The ice cream brand Häagen-Dazs was invented in 1959 by a Russian immigrant, Reuben Mattus, at his kitchen table and manufactured at his family ice cream factory, Senator Frozen Products, in the Bronx. While Reuben handled the marketing and devised the original Häagen-Dazs recipe — much richer and with less air than standard ice creams of the day — Rose handled the business end, learning to buy in bulk, organizing a sales force, and designing an early distribution network that included sending cases of ice cream cooled by dry ice to distant college towns via Greyhound bus.

Rose Vesel met Reuben Mattus when they were children, both Eastern European Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn. She went to work as a bookkeeper at the Senator plant in 1934 and within two years had married Reuben. It was always a small business, and sometimes on summer afternoons the young couple would take a trunk-load of ice cream down to Coney Island and sell it on the beach. By the 1950s, the business was being squeezed by larger companies, and Reuben came up with Haagen-Dazs.