Miko is a French ice cream brand and company owned by The Magnum Ice Cream Company, originally created by Luis Ortiz in Saint-Dizier in the 1920s.
Miko is the official ice cream supplier of Disneyland Paris.
History
Miko's origins lie in the emigration of the Spanish Ortiz family to France in the 1920s. Some settled in 1919 in Deauville and Trouville where they created Glaces Pompon. One of their cousins, Luis Ortiz (1889–1948), born in San Pedro del Romeral, established himself as a traveling merchant in Saint-Dizier (Haute-Marne) in 1921.[1] He drives his street vendor's cart there to sell his roasted chestnuts, complementing this activity by making ice cream. At the same time, the American Christian K. Nelson discovered the property of coconut oil used to fix the chocolate around the stick, and created the Eskimo.[2]
A cousin of the Ortiz imported the idea in 1925, giving birth to the Ortiz stick.[3] Parents and children crisscross the region aboard scooters. The sale of ice cream increased after the Liberation.