Mainly concentrated in the Northeast United States and Florida, its stores are primarily located in high-traffic areas such as airports, malls, and sports arenas.

[citation needed] In addition to Cookie Puss, Fudgie the Whale and Hug-Me the Bear,[6] there were special cakes for most major holidays, including a "Flower Basket" for Mother's Day, "Hoot The Owl" for June graduations, "Dumpy the Pumpkin" and "Wicky The Witch" for Halloween, "Tom the Turkey" for Thanksgiving, "Seamus The Leprechaun" or "Cookie O'Puss" for St. Patrick's Day, and Santa Claus or a "Snow Man" for Christmas.

In 1929, Carvel borrowed $15 ($270 today[8]) from his future wife Agnes and used it to buy and operate an ice cream truck.

He realized that a fixed location selling soft ice cream (known at the time as frozen custard) as opposed to hard was good business.

[5] In the early 1940s, Tom Carvel traveled, selling soft serve at carnivals, while his wife Agnes ran the Hartsdale location.

During World War II, he ran the ice cream stands at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, gaining expertise in refrigeration technology.

Upon investigation, Carvel found that they needed to run their businesses more efficiently, choosing poor locations and only sometimes maintaining high health standards.

New franchisees undertook an 18-day training program at the "Carvel College of Ice Cream Knowledge", and were sent an in-house magazine called "The Shopper's Road".

[9] From then onwards, Carvel recorded nearly all of the chain's advertising, eventually maintaining an in-house production studio at the headquarters offices and becoming something of a regional celebrity.

Carvel had a distinctive "gravelly" voice, lacking the "slick" sound of most professional voice-over artists, and all his narration was unrehearsed.

Accompanied by the familiar Tom Carvel narration, footage showed the products and employees in the stores; very few graphics or effects were used.

In 1956, Carvel transformed the Hartsdale location into their first "Ice Cream Supermarket" by adding freezer cases containing pre-made cakes and novelty items which customers could choose and purchase.

Independent owners attempted to buy products outside the corporate supply chain (in conflict with their contracts), maintaining that the company was deliberately overcharging them.

[10] The same year, the Beastie Boys released their first single, Cooky Puss, which included audio of the rap band making prank phone calls to a Carvel store.

[11] In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Howard Stern used a vocal harmonizer to imitate the "outer space" voice of Cookie Puss that was used in Carvel's TV advertisements.

On December 11, 2001, Roark Capital Group, a private equity firm, purchased a controlling interest in Carvel Corporation from Investcorp.

In August 2007, Abdul Faghihi, the owner of the original Carvel location in Hartsdale, revealed that he had applied for permission to knock down the store and develop a retail strip on the property.