What's The Difference Between Häagen-Dazs And Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream?

Ben & Jerry's and Häagen-Dazs are two of the most popular brands in the frozen aisle. Both have dedicated fans from coast to coast, but the ice cream couldn't be more different. While they are masters at serving up sweet desserts, the two most iconic ice cream brands specialize in making totally different styles of cold treats. 

Ben & Jerry's is known for creative mashups of unconventional mix-ins and pop culture references, while Häagen-Dazs focuses more on classic flavors with fewer additions. Ben & Jerry's ice cream has a chunky texture, with playful pints that turn digging for your favorite mix-ins into a sort of treasure hunt. Häagen-Dazs, meanwhile, is known for its smooth, creamy texture. The brands also take different approaches to accommodating customers with food sensitivities. Ben & Jerry's offers gluten-free versions of some flavors, while Häagen-Dazs makes a line of gluten-free sorbets. Naturally, Ben & Jerry's ingredient lists can be lengthy due to its many mix-ins and may include unfamiliar ingredients like carrageenan, a natural thickener derived from seaweed. Most Häagen-Dazs flavors, by comparison, use simpler ingredients like cream, egg yolks, and sugar.

Häagen-Dazs may sound like it comes from Germany, but its actual origins date back to the 1960s, when Rose and Reuben Mattus, two Polish-Jewish immigrants based in the Bronx, set out to create an ice cream brand. They focused on using high-quality natural ingredients at a time when many companies were following the trend of mass production and packaged foods. The couple started with just three flavors: vanilla, chocolate, and coffee, later adding strawberry in 1966. Their rich, velvety ice cream gained a following, and in 1976, Reuben's daughter Doris opened the first Häagen-Dazs ice cream shop on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights, where it still operates today.

Ben & Jerry's took a very different path. The story began with childhood friends from Long Island, New York, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, who invested $5 in an ice cream-making correspondence course from Penn State. With $12,000, the pair opened their first ice cream shop in a former gas station in Burlington, Vermont, in 1978. A decade later, their growing ice cream empire was worth $30 million. Ben & Jerry's is also known for its charity work and social activism, with the brand embracing progressive, nonpartisan values that it uses to advocate for change at the local, national, and international levels. Its causes include human rights, social and economic justice, and environmental protection, restoration, and regeneration.