Häagen-Dazs (US: /ˈhɑːɡəndæs/ HAH-gən-dass, UK: /ˌhɑːɡənˈdɑːz/ HAH-gən-DAHZ)[1] is an American ice cream brand, established by Reuben and Rose Mattus in The Bronx, New York, in 1960. Starting with only three flavors: vanilla, chocolate, and coffee, the company opened its first retail store in Brooklyn, New York, on November 15, 1976.[2] The company operates worldwide and also produces ice cream bars, ice cream cakes, sorbet, frozen yogurt, and gelato.[3]Häagen-Dazs's founder Reuben Mattus was born in Poland in 1912 to Jewish parents. His father died during the First World War, and his widowed mother migrated to New York City with her two children in 1921.[4] 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.[5][6]The Senator Frozen Products company was profitable, but by the 1950s the large mass-producers of ice cream started a price war[7] 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 alleged exemplary treatment of Jews during World War II,[5] 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.[7] [Wikipedia]
