Core77

Rose Mattus, 90, Co-Creator of Haagen-Dazs Ice Cream, Dies

Around 1960, while sitting on their couch in the Bronx, Mr. and Mrs. Mattus fabricated the foreign-sounding name. It was Mr. Mattus's idea to include a map of Denmark on the carton and to put an umlaut over the first "a" in Haagen, even though no umlaut is used in Danish.

Mrs. Mattus built the business by going to bodegas and grocery stores to offer free samples. By 1983, when Haagen-Dazs was acquired by Pillsbury for $70 million, the company had a strong presence in supermarkets, a coast-to-coast string of franchise ice cream shops and sales of about $115 million a year. It is now owned by Nestle.