T. Gary Rogers, Dreyer’s owner, philanthropist, dies at 74

T. Gary Rogers at the Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream parlour on College Avenue in Oakland in 2002. T. Gary Rogers at the Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream parlour on College Avenue in Oakland in 2002. Photo: LEA SUZUKI, SFC Photo: LEA SUZUKI, SFC Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close T. Gary Rogers, Dreyer’s owner, philanthropist, dies at 74 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

T. Gary Rogers, the Oakland businessman and philanthropist who built Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream from a small operation into one of the world’s premier purveyors of frozen delights, has died.

Mr. Rogers, 74, died Tuesday while playing tennis at his Oakland home, his family said. Known as Gary to his loved ones and employees, he was the chief executive of Dreyer’s for three decades, until the company was sold to Nestle in 2002.

Mayor Libby Schaaf called Mr. Rogers a “stalwart of the Oakland community.”

“His success as a business leader (and) his commitment to the educational attainment of Oakland’s students, and to fostering critical dialogue about Oakland’s future, has inspired so many in our community — including me,” Schaaf said.

Deploying the same passion with which he oversaw the placement of cookie-dough chunks and candy-bar pieces into ice-cream recipes — or with which he rowed on the championship Cal team as a student — Mr. Rogers oversaw the close corporate culture at Dreyer’s, which became known as one of the great places to work.

Mr. Rogers once served as chairman of Safeway Inc., Levi Strauss & Co. and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, as well as the Bay Area Council, a regional association devoted to business and public policy.

“The Bay Area has lost a great business, community and philanthropic leader, a good friend and a generous supporter,” said Jim Wunderman, president of the council. “Gary was a deeply caring man who invested so much in our region, particularly in Oakland, which he so dearly loved. He will be remembered for his leadership, philanthropy and his great heart.”

A native of Stockton, Mr. Rogers was a 1963 graduate of UC Berkeley. In 1968, he received a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School.

In 1977, at age 34, Mr. Rogers and his business partner, William Cronk, purchased Dreyer’s, the ice cream plant in the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland. Dreyer’s had been founded in 1928 by William Dreyer and Joseph Edy, the visionaries said to have created the rocky-road flavor.

Under Mr. Rogers and Cronk, the enterprise thrived. Plants were built and production swelled to more than 3 million gallons a year. In 1982, the company was credited with the idea of mixing crumbled chocolate cookies into the recipe, giving birth to the flavor known as cookies ’n cream. Five years later, the company pioneered “light” ice cream with reduced calorie and fat content.

In 2002, the two men sold Dreyer’s for $3.2 billion. They had bought it for $1 million. During that time, the company went from a workforce of 75 employees to 9,000.

In 2013, Mr. Rogers was named chairman of an even larger food empire: Pleasanton’s Safeway Inc.

Mr. Rogers never forgot that his path to success had been something of a rocky road itself. In a 2015 speech to business students at UC Davis, he recalled how his first business venture “flew right into a wall.” He had sought to open a chain of upscale restaurants in California and Texas.

“I was selling Chardonnay and abalone to Texans who wanted chicken-fried steak,” Mr. Rogers recalled, with a characteristic self-effacing grin.

An adventurer, Mr. Rogers traveled to both the North and South Poles, to the Amazon and to the Serengeti.

As head of the Rogers Family Foundation, he oversaw gift giving to educational, health and athletic causes. He was particularly generous to his alma mater, Cal, and its rowing program.

“We all need to give back to those things that gave to us,” Mr. Rogers liked to say.

Mr. Rogers is survived by his wife of 52 years, Kathleen, and by sons Andy, Matt, Brian and John. He is also survived by his brothers, Don and Jim, and by his 102-year-old mother, Virginia Rogers.

An outdoor memorial service will be held at the T. Gary Rogers Rowing Center on at 11 a.m. May 15 at 2999 Glascock St. in Oakland.

Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com