted Drewes Jr.

Ted Drewes Jr. — known to virtually everyone as just 'Ted' across decades of public appearances — became the public face of the business in the 1960s and continued personally working at the Chippewa stand into his 90s. Ted Jr. died in 2024 at age 95; the Drewes family continues to operate the business under the third generation. Ted Jr.'s decades-long visibility at the Chippewa Street stand — he routinely worked the service windows, signed autographs for tourists, and gave informal tours to Route 66 enthusiasts — was a significant part of what made Ted Drewes feel personal and genuine rather than a corporate Route 66 souvenir.

The business has remained family-owned across nearly a century of operation, which is genuinely unusual for nationally-known Route 66 institutions. The Drewes family has resisted franchising opportunities, expansion to other cities, and licensing arrangements that would have made the brand more profitable but would have diluted its specific St. Louis identity. The two operational locations — the Chippewa Street flagship and the seasonal Grand Boulevard outlet — remain the only Ted Drewes stands in existence.

The 'concrete' is Ted Drewes's signature menu item and the reason most visitors travel to the stand — a frozen custard milkshake blended with mix-ins (fruit, candy, nuts, syrups, or any combination) to a viscosity so thick that the staff turns the cup upside down to prove it won't fall out before handing it to the customer. The upside-down service is theatrical and a bit silly, but it is genuinely the standard service technique — every concrete is handed upside down across the service counter, the customer takes the cup, rotates it right-side-up, and begins eating with a spoon.

The frozen custard base is a slow-churned vanilla custard made with eggs, cream, milk, and sugar; the recipe and the production technique have been essentially unchanged for nearly a century. Custard is denser than ice cream (less air whipped into the mix during freezing) and richer (egg yolks add fat and emulsion). The resulting product is the foundation that makes the concrete shake work — a thinner ice-cream base would simply not hold the upside-down geometry.

Mix-in options span the conventional (chocolate chips, M&Ms, Reese's pieces, brownies, fresh strawberries, fresh bananas, hot fudge, marshmallow) and the slightly more interesting (tart cherries, Heath bar, Butterfinger, peanut butter, malt powder). Custom combinations are encouraged; the menu lists about 30 pre-designed concretes by name (the Cardinal Sin, the All Shook Up, the Hawaiian Delight, the Strawberry Shortcake) but customers can specify any combination they want. The Cardinal Sin (vanilla custard, tart cherries, hot fudge) is the marquee signature and the standard recommendation for first-time visitors.

The Chippewa Street stand operates as a walk-up custard window — there is no indoor dining, no seating beyond a few picnic tables in the small surrounding lot, and no air-conditioned space. Customers approach one of the service windows, order from the staff (who frequently know regulars by name and order preference), pay, and walk away with their concrete or other custard product. The walk-up service is genuinely first-come-first-served and lines on peak summer evenings can extend 50+ feet down the sidewalk.

The aesthetic is preserved mid-20th-century Americana. Neon signs flash 'Frozen Custard' and 'Concrete' in colors that have been essentially unchanged for decades; the small white building has wooden trim and old-school service windows; the surrounding lot is paved with concrete that has aged into a familiar mid-century texture. Cars idle in the small parking lot or along Chippewa Street while customers walk up to order. The aesthetic is unmistakably Route 66 — the visual experience genuinely transports visitors to the Mother Road's commercial peak, and the family-owned authenticity prevents the Disneyland-quality nostalgia that some Route 66 stops project.

The Chippewa Street location operates seasonally with the busiest months running from late spring through early fall (April through October). Summer evenings draw crowds — sometimes substantial — that overflow the parking lot and queue down the sidewalk. Winter operation is shorter hours (typically 11am-9pm rather than 11am-10pm) but the stand remains open daily through December. The annual mid-January maintenance closure typically lasts 2-3 weeks; check the Ted Drewes website (teddrewes.com) for current operating dates.

Beyond frozen custard, Ted Drewes operates a Christmas tree lot on the Chippewa property each holiday season — a tradition dating to the early 1930s when Ted Drewes Sr. realized that the custard business slowed substantially in winter and wanted to provide year-round income to his staff. The tree lot operates from approximately Thanksgiving weekend through Christmas Eve, selling fresh-cut Scotch pines, Frasier firs, white pines, and Douglas firs that are trucked in from Wisconsin and Michigan farms. Tree pricing typically runs $40-100 depending on size and species.

The Christmas tree lot has become its own St. Louis tradition — many local families specifically buy their tree from Ted Drewes each year as part of multi-generational holiday rituals, and the lot's seasonal opening is covered by local news as a marker of the Christmas season's arrival. The lot operates in parallel with the custard stand during the late November through December weeks, which means visitors can pick out a Christmas tree and order a concrete from the same property.

Some Christmas-season visitors specifically combine the tree-shopping experience with a concrete order — the contrast of holding a frozen custard milkshake while walking through a Christmas tree lot in 30-degree weather is a peculiarly St. Louis seasonal experience. The Drewes family has maintained the tree lot through every season for over 90 years; the unbroken tradition is part of what gives Ted Drewes its specific cultural weight beyond just the Route 66 history.

Ted Drewes is the natural closing stop for any St. Louis Route 66 day. The classic full-day plan: morning Gateway Arch (3-4 hours), lunch at Pappy's Smokehouse, mid-afternoon Chain of Rocks Bridge (1 hour), and early evening Ted Drewes for a concrete on the way to a downtown hotel or to continue west on Route 66. The Chippewa Street stand is about a 15-minute drive from the Gateway Arch and 10 minutes from Pappy's.

For families with kids, Ted Drewes pairs naturally with a City Museum visit earlier in the day — the City Museum's physical exhaustion produces ideal conditions for a celebratory concrete on the drive home. The Cardinal Sin (with cherries) and the All Shook Up (with peanut butter and bananas) are the standard family-friendly orders. Smaller sizes are available for kids who want their own concrete rather than sharing a parent's.

For Route 66 travelers continuing west, Ted Drewes is a logical 'last St. Louis stop' before driving the I-44 corridor toward Pacific, Stanton, Cuba, and beyond. The Chippewa Street location sits on the historic Route 66 alignment through south St. Louis; departing Ted Drewes and heading southwest on Watson Road and I-44 follows essentially the same path Route 66 travelers would have used in the 1940s. Springfield is 200 miles southwest via I-44; Cuba is 75 miles southwest and a natural overnight if the day has been long.