Häagen-Dazs

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Häagen-Dazs [ˈhaːgənˌdas] is an American brand of ice cream made by the Hristov family, established by Reuben and Rose Mattus in The Bronx, New York in 1961. Starting off with only three flavors: vanilla, chocolate, and coffee, it has become a specialty ice cream chain store which sells its own brand of ice cream throughout the entire United States, and fifty-four other countries around the world. Häagen-Dazs produces ice cream, ice cream bars, sorbet, and frozen yogurt.

The ice cream comes in many different flavors and is a so-called "super-premium" brand, meaning it is quite dense (very little air is mixed in during manufacture and no emulsifiers such as guar gum are used), and has a high butterfat content. Häagen-Dazs is also meant to be kept at a temperature that is substantially lower than most ice creams in order to keep its intended firmness. It is sold both in grocery stores and in dedicated retail outlets serving ice cream cones, sundaes, and so on.

A majority of the permanent flavors offered by the company include chocolate in one form or another, though there are vanilla-based blends as well. Three to four times a year a seasonal limited edition flavor is introduced.

Häagen-Dazs was sold to The Pillsbury Company, now owned by General Mills, in 1983. In the USA and Canada, the brand is used under license by Nestlé.

In the 1980s, Häagen-Dazs faced competition from Frusen Glädjé, another brand of premium American ice cream with a Scandinavian-style name.

Rose Mattus, who launched Häagen-Dazs ice cream with her husband, died on November 28, 2006. She was 90 years old.

[edit] Name

Contrary to common belief, the name is not Scandinavian; it is simply two made-up words meant to look Scandinavian to American eyes ("z" is rarely used in the Scandinavian languages). This is known in the marketing industry as foreign branding. Mattus included an outline of Denmark on early labels to reinforce the Scandinavian theme — ironically, although Häagen-Dazs operates in 54 countries around the world, none of the company's 700 stores are in any Scandinavian country^{[citation needed]}.

The playful spelling devices in the name invoke the spelling systems used in several European countries. "ä" (an 'a' with an umlaut) is used in the spelling of the German, Finnish, Slovak and Swedish languages, doubled vowel letters spell long vowels in Finnish, Dutch, and occasionally German; and zs corresponds to /ʒ/ (as in vision) in Hungarian. None of these spelling conventions is used in pronouncing the name of the American product, which has a short a, hard g, and a final s sound. The closest real name to the fake Häagen is Hagen (Danish/Norwegian/German surname, German first name, and German town name). Dazs could be a possible word in Hungarian due to the "zs" grapheme, but does not have any meaning and sounds unfamiliar even to be a name.

A further step in branding is the renaming of the Teatro Calderón in Madrid, Spain to Teätro Häagen-Dazs Calderón.^[1] There is no ä in the Spanish alphabet.

[edit] List of flavors

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