The Chocolate Moose upgrades venue, menu

After 63 years in a small stand on Walnut Street, Bloomington favorite the Chocolate Moose is expanding.

While the stand will still operate like usual during the summer, the additional building will stay open year-round beginning April 1.

“It just seemed like such a waste (to close during the winter); we have so many people craving it by the time we open, myself included,” owner Jeff Grossnickle said. “We’ll close (the stand) for business, but all the equipment will stay over there. We’ll prepare the food, bring it over here with a waitress service so we can stay open.”

The building, located next door to the stand, is the original location of a restaurant that local resident “Grandpa May” operated from 1933 to 1947.

After a trip to Florida, where he first saw a soft-serve ice cream machine, May purchased one for his restaurant and his business took a new direction.

“He soon found the place was filled with young people eating ice cream; that was the hot new craze — soft-serve ice cream,” Grossnickle said. “After a couple months of hardly anybody buying regular food, he said, ‘If all we’re going to sell is ice cream, we just need one of those little beat shacks.’ He created that in his mind, and they built it, and in ’48 it moved over there.”

Grossnickle is using the expansion and the tradition of creative energy with new general manager Steve Schroeder on many new Moose products.

“We (have) a lot of new projects: (more) custom ice cream, shipping ice cream, the gift shop, soups,” Grossnickle said. “We’re trying to do a lot more local stuff, like buying meat locally and our chocolate locally.”

Along with working to finish construction of the building and working with new recipes, Schroeder is helping to create a new line of pastries.

“I am working in particular with the pastry chef (Erinn Williams). We teamed up to do the homemade ice cream cakes,” Schroeder said.

The Moose will still serve fan favorites like the grasshopper and other basic flavors but can add new flavors and varieties with the new space.

Grossnickle said he is planning to work with Bloomington restaurants to craft custom flavors that will only be sold at that location, as well as catering to the greek system.

“What’s nice about not being a franchise is we can experiment,” Grossnickle said. “If it flops, if it doesn’t make any money, we say, ‘Well, that didn’t work,’ and do something else. Experimentation has been fun.”

Grossnickle never expected to own the Moose. When he went to buy his annual half gallons of ice cream to make it through the winter in 2008, he discovered the stand would be closing permanently. Tim May, the youngest grandson of the original owner, had decided to not open the next season.

“I worked here for eight years in the ’70s,” Grossnickle said. “Some of my greatest memories of junior high and high school were here.”

Grossnickle went home to talk to his wife and family and returned with a plan to buy the business from May. He then made May an offer and after that, he said he knew he was in the ice cream business.

“Everybody came together and wanted the Moose to survive,” Schroeder added. “People grew up here, people went to school here; that’s what’s so neat about it.”

While the original family members are no longer the owners, Bloomington residents who have grown up around the Moose now run it.

Jeff Grossnickle and his wife Joani, along with Schroeder and many other workers, have fond memories of the stand.

“My dad worked here when he was in high school, and other members of my family have worked here through the years,” Bloomington High School North junior Andrew Capshew said, who has been working at the Moose for two years. “It’s kind of a family tradition.”

Demi Labarr, assistant manager and a freshman at Ivy Tech, said she always came to the Chocolate Moose as a little kid.

The loyal customers and strong sense of community helped keep the business running during the initial change of ownership. Thousands of dollars went into updating equipment and fixing plumbing and wiring issues.

After minor resistance to the change in ownership, everything began to go well, Grossnickle said.

“We’re a tie between the community and the University,” Joani Grossnickle said. “Everybody loves the Moose.”

With movie showings projected on the side of the stand every weekend and a new option of having kids parties, the Moose works to serve its customers in a variety of ways.

“There’s a lot of pride in the ice cream we make,” Schroeder said. “We’re not trying to be the same as anybody else.”