The Untold Truth Of Breyers

When you walk by those long lines of black and white tubs of ice cream — the ones with the little spearmint leaf in the corner – in the freezer aisle, you may assume they're just another of the many, many brands of ice cream on the market. But Breyers is not just any ice cream brand — this is an ice cream company with a past. 

Founded in the 1860s, Breyers' story stretches back to a whole other era of American history (for context, the American Civil War ended in 1865) and, for many families, Breyers has remained a part of their dessert traditions throughout the decades spanning more than a century and a half. However, just because Breyers has all that history under its belt, it doesn't mean the brand is stuck in the past. 

By changing its leadership throughout its years of existence, Breyers ice cream has managed to stay relevant even up until today. These changes has meant the company has updated its product lines as trends and tastes have evolved while also remaining innovative. Today, Breyers offers a range of traditional ice creams, along with gluten-free, vegan, and other ice creams made for specialty diets and other growing markets. What exactly has Breyers done to continue to stay up-to-date for so long? You may just find the answer and more in the untold truth of Breyers.

While William Breyer started the Breyer empire in 1866 and then passed along the business to his son Henry in 1896, 30 years later, the Breyer ice cream name wouldn't stay in the family for long. Henry incorporated the Breyers brand in 1896, and the independent company grew to mammoth proportions. By 1918, Breyers was churning up over million gallons of ice cream a year. Breyers remained an East Coast brand, though, shipping primarily 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.

However, the Breyer family would soon cash out on William Breyer's baby and sell Breyer Ice Cream to National Dairy Products Co. in 1926. National Dairy Products was in the business of buying up other brands around the time and, soon, in 1930, bought up a little cheese business based in Chicago, known as Kraft. As a result, some time later, in 1976, National Dairy Products would come to be known as Kraft, Inc. Don't make the mistake of assuming that Breyers is now a Kraft product though: Kraft sold Breyers to Unilever in 1993, and now Breyers is part of Unilever's Good Humor-Breyers Ice Cream Company.

That mint leaf on the Breyers carton? It's not really a mint leaf, but you'd be safe to assume it is one — after all, it looks like a mint leaf. Even the Philly History blog from the Philadelphia City Archives calls it a mint leaf when referencing Breyers ice cream parlors that were once found across the city and the Breyers signs, emblazoned with that iconic leaf, that would hang over their storefronts. Similarly, a Philadelphia Inquirer article references the mint leaf when detailing the Philadelphia Breyers factory, saying, "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, alas, the logo is not a mint leaf. Instead, according to Ice Cream, the technical science and technology textbook on ice cream production, by H. Douglas Goff and Richard W. Hartel, the leaf is a briar leaf, which William Breyer's sons, Fred and Henry, adopted in 1896, when they opened their first ice cream manufacturing plant in Philadelphia to meet growing demand and needed some more "official" branding. It's easy to see why they went with a briar leaf (Breyer, briar, sometimes spelled "brier"... you get the idea), even though a briar leaf has nothing to do with ice cream.

If you're looking for an ice cream that you can enjoy while following a strict diet, you're in luck, because Breyers has you covered. Breyers makes a range of ice creams for specialty diets, including dairy-free, vegan, gluten-free, no-sugar-added, and "CarbSmart" for low-carb dieters. One of the most recent specialty lines Breyers introduced was its Breyers delights line in 2017, which 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 ice cream contains 260–330 calories and 20 grams of protein. Prior to that, in 2014, Breyers released gluten-free flavors, including 36 gluten-free 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 (which, yes, is different from dairy-free; the non-dairy free ice creams are made from almond milk, whereas the lactose-free ice cream is made with dairy without lactose).

Don't feel like getting up off the couch to go to the grocery store and grab some ice cream? No worries. Just like in its earlier days, Breyers has you covered with delivery services to 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. But The Ice Cream Shop is not only a Breyers service. It's a Unilever initiative that stretches to include other Unilever ice cream brands, like Magnum, and is available in more than 1,500 US locations as well as under another name outside of the United States, Ice Cream Now.

According to CNN, Ice Cream Now was launched as a pilot program in London to help Unilever overcome the seasonal slump that accompanies ice cream sales, but, in 2020, the service boomed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the article, "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."

On the flip side of the sustainable farming and raspberries issue, Breyers does seem to be doing good work where its vanilla beans are concerned. According to Delish, Unilever says Breyers' best-selling flavor is vanilla and that Breyers is the leading vanilla ice cream brand in North America. Breyers' natural vanilla ice cream (and, yes, the carton does say "ice cream" versus "frozen dairy dessert") uses 100% sustainably sourced natural vanilla beans from Madagascar via a partnership with Rainforest Alliance. Breyers' further commitments to its vanilla bean farmers impact approximately 4,000 farmers and their communities through initiatives like education subsidies for primary schools, health insurance for farmers, and agricultural education. 

The Rainforest Alliance seal on Breyers' vanilla products is further third-party proof that when Breyers sources vanilla beans for its products, those ingredients are farmed with close attention to the environment and human rights, with support provided to help farmers improve and benefit from working with brands like Breyers.

In 2015, Breyers announced that it would begin sourcing milk and cream only from farmers who did not treat their cows with artificial growth hormones. The change was consistent across all Unilever ice cream brands, which also includes Good Humor, Klondike, Magnum, and Popsicle. The change was made at the same time that Breyers made its commitment to using sustainably-sourced vanilla beans. At the time of the announcement, Unilever positioned the changes as a benefit to parents, saying, "Breyers has a longstanding history of offering frozen treats with high-quality ingredients that moms feel good about. These industry-leading changes are the latest in our commitment to do right by parents and the environment."

Breyers, however, did add a disclaimer to the announcement to refine its dairy sourcing, saying that suppliers who provide ingredients that go into Breyers ice cream, such as sauces or candies, may not follow the same sourcing guidelines, but that it was basically fine because, as Breyers said, "the FDA states that no significant difference has been shown between dairy derived from rBST-treated and non-rBST treated cows."