Chipwich
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 | |
| Product type | Ice cream cookie sandwich |
|---|---|
| Owner | Crave Better Foods (a United States limited liability corporation), Cos Cob, Connecticut |
| Country | U.S. |
| Introduced | 1981 |
| Markets | United States |
| Previous owners | Richard LaMotta,[1] Sam Metzger, Chipwich, Dreyer's division of Nestlé |
The Chipwich is a brand of ice cream sandwich. The Chipwich name and logo is trademarked by Crave Better Foods, LLC based in Cos Cob, Connecticut.[2][3]
While ice cream sandwiches have been sold in New York City since the 1890s,[4] New York lawyer Richard LaMotta created the Chipwich in 1978. He introduced it to the city in 1981 with a guerrilla marketing campaign, training sixty street cart vendors (mostly students) to sell the new product on the streets of New York, for a dollar each. Some twenty-five thousand Chipwiches were sold the first day, and within two weeks the company was selling 40,000 a day.[5][6]
The small, independent company struggled to find capital to expand. In 1984, Chipwich sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.[7] By 1987, co-founders LaMotta and Samuel Metzger had reorganized the company and obtained a $1 million investment from Swedish holding company Hexagon AB, which guaranteed loans and licensed its products.[8] In 1992, the company was back in Chapter 11 bankruptcy after incurring a $1.4 million loss on sales of $4.8 million; an accounting scandal involving inventory overstatements at Peltz Food, a subsidiary headed by Robert Peltz, were at the root of much of the problem.[7]
CoolBrands International bought Chipwich in 2002, becoming North America's third-largest ice cream vendor. Due to a series of financial difficulties, which began with the loss of its Weight Watchers/Smart Ones frozen food licence in 2004,[9] CoolBrands sold Chipwich, Eskimo Pie and Real Fruit to the Dreyer's division of Nestlé in 2007.[10] This was part of a larger divestiture of core assets which left the company as little more than a publicly listed empty shell. By 2009, Nestlé had stopped production of the original Chipwich, reportedly because it competed with its own Toll House chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich.[1]
The trademark was acquired in 2017 by Crave Better Foods, LLC of Cos Cob, Connecticut.[11] The product was relaunched in 2018 in the U.S.[12][13] In 2020, the brand introduced a new flavor, Birthday Cake, to its product line.[14]
