Breyers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Breyers Ice Cream is a brand of ice cream owned by Unilever (part of their United States Good Humor-Breyers unit).
Breyers Ice Cream informally began as a company in 1866 when William A. Breyer of Philadelphia made his first gallon of hand-cranked ice cream consisting of cream, pure cane sugar, fresh fruits, nuts and other natural flavors. Breyer opened his first retail ice cream shop in 1882.
In 1896, 30 years after Breyer made his first gallon of ice cream, his family set up its first wholesale manufacturing plant. William Breyer’s son Henry W. Breyer, Sr. incorporated the business in 1908. He added the now obsolete "Pledge of Purity" to every package of Breyers Ice Cream as his personal guarantee that Breyers was to use the highest quality, all natural ingredients available. Currently, the pledge is carefully worded to only include the ice-cream portions of the product, so as to exclude the frequently non-natural ingredients in the mix-ins.
They have a large plant in the town of Framingham, Massachusetts, outside Boston.
Breyers is often confused with Dreyer's ("Edy's" in the Eastern United States), which has led to a popular misconception that it is an imitation or knock-off brand.
[edit] Breyers Yogurt
Breyers Yogurt is a brand of yogurt, owned previously by Kraft Foods then by CoolBrands International, a Canadian company, and it has been recently sold by them to Lily Acquisition LLC, an affiliate of Catterton Partners Management Co., a private equity firm based in Greenwich, Connecticut (United States).
[edit] Recipe Changes
In a move for cheaper production and distribution costs, Unilever, a Dutch industrial conglomerate (also owns the brands Good Humor and Ben & Jerry's), who bought out Kraft Foods, previous owners of the "Breyer's" brand name, recently started adding "natural" tara gum to Breyer's ice cream. The addition of tara gum creates a very different flavor and consistency than the original recipe. The substitution of "chocolate flavored" chips for real chocolate, and the introduction of fruit flavor purees that are primarily beet juice and corn syrup-based are other recently adopted cost-saving measures. Canadian consumers will find the formerly "All Natural Vanilla" ice cream (containing Milk, Cream, Sugar and Vanilla) is now called "Natural Vanilla" and contains Mono/Diglycerides, Cellulose Gum, Guar Gum, Polysorbate 80, and Carrageenan. Some former customers now work to spread the word on the change in product quality. (Consumer response.) The irony about this is that Breyer's had, for years, used an advertising campaign in the United States and Canada that disparaged ice creams containing the ingredients listed above.
