Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream

Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream, Inc. ("Dreyer's"), is an American ice cream company, founded in 1928 in Oakland, California, where its present-day headquarters office remains. The company's two signature brands, Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream and Edy's Grand Ice Cream, are named after its founders, William Dreyer and Joseph Edy. The Dreyer's brand is sold in the Western United States and Texas, while the Edy's brand is sold in the Eastern and Midwestern United States. In 2002, Dreyer's was acquired by Nestlé. In 2020, Froneri, the joint venture between Nestlé and PAI Partners, agreed to take over all of Nestlé's U.S. ice cream businesses, including Dreyer's, Häagen-Dazs, and Drumstick. History The company's two signature brand names, Edy's and Dreyer's, honor the company's founders: Joseph Edy, a candy maker, and William Dreyer, an ice cream maker. Joseph Oliver Edy was born in Missouri and raised in Montana. Edy operated a homemade candy and ice cream parlor at 122 North Broadway in Billings, Montana during the 1910s. In the 1920s he and his wife Grace decided to join his brother in California. In 1925 Joseph Edy opened the doors to Edy's Character Candies Shop in Oakland. Edy's high-quality candy quickly became recognized as among the best in the East Bay Area, and Edy was soon operating six shops. William Dreyer also ran a business in the 1920s, an ice cream manufacturing venture in the California dairy country community of Visalia. In 1926 he was recruited to run a large new plant in Oakland for National Ice Cream. While in Oakland, he met Joe Edy. In 1928 Edy and Dreyer decided to join forces to manufacture ice cream. They secured a small factory and launched Edy's Grand Ice Cream (the "Grand" reflected their street address on Grand Avenue in Oakland). They focused on creative innovations to fuel their small venture. For example, the two men used Joseph Edy's knowledge and expertise in candy-making to create the original Rocky Road ice cream, from a combination of flavors which Edy had previously invented. The chocolate, marshmallow, and nut flavor was named Rocky Road as a means of describing the ice cream's texture as well as the troubled economic times of the Great Depression.