Chocolate Cooler Co.

1892 - 1920

The Chocolate Cooler Company manufactures candy manufacturers’ furniture and also ice cream refrigerators. The chocolate cooler is a cabinet with iceboxes above and below. The fresh chocolate candy is placed in the cabinet to cool and harden. The ice cream refrigerators are seen in drug stores and other places where ice cream is sold at retail. It is an icebox or chest with a galvanized iron cylinder about a foot in diameter instead of the familiar square box. Within this cylinder is an inner cylinder of perforated galvanized iron. The inner cylinder is just large enough to permit a five-gallon ice cream can to slip in. When the ice cream can has been placed the space between the inner and outer cylinders is paced with ice and an insulated cover is put on. The ice cream is then safe for at least twenty-four hours even in the hottest weather. These refrigerators are made in different sizes and also for milk and oysters. Car-lot shipments are not uncommon and orders have come as far away as from Australia.Manufacturer of "The Grand Rapids"� ice cream cabinets and refrigerators, special ice cream and confectioners' tables, and refrigerators for florists.

1892:  Peter J. VanderLinda and Herbert M. Dickinson are listed as proprietors of the Chocolate Cooler Co with Mr. Dickinson as manager.

1898:  Joseph Goeldel is president of the company and Philip Fritz the manager.

1911 to 1919:  Fritz Manufacturing Co. and the Chocolate Cooler Co. operate out of the same address, 423-431 Alabama NW, and with the same management. 

1920:  Company name was changed to Grand Rapids Cabinet Co. and run by Philip Fritz and his son, Edward M. Fritz.