Ice Cream Cone Inventor Is Dead

Feb. 11, 1965 - David Avayou, who said he invented the edible ice cream cone, died on Monday at a nursing home in Atlantic City, N.J. He was 87 years old.

Mr. Avayou operated ice cream stores on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City until his retirement 10 years ago.

While working as a laborer at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904 (pictured), Mr. Avayou reportedly noticed that many people did not buy ice cream because they had to eat it from plates. So, he recalled, he devised the ice cream cone. 

Mr. Avayou, who was born in Izmir, Turkey, said he had come upon the idea for the cone when he recalled that ice cream was eaten from paper cones when he visited France. He set about making the cone edible.

“I spent three weeks and used hundreds of pounds of flour and eggs before I got it right, but finally I found the right combination,” he recalled recently. He first started making cones by baking them over a charcoal grill.

He went to Philadelphia, where a department store hired him to sell his confection. The cones sold well, and the store told Mr. Avayou that he deserved a vacation. When he returned, Mr. Avayou said in his later years, the store had taken over his concession, his formula, and was producing and selling its own cones.

He leaves his wife, Lena; 5 children, 13 grandchildren, and 2 great-grandchildren.

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