Speaker A
Hey, um, it's actually a real honor to be here. I was born in Amsterdam a while ago, and it's great to see that Amsterdam is hosting the launch of the Be Called movement in Europe. So, I'm excited to tell you a little bit about Ben & Jerry's and the things that we do and know the reason why we actually, so yeah, so much they forth in B Corp and champion the movement. It is actually the first time as well that I actually appear on a stage after a banker. So, for the guys that when the workshops, Mr. Beeman had a fantastic story about three of those banks. I think it's a special bank, and I have to admit as well, he convinced me so much that I'm going to put all my money on this banker, which I haven't done yet. Let me tell you a little bit about Ben & Jerry's, and I've got some slides as well to elaborate on that one. Ben & Jerry's was founded by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield in 1978. They were high school friends, and at some point, you know, in their lives, they got to find themselves a job, and that didn't work really well. So, they were searching and searching and tried all kinds of things and ended up starting an ice cream parlor in 1978 in Burlington, Vermont, selling ice cream in a state up north in the US where it snows about six months a year. But they fundamentally believed that their ice cream was so special, and it was a student town that would, you know, going to make good business for them and actually did. So, a year later, they celebrated Free Cone Day. They actually started to hand out free ice cream like we actually did today, and I think you guys, you know, enjoyed that, so that's good. Basically, to thank our customers for their custom, for the fact that they actually came to a shop and bought our product. But in that journey of, you know, becoming a real enterprise and, you know, the two entrepreneurs, you know, one whack a guy and one of the guys, but basically, you know, did all the engineering work and got things, you know, to happen and make it work, there was an evening that I think is worthwhile to mention when you talk about B Corp and talking about, you know, using business as a force for good. About a year, you know, in business, 1979, Ben actually went to the local pub and had a couple of drinks, three, four, five, whatever, you know, one of these evenings where you think about your business life and all the fundamental stuff that you do, and you reflected upon his own business and life and actually said, like, I'm doing business, I'm actually quite successful, you know, we got through the first year, everybody loves us, but I actually don't really like the way I do business. It's all about, you know, can I, you know, make enough profit out of this thing? My father was an ex-accountant, is not actually, you know, that happy because we're losing a little bit here and a little bit there. We're way too generous to our suppliers and our employees, and, you know, I'm actually going to pull out. This is not my business. This is way too profit-focused. And I think the story goes that the local innkeeper says to Ben, if you don't like how business is run, then run business your way and make a difference. Now, my first slide is this one. This is a slide that we show pretty much in, you know, every presentation because I think it's kind of the fundament and the basics of what we do as a business. This is 1988, about 10 years later when we started to articulate the way we do business as Ben & Jerry's. So, this business is founded on a mission statement, but we talk about, you know, product, social, and economic, and they're equally important. It is about good product, authentic, natural, wholesome, with respect for earth and environment. It is about a sustainable business in which we create value for the business and also for stakeholders and for our employees. And it is about our social mission where we basically say, you know, how can we actually use this business to have an impact and return to society? Now, the threefold mission is actually linked to, you know, a concept that we've called linked prosperity. So, our business is found dedicated to the concept with linked prosperity. And just in, you know, simple terms, and you've heard this in many different ways of things during the day today as well, what linked prosperity means to us is if we do well, we got to make sure the whole chain, the whole value chain, all our stakeholders do well as well. And we can actually do this as a group, as a team, as a movement, and make this happen across, you know, multiple communities. So, this is how we try to frame linked prosperity. And can I have to look at this one, set of that one, because it doesn't work. So, linked prosperity for us is in actually taking care of, you know, the suppliers where we buy our ingredients from. You know, we make ice cream. We make ice cream with big chunks and swirls, and that, you know, ice cream consists of about fifty percent dairy. Now, we work very closely with our farmers in Vermont and Holland to work on sustainable dairy and to actually pay a fair price for the dairy that we have. We saw, we live, and work in communities. You know, we've got about 500 shops across the world. We've got three factories. In working with all of these people, we got to make sure that everybody benefits from that business that we're building as well. So, we pay a livable wage. We try to make sure that is the safest factory, you know, that we can have on earth, and that safety is a key topic in everything we do. We work with our, you know, shops across the state and, of course, Europe to actually train people and to help them actually move through the cycles of running a business of Ben & Jerry's. And last but not least, you know, we sell our products to people. You know, we're a real business, and the cool thing is actually when we sell products to people, and we, and it comes with that story, and, you know, the people that actually love us and own us in a way because our brand is owned by these people, we can actually work with them together to use this linked prosperity cycle to drive change and do community work and drive movement across our communities, whether this is in Burlington, Vermont, in Amsterdam, Dennis, and Lightest Art, or, you know, a fair trade farmer in Uganda. It doesn't really matter. That's linked prosperity for us. And I wanted to give you a conceptual feel of what that's all about. I'll give you a couple of examples of the stuff that we do, and I'll start with the one I think is one that stands out and actually, you know, what started by Ben. Yeah, because Ben is, in my eyes, the genius, the mastermind, the guy that always found ways to do difficult things and just made it work. The example I'm going to show you is Greyston Bakery. Greyston Bakery is a certified B Corporation, or that's right. And the cool thing about Greyston Bakery is that about ninety percent of our brownies, that's it, in chocolate fudge brownies, brownie and a salt across the globe are produced by Greyston Bakery. Greyston Bakery actually enables ex-convicts to return back into society. So, people come on as straight out of jail, and we actually say, like, come work for Greyston, and we train you to actually work in a factory and bake brownies. And these brownies go into our products. And the cool thing is that through, you know, that apprenticeship, through that, you know, working, it's much easier for them to then return back into society, move on to the next job, and really, you know, don't go getting into that vicious cycle of returning back into jail again. So, I think that's a great song. The other thing that we did that was not an easy one is that we set to ourselves, you know, we got to pay a fair price to our farmers for nearly sugar, cocoa, banana. So, how can we use the fair trade movement and work with the fair trade movement to certify all of the stuff that we put into our products? So, from 2000 and onwards, we more or less certified everything and made it into Fairtrade sugar, cocoa, vanilla.
