Thomas Grim, BA '75

Football fan turned businessman 

A passion for football unexpectedly propelled Thomas Grim, B.A. ’75, into the chocolate and ice cream business. Grim is co-owner of Thomas Sweet, an enormously popular chocolate shop and ice cream parlor in Princeton, N.J.

A Western New York native, Grim got a high school job at the Blasdell motel where the Buffalo Bills lived and practiced during training camp. Grim explains, “In the summer the motel had a snack bar for the fans that came to watch the Bills. My goal was to get a job there as a dishwasher and work through the winter. Then, when the training camp came, I would work in the snack bar. I worked all winter and then that year the Bills moved their training camp to Fredonia. So I never got to do that job.” The upside? While working at the motel, Grim befriended the bartender, Thomas Block, B.A., ’69, a fellow UB student who later became Grim’s business partner. “During the Erie County Fair a lot of the people who worked at the Fair stayed at the motel,” Grim says. “My partner was always impressed because one particular guest always had a ton of cash. Tom found out that he made fudge at the Erie County Fair. We said, ‘We could do that,’ and so we started making fudge and selling it at fairs in upstate New York.”

The Taste of Success

After college their fudge business evolved into a chocolate shop in Pennsylvania, and in 1980 they moved to their current location near the Princeton campus. Within a few months, the university, who leased the space, asked them to open an ice cream store next door. Grim recalls, “The university said they wanted to jazz up Princeton, which was really a sleepy town at that time.” The only problem? Grim laughs, “We didn’t know the first thing about making ice cream. The first ice cream we made was absolutely horrible. My partner’s brother tasted it and said, ‘This is the worst thing I have ever eaten!’ So we called in some people and we eventually got it right. Our goal is to make the best ice cream possible.” Judging from the ice cream shop’s year-round popularity, the UB grads have done just that – you’ll find ice cream-loving students at Thomas Sweet at 10 p.m. in the middle of winter, and in the summer 150 people lined up nightly.

Uncertain times

Grim’s entrepreneurial skills grew out of necessity. “We were a very poor family,” he says. “My father worked at Bethlehem Steel and we barely got by – there were five kids.” Growing up in small towns where “there was no expectation that you would ever go to college,” Grim became “the first person in [his] entire lineage to graduate from college.” A philosophy major with a minor in photography, Grim paid his own way through UB while also helping to support his family. The university’s proximity to home and its affordability made it the right choice for him. Of his time outside of the classroom Grim relates: “I was there during the whole Vietnam thing, which was a very exciting time to go to school. I participated in a lot of marches. And we lived right off campus across from a firehouse where the cops would practice firing tear gas. It would waft into our house. It was exciting to feel part of a revolution and to have a cause that you really believed in and fought for.”

Sweet Rewards

The success of Thomas Sweet has allowed Grim to pursue his favorite hobbies, including photography and travel. He and his family have visited several countries in Europe, as well as Alaska, Hawaii and Mexico. Malta, where his wife’s family is from, is another frequent destination. Back in Princeton, Grim helped launch the first Thomas Sweet Outdoor Cinema Series during the summer of 2004. As a film buff, Grim says he had talked of doing such a festival for years and finally “found a location at a park in town and we picked 12 great movies – all different kinds – and had crowds of 300 to 600 people come out.” Grim, the self-dubbed “artistic director,” now enjoys previewing films for future festivals.

Grim also maintains hometown connections. His mother still resides in Western New York. And his love for the Buffalo Bills continues. In fact, he brought his two young sons to all of the Bills playoff games in the early 1990s. He says, “There are a lot of great things about Buffalo. The first thing that I do when I go back is go straight to Bocce’s [Pizzeria]. We lived on Bocce’s when I went to college. Buffalo has great food.” Coming from one of the men behind the celebrated Thomas Sweet Chocolates, this is high praise indeed.

Written by Jessica Dudek, BA '94
March 2005

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