Reuben Mattus

Reuben Mattus (1912 ’Ŭ 1994) was a Polish American entrepreneur who, with his wife Rose, founded the Haagen-Dazs ice cream business. He was a 12-year-old South Bronx boy who helped his widowed mother sell her lemon ices. Mattus left high school to make deliveries with a horse-drawn wagon to local candy stores. He peddled the Mattus family's homemade ice cream for more than 30 years to small candy stores and neighborhood restaurants in the Bronx, and expanded his business gradually. The financial rewards were modest until 1959, when he hit on the idea that would make his fortune. Correctly deducing that a large share of ice cream lovers in New York would be willing to pay for something they perceived as different, even evocative, and maybe better, Mattus came up with the name Haagen-Dazs, wanting it to sound cold, clear, luxurious and Danish. A map of Scandinavia was printed on its carton. But the name is not Danish, and the name means little in that language as it does in English: more butterfat, less air. But it was noticed. His wife, Rose Mattus, was behind the strategy to market the brand to university students, and their ice cream was first distributed nationally by Greyhound Bus deliveries to college towns. Haagen-Dazs quickly gained a reputation as a dense, richly textured, luxury ice cream, and many serious eaters were willing to pay more for what they perceived as the best, which had the added cachet of an unpronounceable name. It was the "Rolls Royce of ice creams." The product's popularity in supermarkets led to a coast-to-coast string of hundreds of franchise stores, and ultimately they spread as far as Tokyo. In 1983, Haagen-Dazs was sold to the Pillsbury Company for $70 million. Reuben Mattus participated in the 1982 Achievement Summit in New Orleans and spoke about his philosophy of entrepreneurship.