Breyers

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. Henry W. Breyer, Jr. also helped to run the company and was a noted philanthropist.

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), a Nestle brand, which has led to a popular misconception that it is an imitation or knock-off brand, or vice-versa.

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).

Low-carb ice cream products
Breyers features a line of low-carb ice cream products called CarbSmart.

Recipe changes
Unilever (the multi-national corporation that owns the "Breyers", Good Humor, and Ben & Jerry's brand names) recently started adding tara gum (made from the seeds of the tara tree) to the "All Natural" varieties of Breyers ice cream.

Some consumers feel strongly about these ingredient changes and are actively working to make them more widely known.