What Is The History Of Stewart's Shops

Stewart’s shops are located across upstate eastern New York and southern Vermont. They originated from Percy and Charles Dake in 1921 in the town of Greenfield, New York where they set forth making Dake’s mouthwatering, irresistible rich ice cream. The two brothers started Saratoga dairy just fourteen years later in Saratoga Springs, New York. In 1938, Percy and Charles bought an ice cream production facility in Ballston Spa, fifteen minutes south of Saratoga Springs, from Donald Stewart. They began selling directly to the public, which was soon after considered the first Stewart’s shop. Saratoga Dairy and Stewart’s ice cream formally incorporated within the state of New York in 1950, and just in short five years later there were over 50 Stewart’s shops.

This was resolved in favor of Stewart’s shops when they developed a strong idea of vertical integration (selling products at high quality, with reasonable costs). As a result of the decision with the US Department of Agriculture, the cost of retail milk dropped by a total of twenty five percent. In 1959, the second generation Charles S. Dake took over and over the span of the 1960’s the company was one of the largest private dairies in the eastern United States. In 1978, William Dake takes over and ten years later Stewart’s shops quickly add forty stores by acquiring the Bonfare chain. In 2003 William Dake retires, and becomes chairman of the board, while his son Gary Dake becomes the president of Stewart’s