Few residential customers needed a hundred pounds of ice, but people who owned grocery stores and taverns certainly did and they bought huge iceboxes to store the ice and goods. These iceboxes looked like residential ones but were five or six feet tall and deep enough to store three kegs of beer, food such as cheese and cold cuts, and the ice. Some had a small window in the upper panel.

Unfortunately, these iceboxes became a lure for robbers who soon developed a routine: two men entered the tavern during a lull, ordered drinks, and when the barkeep turned around to serve them, held him at the point of their revolvers, directing him into the icebox and closing the door securely, after which they leisurely finished their drinks and cleaned out the till. If there were any unfortunate customers in the tavern they too went into the icebox. Few robbers allowed them to take their coats and one truly unfortunate man who was barefoot was forbidden to take his shoes and socks with him. Asphyxiation was even more of a danger than the cold. The inhabitants were trapped until a passerby or customer heard them shout and let them out.

These robberies became so common that companies began putting a latch on the inside of the door so it could be opened from the inside, much like the emergency release common in the trunks of contemporary cars. One butcher stored a shotgun in his icebox and used it. Once the robbers had locked the door and turned away, he used the gun to break the window in the upper panel, then shot the men, felling one of them, who was soon arrested. Unfortunately for the butcher, the other robber escaped with $115 from the till.

Eventually, thanks to electricity and Prohibition, tavern iceboxes disappeared and so did the robberies