Welcome to Kaiser’s Grateful Bean Café & Old Fashioned Soda Fountain
Prepare yourself for a trip back in time when living was quieter, simpler and slower and, perhaps, gentler. You have just arrived at Kaiser’s. It’s a sweltering summer day. You eagerly anticipate the sheer enjoyment of an ice-cold ice cream confection. Kaiser’s has recently re-located here—10th & N Walker—from 7th & N Robinson where it was established in 1910—seven years ago. The Bolsheviks have overthrown Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and have established the Soviet Union. The Great War will end in one year and our doughboys will be coming home. The Great Pandemic of 1918 is still one year away: 50 million souls will die in the world; nearly 1 million in the U.S. People are arriving for diversion and refreshment; the Interurban Railway is rumbling nearby and Model T automobiles slowly proceed through this busy five-point intersection. For a moment it is still 1917…
Kaiser's Ice Cream Parlour is an icon in the Oklahoma City area. Anthony J. Kaiser came here from Switzerland in 1909, with 50 cents in his pocket, a 3-qt. ice cream freezer, and a head full of family recipes - or so the story goes. After opening a confectionery shop elsewhere, he moved his business to this location in 1917. This is a one-story painted brick building with large display windows on the north and east. Above the windows on the east side of the building, wonderful stained glass windows made in Italy can be seen. There are two entrances, at the corner on the east side, and the center of the north side. Beneath the windows on the outside, black tile is laid, with the words Kaiser Ice Cream in white tile. Inside, you step back into history as you enjoy the pressed iron ceiling, and the mahogany fountain and back-bar area, with its engraved mirrors and stained glass cabinet doors. The fountain counter is decorated with tiles, and the seating is true early-American vintage. Throughout the decades, ice cream was made here, first with hand-cranked freezers until electricity made the job easier. Ice cream was made with rock salt and ice and was hand-packed in 36 flavors. Nothing but pure ingredients were used - no extracts or substitutions. Exotic ice cream, ices, punches and frozen puddings were their specialty. And beautiful ice sculptures made from hundreds of molds were ordered by the citizens of Oklahoma City. Their products were so pure that hospitals locally and beyond ordered their ice cream, including Johns Hopkins Hospital which was known to order from Kaiser's. The Kaiser family operated here with its homemade, hand-packed ice cream until 1977, at which time it was purchased by another ice cream worshiper who kept the operation going untouched until 1990. After sitting vacant, it was reopened as the Grateful Bean in 1994. That business is back again in 2016 to present the old fashioned Kaisers Grateful Bean Café. he Grateful Bean neon sign is once again on display in the window of Kaiser's, marking the return of Peter K. Schaffer and a tradition of giving a “second chance” to ex-felons, recovering addicts and others struggling to get a job. The Kaiser's Ice Cream building, 1039 N Walker in Midtown, is set to celebrate its centennial next year, and Schaffer is hoping to get the good times at Kaiser's going again. . The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Schaffer acquired the building in 1992 It re-opened in April 1993 after having been closed for four-years. The Grateful Bean Café survived some of Midtown's darkest days and developed a loyal community following that fell in love with his staff and the ice cream made from scratch on premises. Schaffer's love of Kaiser's dates back to 1975, when as a soldier at Fort Sill in Lawton, he visited the ice cream shop.
“I was mesmerized with the building, the pressed-in tin ceiling, the tiling on the soda fountain, the soda fountain itself; it was bringing me back to my childhood in New York,” Schaffer said. “When the building became available this was something I wanted to be a part of.”
From 1992 until 2010, Schaffer operated Kaiser's as the home of the nonprofit Grateful Bean Project, which sought to create opportunities for those struggling to enter the job market.
“The area has transformed. It's vibrant. It's alive. There is so much going on, so many places to shop and visit, and people moving into the area,” Schaffer said. “It's a complete renaissance.”
Alberto Fonseca, who helped manage the Grateful Bean during its prior run, was back on Wednesday preparing for a reopening by late April. A long list of repairs and preparations are written on paper covering the front door.
“We are restoring the soda fountain, which includes the 1950 Coke dispenser, the soda fountain itself, which is also from 1950,” Schaffer said. “They are functional now. The freezers are functional. We are restoring the gooseneck arms. You can't make a root b**r float and you can't make a Brown Cow without the gooseneck arms controlling the carbonated water.”
Some of the beloved personalities that worked at Kaiser's previously have passed, though Schaffer is hopeful at least one Grateful Bean veteran, Ola Hall, once again will man the soda fountain. The nonprofit model, however, was no longer feasible when Schaffer ended the Grateful Bean in 2010. So the new operation will be run as a for-profit restaurant.
“The mission will be exactly the same,” Schaffer said. “We hire people down on their luck — the person out of the penitentiary, the single mom whose husband has run off, folks out of drug rehab, the people who want a second chance. We are keen on preserving the Kaiser Tradition: homemade ice cream. To those who remember how good Kaiser's was, Kaiser's still is. It's back.”
