Joseph Oliver Edy (1891-1964): The Candy Man of Grand Avenue; Sold to Dreyer's

Young Joe Edy and grave marker

Plot 59

Joseph Oliver Edy helped give Oakland one of its sweetest claims to fame: a candy shop that grew into a Bay Area confectionery chain, and an ice cream partnership whose name still sits in freezers across America.

Edy was born in Missouri on April 2, 1891, and was raised in Montana, where he operated a candy shop in Billings before coming west. In 1925, he opened Edy’s Character Candies on Grand Avenue in Oakland, a small shop producing homemade candies that quickly became part of the growing Grand Avenue shopping district. By the time of his death nearly four decades later, the enterprise he founded had expanded to 12 stores, including three in Oakland, with locations stretching as far south as Los Angeles.

But Edy’s name would travel even farther because of ice cream. In 1928, he joined forces with German-born ice cream maker William Dreyer, forming what became Edy’s Grand Ice Cream in Oakland. Dreyer brought the dairy craft; Edy brought the candy maker’s imagination. Together they helped create one of the great American ice cream innovations: Rocky Road, introduced in 1929 and remembered as one of the first major ice cream flavors built around mix-ins.

Joe Edy & father Joseph Edy, Sr.

The timing could hardly have been more apt. As the Great Depression darkened the national mood, Rocky Road offered a bit of edible optimism: chocolate ice cream, marshmallows and nuts, a rough road made sweet. The flavor became a signature of the company and a small piece of Oakland food history.

Edy and Dreyer eventually dissolved their partnership in 1947, but the two names remained linked. The company later grew far beyond Oakland. By the late 20th century, Dreyer’s had become a national brand, marketed as Dreyer’s in the West and Edy’s east of the Rockies to avoid confusion with Breyers. UC Berkeley’s Haas School later described Dreyer’s as a Bay Area company founded in 1928 by William Dreyer and Joseph Edy that eventually grew from a local brand into a national ice cream powerhouse. 

Ad for Edy's Candies in Walnut Creek

Edy’s own candy business also had a notable second act. An Oakland Tribune item from October 1, 1945, reported that Joseph O. Edy sold the four stores of Edy’s Character Candies—three in Oakland and one in San Francisco—to a partnership of six longtime employees. Edy was to remain as general manager, and the announcement said the sale was intended to compensate loyal employees for their years of service. The separate Edy Ice Cream Co., owned by Edy and William Dreyer, was not included in that sale.

Joseph Edy died on March 11, 1964, at his home in Woodside. His Oakland Tribune obituary remembered him as the founder and president of Edy’s Character Candies, one of the early merchants of the Grand Avenue shopping district, and a member of the Oakland Rotary Club, Scottish Rite and Aahmes Shrine. 

There was public service in the family as well. Joseph’s older brother, John North Edy, was Berkeley’s first city manager, appointed in 1923. John Edy went on to become the first city manager of Dallas and Houston and later served in the federal Bureau of the Budget under Franklin D. Roosevelt. John is buried in Houston, Texas. 

For Oakland, Edy’s story is more than a tale of candy and ice cream. It is the story of a local shopkeeper whose Grand Avenue storefront became part of a national brand; a confectioner whose skills helped transform ice cream from plain scoops into textured, imaginative flavors; and a businessman whose name—whether seen as Edy’s or Dreyer’s—still carries a little bit of Oakland with every carton.