Reuben Mattus; Ice Cream Maker Behind Haagen-Dazs

Reuben Mattus, the Polish immigrant who fashioned the nonsensical name “Haagen-Dazs” and built it into a multimillion-dollar upscale ice cream company, is dead.

He was 81 and died Thursday at a Deerfield Beach hospital, his daughter, Doris Hurley, said Saturday.

He lived in Cresskill and suffered a heart attack while on vacation, she said.

Mattus took his family’s modest business, selling homemade ice cream door to door from a horse and buggy, and turned it into an ice cream fortune.

It did not happen overnight. He had sold the homemade dessert for more than 30 years to small candy stores and neighborhood restaurants in the Bronx.

But in 1959 he hit on the idea that would change his life.

What Mattus deduced was that a large share of ice cream lovers in New York would be willing to pay a little extra for something they perceived as exotic.

He came up with the name Haagen-Dazs. It meant nothing but sounded European, a bit of puffery he hoped would offset the higher price. His ingenuity also coincided with a trend. People seemed to want food that was perceived as high quality and made of natural ingredients.

“When I came out with Haagen-Dazs, the quality of ice cream had deteriorated to the point that it was just sweet and cold,” Mattus said a few years ago. “Ice cream had become cheaper and cheaper, so I just went the opposite way.”

In 1983, he sold Haagen-Dazs, which by then involved franchises coast to coast and as distant as Tokyo, to Pillsbury Co.

He then took an opposite approach and began marketing Mattus’ Lowfat Ice Cream.