Reuben and Rose Mattus

Reuben and Rose Mattus were American entrepreneurs who founded the Häagen-Dazs ice cream business.

Rose Mattus (23 November 1916 – 28 November 2006) was born as Rose Vesel into a tailoring family who made theatrical costumes in Manchester. Her Jewish parents had come from Poland. They briefly moved to Belfast with a theatre company and left for New York in 1921 when Rose was five years old.

Reuben Mattus (1912 – 1994) was born in Poland of Jewish parents and he arrived with his widowed mother, Lea, in New York at about the same time as Rose Vesel.

They met in a youth club in Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York and married in 1936. Rose joined Reuben in his family's business selling ices from a horse drawn wagon in the Bronx. The business grew throughout the next 40 years and then, in 1959, Reuben decided to form a new ice cream company. He invented the name 'Häagen-Dazs' to evoke an image of Danish pasture and even put a map of Denmark on the carton. (There is no umlaut in Danish.) Rose said in her autobiography "The Emperor of Ice Cream" (2004), that Denmark was used in tribute to the nation's decent treatment of its Jews during the Second World War.

The ice cream was made using butterfat and real ingredients for the flavorings. It launched in 1961 in contrast with competing brands which used cheap, often artificial ingredients. Rose marketed the product and Reuben developed the flavors. Part of Rose's strategy was to market the brand to university students, and she made certain that ice cream parlours near New York University in Greenwich Village carried Häagen-Dazs. The brand, which grew only slowly through the 1960s, was at first distributed nationally by Greyhound Bus deliveries to college towns.

The business was sold to the Pillsbury Company in 1983 for $70 million. Reuben and Rose were kept on as consultants after the sale until Pillsbury was bought by Grand Metropolitan. After this, the Mattuses launched the Mattus Ice Cream Company, this time specializing in low-fat products. Pillsbury and Häagen-Dazs are now owned by General Mills.

They had two daughters: Doris Hurley and Natalie Salmore, five grandchildren and, to date, ten great-grandchildren.

Rose died in Westwood, New Jersey on 28 November 2006.

External links

* Hevesi, Dennis. [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/obituaries/01mattus.html?ex=1322629200&en=8412b912549fbbc3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss "Rose Mattus, 90, Co-Creator of Häagen-Dazs Ice Cream, Dies"] , "The New York Times", 1 December 2006.