Breyers isn't just any ice cream brand. No, this is an ice cream brand with a history.
Its origins date back to the nineteenth century, and over the decades,
it's remained innovative as trends and tastes have evolved.
Keep watching to discover everything you need to know about Breyers ice cream.
Long before ice cream trucks were roaming neighborhoods looking for hungry children,
Breyers took its ice cream on the road. Right after the Civil War ended in 1865, a man named
William Breyer started the brand in Philadelphia. With a bit of cream, sugar, and nuts, as well as a
fair amount of elbow grease, he started making ice cream using a hand crank. He sold the ice
cream to his neighbors, and then demand grew throughout Philadelphia, forcing him to take his
show on the road and begin delivering his frozen treats throughout the city via horse and wagon.
By 1882, Breyer had five ice cream shops in Philly along with the horse-drawn delivery
side of his business. He and his family would continue with this method for a
few years, before they opened up a full wholesale manufacturing plant in 1896.
In 1896, William Breyer passed his ice cream business along to his son Henry.
But the brand name wouldn't stay in the family for long. Henry incorporated the brand in 1896,
and the independent company then grew to mammoth proportions. By 1918, Breyers was churning up
more than one million gallons of ice cream per year. The company remained an East Coast brand,
as it primarily shipped between the two major urban hubs flanking the Breyers'
home base in Philadelphia: New York City to the North and Washington, D.C. to the south.
But the Breyer family would soon cash out on William's baby and sell Breyer Ice Cream to
National Dairy Products Company in 1926. Around that time, National Dairy Products was in the
business of buying up other brands. In 1930, they also bought up a little cheese business
based in Chicago by the name of Kraft. As a result, some time later, in 1976 to be exact,
National Dairy Products would come to be known as Kraft, Inc. But that doesn't mean that Breyers is
now still a Kraft product. As it turns out, Kraft sold the brand to Unilever in 1993,
and Breyers is now part of Unilever's Good Humor-Breyers Ice Cream Company.
If it looks like ice cream, smells like ice cream, and tastes like ice cream,
then surely it must be ice cream, right? You would think so, but maybe not. As it turns out,
certain Breyers products don't actually include enough dairy to officially be called "ice cream,"
so they're instead labeled as "frozen dessert." So what's the difference? As a spokeswoman for
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration explained to The New York Times in 2013,
"Ice cream requires specific levels of milk fat content,
nonfat milk solids content, total solids in each gallon of ice cream,
and total weight in each gallon of ice cream, while frozen dairy products do not."
In most cases, ice cream requires a minimum 10% dairy fat. At the time of that New York
Times article, about 60% of Breyers products were still ice cream, but the remaining 40%
had to be considered frozen dairy desserts. But can consumers even tell the difference?
For some taste testers, not at all, until you ask them to try the two varieties side by side.
On their own, frozen dairy desserts can fool anyone and taste like you'd expect
ice cream to taste. But when the real deal is right there to compare it to,
frozen dairy desserts are just a cheap imitation. Nevertheless, Breyers justified the change
by noting that frozen dairy desserts have a smoother texture and less fat.
"You can still find a few ice cream brands using all-natural ingredients,
but they tend to be few and far between, and they tend to be pricier."
Do you know that famous mint leaf on the Breyers carton? As it turns out, it's not really a mint
leaf at all, although we can understand why anybody would assume that it is one,
seeing as it does look very much like one. Even the Philly History blog from
the Philadelphia City Archives calls it a mint leaf in a post discussing Breyers
ice cream parlors that were once found across the city. Similarly, a Philadelphia Inquirer
article references the mint leaf when detailing the Philadelphia Breyers factory by noting,
"Its Philadelphia factory is crowned by a large billboard bearing the Breyers insignia — a
green mint leaf — that can be seen from the Schuylkill Expressway and passing Amtrak trains."
But despite what these seemingly reliable sources have to say,
the leaf in the logo is not a mint leaf. Instead, as noted by Ice Cream,
a technical science and technology textbook on ice cream production, it's a briar leaf.
William Breyer's sons Fred and Henry adopted it in 1896 when they opened their first ice
cream manufacturing plant in Philadelphia to meet growing demand and needed some more
official branding. Even though a briar leaf has nothing to do with ice cream, it's easy to see
why they chose it, considering that their name is pronounced the same as that particular leaf.
Do you ever panic if you take out a carton of ice cream but then get distracted and forget about it?
"Who wants melted ice cream?!" "Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!"
If you find yourself in this predicament, you actually might not need to worry.
If you're expecting to discover a puddle of melted ice cream,
you might avoid that if you've got Breyers, or at least that's what a rumor claims.
Spoon University tested that claim by setting two cartons of Breyers products,
the Homemade Vanilla ice cream and the Cookies & Cream frozen dairy dessert,
out on a kitchen counter at room temperature. Both melted at about the same rate, and after one hour,
they were both as Spoon University described them, "on their road to soup."
This rumor has also sparked broader questions about why certain ice creams do or don't melt,
and it turns out that it's not always a question of whether or not an ice cream
is "real" or a dairy dessert. Sometimes, it's just a matter of ingredients and additives,
some of which are perfectly natural.
If you're a fan of Breyers and you're looking for an ice cream that you can enjoy while following
a strict diet, then you're in luck! The company makes a range of ice creams for specialty diets,
including dairy-free, gluten-free, no-sugar-added,
and "CarbSmart" for low-carb dieters. One of their newest specialty options
is the Breyers delights line that was introduced in 2017. It offered four flavors of ice cream
with low and reduced fat and more protein than you might expect in a serving of ice cream.
Each pint of Breyers delights contains between 260 and 330 calories and 20 grams of protein.
A few years earlier in 2014, Breyers released gluten-free flavors,
including 36 varieties that are approved by the FDA via its gluten-free validation and
labeling process. Other specialty diet ice creams from Breyers include non-GMO options
and some products that are lactose-free. And if you're wondering, yes, lactose-free
is different from dairy-free. The non-dairy free ice creams are made from almond milk,
while the lactose-free ice cream is made with dairy without lactose.
Once upon a time, Breyers offered Americans an unfamiliar ice cream dessert that had previously
achieved significant popularity in 1980s Great Britain: the Viennetta ice cream cake.
This frozen cake is made with alternating vanilla ice cream and chocolate layers,
and it comes in a few different flavors, like chocolate and mint.
Despite Viennetta's cult fandom and unique texture, Breyers wasn't able
to make the sale on all Americans when they offered this dessert Stateside in the 90s,
and it was thus discontinued. If you're a bit sad you missed out the first time around,
don't cry too hard, because you could end spilling your tears in your very own Viennetta ice cream
cake. In 2021, Unilever announced that it would be bringing the Viennetta cake back under its Good
Humor brand. For the time being, the cake is only available in the vanilla variety and in a smaller
size with six servings. But considering that it's only 130 calories per serving,
we wouldn't blame you if you ate the entire thing yourself.
"One slice is never enough."
Do you ever have a hankering for ice cream, but you don't feel like getting up off the couch
and trekking to the grocery store? That's no problem! Just like in its earlier days,
Breyers has you covered with delivery services that can bring ice cream directly to your door.
The Breyers "Ice Cream Shop" can be found in select locations on popular food service
apps such as DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats, and Postmates. And this isn't just a Breyers service.
It's a Unilever initiative that also includes other Unilever ice cream brands,
like Magnum, and it's available in more than 1,500 US locations.
It's also available outside of the United States, where it's known as "Ice Cream Now."
Ice Cream Now was launched as a pilot program in London to help
Unilever overcome the seasonal slump that typically befalls ice cream sales. In 2020,
the service really boomed in popularity due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As CNN noted,
"For Unilever, the growth of ice cream at home, led by brands including Ben & Jerry's and Magnum,
is on track to more than offset the collapse in its out of home ice cream
revenue [in 2020], which includes sales to restaurants and catering companies."
In 2020, a legal case was raised against Unilever stating that Breyers was falsely advertising its
Natural Vanilla Ice Cream by claiming that it contains vanilla flavor exclusively derived from
vanilla plants. Plaintiffs claimed that this was misleading and consistently false advertising, as
the ice cream also contains artificially-flavored vanilla on top of the naturally-sourced vanilla,
according to laboratory analysis in a 2019 Rutgers University study. Plaintiffs further
claimed that the ice cream contained "at most, only a trace of real vanilla."
The claim also stated that if the members of the class action knew
about this artificially-flavored vanilla, they either wouldn't have bought the ice cream at
all or they would've expected a lower price. There was an attempt to dismiss this case,
but that motion was denied by a California federal judge in July 2020.
A similar case was filed in early 2021 against Breyers Delights Vanilla Bean Low Fat Ice Cream,
in which the plaintiff asked for $5 million in return for what she called "deception" that
created the, quote, "reasonable belief that the vanilla bean ice cream contained vanilla beans."
When you peruse a brand's website, you probably expect to see pages boasting about ingredient
quality and perhaps even information about responsible sourcing practices.
That's what you get for the most part with Breyers' website,
but there's one particular thing that stands out: the admission of
unsustainable farming practices for one key ingredient. On the ingredients pledge page,
you'll see pledges to use only 100% Grade A milk and cream, naturally-sourced colors and flavors,
and sustainably-sourced fruit and vanilla. But then an asterisk points out one exception.
"Since the 1800s, we've pledged our ice cream was made with ripe fruit,
natural sugar, pure milk and cream, nothing artificial."
As it turns out, the raspberries used in Breyers' products aren't sustainably farmed. So what does
that mean? What exactly is an unsustainably farmed raspberry? While you'll be hard-pressed to find
any more information regarding these suspicious raspberries on the Breyers website, you can
come to your own conclusions with a little more research. According to the National Sustainable
Agriculture Coalition, sustainable agriculture or farming is essentially a mode of farming
that protects the environment, is economically profitable, and provides social and economic
equity. Alas, most raspberries don't meet these sustainable farming criteria for one big reason:
pesticide use. As reported by Slate in 2009, according to the Pesticide Action Network,
"Raspberries [account] for an average of 20.2
pounds of chemicals dumped on every acre of treated land."
So, an unsustainably farmed raspberry is very likely a pesticide-laden raspberry,
and Breyers cannot help but admit the truth.
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