Bassetts Ice Cream

The first record of ice cream in America dates from 1700 when Governor Bladen of Maryland served it to some of his guests attending a dinner party. Ice cream also had fans among the famous founding fathers, such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Philip Lenzi, a confectioner from London, made ice cream and advertised it for sale in New York beginning in 1774.

Bassetts Ice Cream got its start back in 1861, when Lewis Dubois Bassett started making ice cream by mule power. Bassetts was started by Lewis Bassett, a Quaker schoolteacher in Salem, N.J., who began his summertime business with dairy cows and a mule that pulled the crank on a giant ice cream-making machine in his backyard.

He would take his finished product to the farmers markets in Philadelphia, and due to popular demand, he opened a shop at 5th and Market Streets in 1885. When the Reading Terminal Market opened in 1892, Bassetts Ice Cream moves production and retail store to the new Reading Terminal Market.

In 1925, Lewis Lafayette, Jr., the third generation, takes over management of the ice cream store and production at the age of 21. Lewis’ grandson and namesake perfected the company’s high-butterfat, all-natural confection and some of its most popular flavors, including rum raisin, Irish coffee, cinnamon and its signature Philadelphia-style vanilla loaded with specks of vanilla bean.

By the mid-1930s, the family run business began its long history of shipping Bassetts ice cream. Its first shipment successfully went to the American Embassy in Tokyo.
Bassetts Ice Cream