Blue Bunny is owned by Ferrero (Italy), which acquired the brand on 1 April 2022.[1][2] Blue Bunny was founded in 1935 in Le Mars, Iowa and was independent until 2022.
This ownership is reported in official statements but has not yet been matched to a regulatory filing.
Evidence: Ferrero Group — our brands. Last checked .
Blue Bunny is an ice cream brand made in Le Mars, Iowa, a town that calls itself the ice cream capital of the world, by a company founded in 1913 and named after a rabbit in a 1930s newspaper competition. Ferrero acquired parent Wells Enterprises in 2022.
Controlling ownership as of . Brands grouped under the entity that owns them; large groups are collapsed.
Open the full Ferrero ownership tree →
See the full Ferrero brand portfolio (23) →
Ferrero controls 23 brands on Brandtree, 23 of them in food.
The 72 brands in ice cream on Brandtree belong to 32 owners. The largest is The Magnum Ice Cream Company, with 14; Ferrero has 2.
| Brand | Owner | Owner based in |
|---|---|---|
| Ben & Jerry's | The Magnum Ice Cream Company | 🇳🇱 Netherlands |
| Bravo Cone | Binggrae | 🇰🇷 South Korea |
| Drumstick | Froneri | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom |
| Dippin' Dots | J&J Snack Foods | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Deluxe | Mengniu | 🇨🇳 China |
| Choco Monaka Jumbo | Morinaga | 🇯🇵 Japan |
| Gala | Paradise Foods | 🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea |
| Ice Vegas | Poulina | 🇹🇳 Tunisia |
Ferrero is a family-owned company headquartered in Alba, Italy, founded in 1946. Brandtree records 23 brands under its control.
Ferrero was founded by pastry maker Pietro Ferrero in Alba, Piedmont in 1946, where wartime cocoa shortages led him to stretch chocolate with local hazelnuts. It remains family-owned through a Luxembourg holding company and has expanded into American biscuits and ice cream by acquisition.
Brandtree records a controlling owner for 2,549 brands that began in the United States. 478 of them (19%) are now controlled by a company headquartered in another country, Blue Bunny among them.
Ferrero acquired Wells Enterprises, the largest privately held ice cream maker in the United States, bringing Blue Bunny and Halo Top into a company known for chocolate. The price was not disclosed. It followed Ferrero's earlier purchases of American confectionery and made it a substantial frozen dessert business as well.
The parent company of Blue Bunny is Ferrero, a family-owned company headquartered in Italy.
Blue Bunny originated in the United States in 1935, but it is owned today by Ferrero, which is headquartered in Italy. So Blue Bunny is an American-origin brand under Italian ownership.
Ferrero completed its acquisition of Blue Bunny on 1 April 2022, after announcing the deal on 24 February 2022. The price was not disclosed.
Blue Bunny was an independent company from its founding in 1935 in Le Mars, Iowa until Ferrero acquired it in 2022.
Yes. As of 16 September 2026, Blue Bunny is still owned by Ferrero. The ownership record was last checked against primary sources on that date.
Last verified . Every ownership fact above is backed by one of these primary documents. Numbers in brackets in the text refer to this list.
Report a correction Opens a pre-filled GitHub issue. See our corrections policy.
Brandtree needs to remember this choice and does not set any other cookie unless you accept.
If you choose “Accept all”, we also use Google Analytics cookies to count visits and see which pages help, so we can improve the site.
If you choose “Accept required”, no analytics cookie is set. Google Analytics still receives a cookieless ping with the page address and your IP address. No advertising is used either way. Privacy policy