Today
Three scoops
The waffle cone
Any three off the board, pressed cone, eat it before Arizona gets to it.
Our story
Milwaukee, 1919.
Arizona, now.
Walter Hartwell opened his first soda fountain in Milwaukee in 1919 with a hand-crank freezer, a marble counter and one rule: make it properly or don't make it. The recipe book outlived the shop by a long way.
A century later, that book came west. Hartwell's opened in Gilbert, Arizona — not as a franchise stamped out of a manual, but as a parlor built around those original recipes. A handful of close friends went in together as owners, which is the short explanation for why the people behind the counter actually seem glad you came.
The rule hasn't changed since Milwaukee: quality first, quantity second. Real ingredients, traditional methods, and a board of thirty-four flavors that has to earn its space.
See you at the counter. The Hartwell's crew · Gilbert, Scottsdale & Peoria
