Häagen-Dazs

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Häagen-Dazs's founder Reuben Mattus was born in Poland in 1912 to Jewish parents. His father died during World War I, and his widowed mother migrated to New York City with her two children in 1921.{{cite web| url=http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20080001,00.html| date=August 17, 1981| title=Reuben Mattus Scooped the Competition with His Pricey and Nonsense-Named Haagen-Dazs| author=Bobbie Stein| work=People Magazine| access-date=August 7, 2012}} They joined an uncle who was in the Italian lemon-ice business in Brooklyn. By the late 1920s, the family began making ice pops, and by 1929, chocolate-covered ice cream bars and sandwiches under the name Senator Frozen Products on Southern Boulevard in the South Bronx, delivering them with a horse-drawn wagon to neighborhood stores in the Bronx.{{cite web| url= http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/108106/ice-creams-jewish-innovators| title= Ice Cream's Jewish Innovators| author=Joan Nathan| date= August 2, 2012| work=Tablet Magazine| access-date=August 7, 2012}}{{cite web|title=Rose Mattus, 90, Co-Creator of Häagen-Dazs Ice Cream, Dies| work=The New York Times| author= Dennis Hevesi| date= December 1, 2006| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/obituaries/01mattus.html |access-date=August 7, 2012}}

The Senator Frozen Products company was profitable, but by the 1950s the large mass-producers of ice cream started a price war,{{Cite web|url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/haagen-dazs-comes-from_n_7266208|title=Häagen-Dazs Comes From Where?!|date=May 13, 2015|website=HuffPost|language=en|access-date=March 26, 2020}} leading to his decision to make a heavy kind of high-end ice cream. In 1959, he decided to form a new ice cream company with what he thought to be a Danish-sounding name, Häagen-Dazs, as a tribute to Denmark's exemplary treatment of Jews during World War II, a move known in the marketing industry as foreign branding. Rose Mattus would dress up in fancy clothing to distribute free samples, giving the ice cream an air of sophistication and class.

The Pillsbury Company bought Häagen-Dazs in 1983. In 1999, Pillsbury and Nestlé merged their U.S. and Canadian ice cream operations into a joint venture called Ice Cream Partners. General Mills, in turn, bought Pillsbury in 2001 and succeeded to its interest in the joint venture.{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/18/business/general-mills-pillsbury-deal-includes-culture-and-history.html |title=General Mills-Pillsbury Deal Includes Culture and History |last=Barboza |first=David |date=July 18, 2000 |work=The New York Times |page=C.2 |agency=Reuters |access-date=June 10, 2010}}{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/24/nyregion/news-summary-830348.html |title=News Summary |date=October 24, 2001 |work=The New York Times |page=C.1 |access-date=June 10, 2010}} That same year, Nestlé exercised its contractual right to buy out General Mills' interest in Ice Cream Partners, which included the right to a 99-year license for the Häagen-Dazs brand, until 2110.{{cite news |url=http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2003/06/23/daily32.html |title=Nestlé takes over Dreyer's |date=June 25, 2003 |work=San Francisco Business Times |access-date=June 10, 2010}}{{cite news |url=https://money.cnn.com/2001/12/26/deals/icecream/ |title=Haagen-Dazs scooped up |date=December 26, 2001 |publisher=CNNMoney.com |access-date=June 10, 2010}} Since then, pursuant to that license, the Dreyer's subsidiary of Nestlé has produced and marketed Häagen-Dazs products in the United States and Canada. In December 2019, Nestlé sold Dreyer's along with its rights in the Häagen-Dazs brand to Froneri, a joint venture set up by Nestlé and PAI Partners in 2016.

"Häagen-Dazs" is an invented pseudo-Scandinavian phrase coined by the American Reuben Mattus, in a quest for a brand name that he claimed was Danish-sounding. However, the company's pronunciation of the name ignores the letters "ä" and "s", and letters like "ä" or digraphs like "zs" do not exist in Danish.{{notetag|The term does not exist in the Danish or any other known language; and Danish has neither an umlaut ä (the ligature æ is the corresponding counterpart) nor the zs digraph (the digraph zs exists only in Hungarian, and represents the voiced postalveolar fricative {{IPA|ʒ}}, a sound which does not exist natively in Scandinavian languages, and would be represented only in loanwords and according to the source language's orthography, such as the English zh or the French j); the umlaut is typical of German while the digraph is typical of Hungarian. Applying the rules of German and Hungarian orthography to the first and second word respectively would result in the pronunciations {{IPA|de|ˈhɛːaɡn̩|}} and {{IPA|hu|ˈdɒʒ|}}. In Norwegian "hagen" (cognate with Danish "haven") means "the garden"{{cite web |url=https://www.naob.no/ordbok/hage_1 |title=hage(n) |website=Det Norske Akademis ordbok}} while "das" or "dass" (zs would be pronounced identically to s under the orthographic rules of the Nordic languages) is a coarse slang term for an outhouse or in modern usage sometimes also a modern toilet in all the Scandinavian languages, a loan word derived from the German definite article das, originally from the German expression das Häuschen (the small house, i.e. the outhouse), by euphemistic omission of the main word; thus, in the Scandinavian languages Häagen-Dazs would be most reminiscent of a grammatically incorrect way of saying "the garden outhouse" with Hungarian- and German-looking extra letters and digraphs.{{cite web |url=https://www.naob.no/ordbok/dass |title=dass|website=Det Norske Akademis ordbok}}{{cite web |url=https://sproget.dk/lookup?SearchableText=das |title=das|website=Sproget.dk|publisher=Dansk Sprognævn }}}} According to Mattus, it was a tribute to Denmark's exemplary treatment of its Jews during the Second World War, and included an outline map of Denmark on early labels. Mattus felt that Denmark was also known for its dairy products and had a positive image in the United States.{{cite news|title=Haagen-Dazs whips up Japan gains with tailor-blended ice cream|work=The Daily Yomiuri |location=Tokyo|date=August 16, 2004|page=1}} His daughter Doris Hurley reported in the 1996 PBS documentary An Ice Cream Show that her father sat at the kitchen table for hours saying nonsensical words until he came up with a combination he liked. The reason he chose this method was so that the name would be unique and original.{{cite web |url=https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/224755/An-Ice-Cream-Show/overview |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080712030021/http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/224755/An-Ice-Cream-Show/overview |url-status=dead |archive-date=July 12, 2008 |department=Movies & TV Dept. |work=The New York Times |author=Beth Deki |date=2008 |title=An Ice Cream Show (1999) |access-date=June 10, 2010}}

Around 1988 Reuben Mattus gave an evening talk, "How to Build an Empire", at the Learning Annex in New York's upper east side. He said that he used to sell ice cream to candy stores. One store owner said that the ice cream is of poor quality and only buys it to help as a friend. Subsequently, he spent much time in the New York public library researching ice creams and ingredients. He decided to make the best ice cream from then on and based on his research used rum from Boston and chocolate from Belgium. He wanted to differentiate his new product by using an invented exotic Scandinavian sounding name, Häagen-Dazs, and did not mention that this was related to Denmark helping Jews during the Holocaust. He packaged the ice cream in round boxes, which was then an innovation. Grocery store owners complained that this way fewer ice creams fit in the refrigerator. He explained that what counts is how many are taken out and bought, not how many are stored. He said that he never set prices like $0.98, $1.22, but $1.00, $1.25—"honest numbers" also to exude quality.{{cn|date=March 2025}}

In 1980, Häagen-Dazs unsuccessfully sued Frusen Glädjé, an American ice cream maker founded that year, for using foreign branding strategies. The phrase {{Lang|sv|frusen glädje}}—without the acute accent—is Swedish for "frozen joy".{{cite web|url=http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/popcult/handouts/adverts/ipr_11_95.html |title=Trade Dress Protection for Advertising Campaigns |publisher=Hall Dickler Kent Goldstein & Wood, LLP |access-date=April 6, 2011}} In 1985, Frusen Glädjé was sold to Kraft General Foods. A Kraft spokeswoman stated that Kraft sold its Frusen Glädjé license to the Unilever corporation in 1993, but a spokesman for Unilever said that Frusen Glädjé was not part of the deal.[http://www.csmonitor.com/2000/0928/p23s2.html 'Whatever Happened To...Frusen Gladje?] The Christian Science Monitor September 28, 2000 The brand has since been discontinued.

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Häagen-Dazs ice cream comes in several traditional flavors as well as several esoteric flavors that are specific to the brand, such as Vanilla Swiss Almond and Bananas Foster. It is marketed as a "super-premium" brand: it is quite dense (very little air is mixed in during manufacturing), uses no emulsifiers or stabilizers other than egg yolks, and has a high butterfat content. It is sold both in grocery stores and in dedicated retail outlets serving ice cream cones, sundaes, and so on.

Since 1992, most of the world's Häagen-Dazs products have been manufactured at a plant in Tilloy-lès-Mofflaines, France that is now controlled by General Mills.{{Cite web|url=https://www.lavoixdunord.fr/archive/recup/region/vingt-ans-pour-l-usine-haeagen-dazs-arras-c-est-le-bel-jna29b0n865260|title=Vingt ans pour l'usine Häagen Dazs Arras, c'est le bel âge… de glace |website=www.lavoixdunord.fr|date=July 31, 2023 }} In the United States and Canada, Häagen-Dazs is licensed to and produced by Froneri. Häagen-Dazs entered the Japanese market in 1984 by forming a joint venture with Suntory and Takanashi Milk, which has produced their products there ever since. The factory is located in Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture, Japan.{{cite news|url= https://www.suntory.com/csr/group/haagendazs/|title=Suntory|access-date=August 16, 2024}}

To offset increasing ingredient and delivery costs, Häagen-Dazs downsized their pint ice cream cartons ({{convert|1|USpt|USoz ml|abbr=on|disp=out}}) in the US to {{convert|14|USoz|abbr=on}} in January 2009.{{cite news|url=http://adage.com/article?article_id=135126|title=Ben and Jerry's Calls Out Haagen-Dazs on Shrinkage|last=York|first=Emily Bryson|date=March 9, 2009|work=Advertising Age|access-date=June 10, 2010}} In March 2009, they announced that they would be downsizing their quart cartons ({{convert|1|USqt|USoz ml|abbr=on|disp=out}}) to {{convert|28|USoz|abbr=on}}.{{cite web|url=http://www.haagen-dazs.com/company/cartons.aspx/ |title=Our new Häagen-Dazs cartons |publisher=Häagen-Dazs |access-date=June 10, 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100225042730/http://www.haagen-dazs.com/company/cartons.aspx |archive-date=February 25, 2010 }}

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