Breyers

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Brand logo
Product type	Frozen dessert
Owner	Unilever
Country	United States
Introduced	1866; 158 years ago (1866)
Previous owners	Kraft Foods Inc.
Website	breyers.com

Breyers is an ice cream and frozen dessert brand with headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Founded in 1866, it is one of the oldest ice cream companies in the United States.

Since 1993, Breyers has been owned and managed by the British conglomerate, Unilever.^[1][2]

Breyers manufactures dessert products described as ice cream or as frozen dairy desserts. It is among the best-selling ice cream brands in the United States, having 2022 sales of $498 million.

When global ice cream sales declined in 2023, Unilever announced plans to sell its ice cream companies, including Breyers, by the end of 2025.^[3]

In 1866, William A. Breyer began to produce and sell ice cream in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, first from his home, and later via horse and wagon on the streets.^[2][4] Breyer's son Henry incorporated the business in 1908. By 1918, Breyers produced one million gallons of ice cream annually.^[2]

The formerly independent Breyers Ice Cream Company was sold to the National Dairy Products Corporation/Sealtest in 1926.^[5] National Dairy then changed its name to Kraftco in 1968, and Kraft by 1975. Kraft sold its ice cream brands to Unilever in 1993, while retaining the rights to the name for yogurt products.^[2][6]

Unilever purchased Breyers ice cream and merged it with Gold Bond and Good Humor ice cream to create the Good Humor-Breyers division.^[2] Kraft retained the rights to produce Breyers-branded yogurt.^[7][8] Unilever closed its last Breyers plant in Philadelphia in 1995.^[5] Good Humor-Breyers moved its headquarters from Green Bay, Wisconsin, to Toronto and Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey in 2007.^[9]

Breyers groups its dozens of products in three flavor categories:^[10]

• Classics made with milk and cream with natural colors and flavors,
• Better For You desserts manufactured to be low in calories with lower carbohydrate content and no sugar added for flavor
• Cookies & Candies, which contain pieces of cookies or branded candies.

Generally by choice of ingredients, Breyers manufactures its frozen desserts to be either "original ice cream" or "frozen dairy dessert", both in numerous variations of composition, flavors, and consumer preferences for specialty diets.^[10][11][12] Some 60% of Breyers products are ice cream and 40% are frozen dairy desserts.^[11]

Examples of ice cream in the Breyers Classics category include "Homemade Vanilla", "Chocolate", and "Cherry Vanilla".^[10] Better For You products include those made to be gluten-free, lactose-free, sugar-free, and "CarbSmart", among others.^[10] The Cookies & Candies category has products made with branded ingredients, such as peanut butter, fudge, toffee or cookie pieces.^[10]

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ingredient requirements for frozen dessert products are defined in Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations, subchapter B.^[13] As detailed in Part 135.110, the FDA regulation for ice cream manufacturing requires the contents of milk fat and total milk solids to not be less than 10% for each component.^[13] Breyers original ice cream products in the Classics category contain at least 10% milk fat and total milk solids to meet the regulated ingredient requirements.^[11][12] (see Nutrition Facts label for each product).^[10]

Breyers is one of the oldest manufacturers of ice cream in the United States.^[14]

Breyers ice cream products are made from milk, cream, sugar, tara gum, and flavors derived from natural sources, such as vanilla.^[10][12] Since 2016, Breyers has participated in a partnership with the Rainforest Alliance to produce its vanilla flavors from sustainably-sourced vanilla beans.^[11][15] Vanilla is a best-selling brand of Breyers ice cream.^[11][14]

As an example of the composition of Breyers ice cream, the sugar-free vanilla ice cream is 68% water, 22% carbohydrates, 6% fat, and 4% protein.^[16] In a reference amount of 100 g (3.5 oz), the Breyers sugar-free ice cream provides 143 calories of food energy.^[16]

Breyers frozen dairy desserts are manufactured with skim milk, corn syrup (or maltitol syrup), sugar or a sugar substitute, polydextrose, glycerin, and various other ingredients that may include whey, carob bean gum, guar gum, carrageenan, and added micronutrients.^[11][17] Breyers frozen dairy dessert products are manufactured specifically to be different from the original ice cream products with the intent to provide a smoother texture, less fat, and lower calories.^[11][12]

As an example of composition in a Breyers frozen dairy dessert, the product Birthday Blast is 38% carbohydrates, 7% fat, and 4% protein.^[17] In a reference amount of 100 g (3.5 oz), the Breyers Birthday Blast frozen dairy dessert provides 228 calories of food energy.^[17]

In 2013, Breyers introduced frozen desserts made with food additives (section above) that were intended to create smooth, low-calorie products.^[11][12] However, the new desserts evoked complaints by consumers who were accustomed to the traditional "all-natural" Breyers ice cream.^[11][12][18]

A 2014 report indicated that some flavors of Breyer's ice cream contained propylene glycol as an additive.^[19] According to another source, propylene glycol was formulated into Breyer's fat-free and Carb Smart ice cream to make it easier to scoop.^[20] In the small quantities used for making ice cream and numerous manufactured foods, propylene glycol is considered GRAS and is an approved food additive in the United States.^[21] As of 2024, the ingredients list of individual Breyers products indicates that propylene glycol is no longer used as an additive (view Ingredients and Nutrition, click on smartlabel).^[10]

In a 2022 survey of consumer preferences for ice cream and Better For You frozen dairy desserts, including Breyers products, "all-natural" and a short list mainly of dairy ingredients with natural sweeteners, reduced sugar or no added sugar were the preferred attributes.^[22]

Breyers Yogurt was a brand of yogurt owned by Kraft Foods then by CoolBrands International, a former Canadian frozen foods manufacturer. After CoolBrands ran into financial trouble, it was sold in 2007 to Healthy Food Holdings, an affiliate of Catterton Partners, a private equity firm based in Greenwich, Connecticut.^{[citation needed]}

The yogurt was manufactured under license from Unilever at an upstate New York facility until the licensing agreement was terminated and the Breyers Yogurt line was discontinued in April 2011.^[23] Catterton continued to produce YoCrunch yogurt but without the Breyers co-branding until it sold the company in August 2013 to Group Danone.^[24][25]

Breyers is part of the Unilever ice cream group of companies, which include Ben & Jerry's, Wall's, Magnum, and others.^[3][26] In 2022, Breyers had $498 million of sales revenue in the United States.^[27]

When 2023 ice cream sales declined globally, Unilever announced that it would divest its ice cream group of companies, including Breyers, by the end of 2025.^[3]

In the Western United States and Texas, Breyers ice cream is sometimes confused with Dreyer's ice cream.^[6][28] Henry Breyer founded Breyers in 1908, while William Dreyer and Joseph Edy co-founded Edy's Grand Ice Cream in 1928 in Oakland, California.^[2][6]

The root of the confusion dates to 1953 when "Edy's Grand Ice Cream" was changed to "Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream".^[6] Seeking to eliminate the confusion this created, Dreyer's changed its brand name in the home market of Breyers from "Dreyer's Grand" back to "Edy's Grand" in 1981.^[29] Around that same time, Breyers had begun an expansion toward the West Coast — the home market of Dreyer's — and by the mid-1980s, was distributing ice cream throughout the western United States and Texas.^[29] Unlike Dreyer's, Breyers kept its brand name nationally, and as a result, both Breyers and Dreyer's can be found on store shelves in the western United States and Texas.^[29]

• Henry West Breyer Sr. House
• List of ice cream brands

• Official website