Ben, Jerry & Chico: The Friendship Behind the Ice Cream

Jerry Garcia was a flavor that was suggested to us by two Deadheads. They said that we should name a flavor after Jerry Garcia, and they assured us that it would sell because Dead paraphernalia always sold. And, uh, sure enough, they were right. Former Ben & Jerry CEO Fred Chico Logger. Today on Now I've Heard Everything, I'm Bill Thompson.

were right. Former Ben & Jerry CEO Fred Chico Logger. Today on Now I've heard everything. I'm Bill Thompson.

[Music] A few years ago, two guys who were friends started a small business in an abandoned gas station in Burlington, Vermont. It was a small business, but these two guys then built it into what is now one of the world's best-known and most popular brands. Their names were Ben and Jerry. They make ice cream. Perhaps you've heard of them.

most popular brands. Their names were Ben and Jerry. They make ice cream. Perhaps you've heard of them.

Well, one of their first customers in Burlington back in the day was a guy who owned a bar in town. And his name was Fred Logger. Everybody calls him Chico.

And in 1982, Fred Chico Logger joined Ben and Jerry's as general manager and CFO. And it was in that role that he helped build the brand into what it is today. In 1988, they made Loger the president and

And in 1982, Fred Chico Logger joined Ben and Jerry's as general manager and CFO. And it was in that role that he helped build the brand into what it is today. In 1988, they made Logger the president and CEO of Ben & Jerry's. In 1994, Logger wrote a book about his Ben & Jerry's experience. He called it Ben and Jerry's The Inside Scoop. It was part business book, part memoir, and a lot of social conscience.

In just a moment, our conversation. No, Sherman, this isn't the Wayback Machine, but it is a look back at an interview from the 30-year archive of national radio personality Bill Thompson. Enjoy.

In just a moment, our conversation. No, Sherman, this isn't the Wayback Machine, but it is a look back at an interview from the 30-year archive of national radio personality Bill Thompson. Enjoy.

of both in here, but I'm wondering which on a day-to-day basis is the harder to maintain. Uh probably a sense of humor uh particularly as you get bigger uh because you begin to get further and further removed from uh the people who

So here now from 1994, Fred Chico Logger. I was looking at the subtitle, how two guys, two real guys, built a business with a social conscience and a sense of humor. And it occurred to me as I was reading this book, there's plenty of both in here, but I'm wondering which, on a day-to-day basis, is the harder to maintain. Uh, probably a sense of humor, uh, particularly as you get bigger, uh, because you begin to get further and further removed from, uh, the people who are on the line making the ice cream, and that's a real good source of humor and joy within the workplace. But, uh, if you work at it, you can still create it.

We have a joy gang at Ben & Jerry's which uh does events such as Elvis Day during which uh employees dressed up as various versions of Elvis. Uh, I came as the Las Vegas Elvis and uh only took

We have a joy gang at Ben & Jerry's, which, uh, does events such as Elvis Day, during which, uh, employees dressed up as various versions of Elvis. Uh, I came as the Las Vegas Elvis and, uh, only took second place to an employee who came as the, uh, "Give me some more mashed potatoes and gravy" Elvis. She was, uh, very hippie. It does not surprise me. It probably does not surprise you in the least that Ben & Jerry's is consistently listed in all the kinds of directories as the best businesses to work for, the best places to find a job. Well, it, it's true. Although, you know, the reality of working at our company is not one of constant, uh, joy and nirvana. Uh, we were a company that went through a period of rapid growth, and the actual act of making ice cream is a physically challenging and physically demanding workplace. So, uh, you know, we do have that reputation, but, uh, in some ways, the reality is not quite as golden as it's perceived to be, although we do aspire and work very hard at living up to that reputation. Why did you write this book? Well, it's a fascinating story. You know, how these two guys started with $12,000 in cash and an abandoned, uh, gas station in downtown Burlington, Vermont. Really no business experience. They learned how to make ice cream from a $5 correspondence course, splitting the tuition. They each threw in two, two and a half bucks. And, uh, I was fortunate to, uh, see the startup of the business. I used to own a bar in Burlington, Vermont. So I saw the early days from a customer standpoint and joined the business in 1982 and was a participant during its period of rapid growth. So, uh, the two individuals, Ben and Jerry, are characters. They lend themselves to great storytelling. There are these wonderful insider anecdotes in the book that, uh, that really have never really been told. And I just thought it would make a really good read. Plus, it would be a book that, uh, people who are in business or who aspire to own their own business could really learn something.

listed in all the kinds of directories the best businesses to work for, the best places to find a job. Well, it it's true. Although you know the reality of working at our company is not one of of constant uh joy and nirvana. Uh we were

Why was it not Jiren Benny's? Well, uh, they, uh, they thought, uh, Benny's was, uh, something that Ben's mother would object to. So, uh, they, uh, they decided to go with, uh, with Ben and Jerry's. And, uh, as it turned out, Jerry became the president of the company because they had put Ben's name first when they named the business. Well, which one is Jerry? Jerry is the one without the beard. They're, they're, they're backwards on the, uh, on the book jacket, but they're, uh, they're right side right on the lids of ice cream. You describe that anecdote in the book, the White House, when they received this. They were the, uh, the National Small Business of the Year, uh, award winners in 1978. Kind of Flumic Star president who didn't know which one was which. His, uh, the only line that he ever spoke to Ben and Jerry was, uh, well, uh, which one is Jerry? Which, when you think about it, is, uh, is probably the, uh, the second question that probably would have popped into most of our minds. The first being which one is Ben?

reality is not quite as as golden as it's perceived to be although we do aspire and work very hard at at at living up to that reputation. Why did you write this book? Well, it's a it's a fascinating story. You know, how these

But there is, you're right, there's a lot of practical information in here for people who, and certainly it's, I think, there's as much lesson in here for people who are in the bowels of some enormous gigantic multinational multi-leveled corporation like Pillsbury as there are with people who are starting up a small business that would eventually find itself going head-to-head with a Pillsbury. I think that's true. You know, the people who are in small business, I think, will find aspects of the story very inspiring. Uh, how the company overcame adversity in terms of raising cash, how it scraped by when it really didn't have, uh, much of a financial backing. Um, how we competed directly with the Pillsburys of the worlds and the Krafts of the world going head-to-head against these billion-dollar packaged goods companies and really successfully competed against them. What is the secret to making an ice cream that, that, that rises to the top of the, the field? Well, uh, you know, the secret of making a great ice cream is really not a secret. I mean, it's, uh, it's decreasing the amount of air in the product. It's, uh, increasing the amount of cream, so it's heavier, denser, richer, and creamier. Uh, it's using, in our instance, large chunks of cookies and candy, although we have now introduced a line of smooth flavors that are unfettered by chunks, uh, for people, in Ben's words, who are just too tired to chew. Or those folks like my dad would have loved this after he took his teeth out on Saturday night. That's right. You can, uh, put it in a blender and drink it right down. That's right. You got a great story in here about the, the Heath bars that were, uh, that wound up being stacked in somebody's... Was it your office they were stacked in? Well, there was, there was only one office.

was fortunate to uh see the startup of the business. I used to own a bar in Burlington, Vermont. So I I saw the the early days from a from a customer standpoint. and joined the business in 1982 and was a participant during its

Everybody shared it. There were four, there were four or five of us stuffed in. But we, uh, uh, we got a call from the Heath Bar salesperson one day offering us Heath bars at 99 cents a pound, which, uh, uh, to me was like a license to print money. It was a really good deal. And, uh, at the time, though, we didn't really have, uh, much excess cash to tie up in inventory. Uh, and we also didn't have much room to store a lot of ingredients far enough in advance. So, uh, we swallowed hard and we ordered 500 cases.

make a a really good read. Plus it would be a book that uh people who are in business or who aspire to own their own business could really learn something.

And, uh, that was a huge, huge outlay for us at the time. And, uh, we scraped together the money. The interesting story was that we were in the process of building a freezer out behind our factory. Uh, and the expectation was that the freezer would be up and running before the Heath bars got there.

became the president of the company because they had put Ben's name first when they named the business. Well, which one is Jerry? Jerry is the one without the beard. They're they're they're backwards on the uh on the book

But the Heath bar showed up before the freezer was built. And, uh, there was no place else to put them. So they stacked them floor to ceiling behind my desk.

award winners in 1978. Kind of Flumic Star president who didn't know which one was which. His uh the only line that he ever spoke to Ben and Jerry was uh well uh which one is Jerry? Which when you

And, uh, I could not get into my, uh, my desk. Got to slip in over the, uh, the ar...

But there is, you're right, there's a lot of practical information in here for people who and certainly it's I think there's as much lesson in here for people who are in the bowels of some enormous gigantic multinational multi-levelled corporation like

Pillsbury as there are with people who are starting up a small business that would eventually find itself going to head head-to-head with a Pillsbury. I I think that's true. You know, the people who are in small business, I think, will

find aspects of the story very inspiring. uh how the company overcame adversity in terms of raising cash, how it scraped by when it really didn't have uh much of a of a financial back backing. Um how we competed directly

with the Pillsberries of the worlds and the crafts of the world going head-to-head against these billiondoll packaged goods companies and and really successfully competed against them. What is the secret to making an ice cream that that that rises to the the top of

the of its field? Well, uh, you know, the the secret of making a great ice cream is really not a secret. I mean, it's, uh, it's decreasing the amount of air in the product. It's, uh, increasing the amount of cream, so it's heavier,

denser, richer, and creamier. Uh, it's using, in our instance, large chunks of cookies and candy, although we have now introduced a line of smooth flavors that are unfettered by chunks, uh, for people, in Ben's words, who are just too

tired to chew. or or those folks like my dad would have loved this after he took his teeth out on Saturday night. That's right. You can uh put it in a blender and and drink it right down. That's right. You got a

great story in here about the the the Heath bars that were uh that that wound up being stacked in somebody's Was it your office they were stacked in? Well, there was there was only one office.

Everybody shared it. There were four there were four or five of us stuffed in. But we uh uh we got a call from the Heath Bar salesperson one day offering us Heath bars at 99 cents a pound, which

uh uh to me was like a license to print money. It was a really good deal. And uh at the time though, we didn't really have uh much excess cash to tie up in inventory. Uh and we also didn't have

much room to store a lot of ingredients far enough in advance. So uh we swallowed hard and we ordered 500 cases.

And uh that was a huge huge outlay for us at the time. And uh we scraped together the money. We the interesting story was that we were in the in the process of building a freezer out behind our factory. Uh and the expectation was

is that the freezer would be up and running before the Heath bars got there.

But the Heath bar showed up before the freezer was built. And uh there was no place else to put them. So they stacked them floor to ceiling behind my desk.

And uh I I could not get into my uh my desk. got to slip in over the uh the arms of my chair. But you coming back to the sense of humor, you you maintain some a degree of sense of humor about

that situation. Sure. We just uh made a little space for the copier and perched it right on a couple of cases of Heath bars. Cuz it seems it strikes me that you and Ben and Jerry know something that most of us need to be reminded of

on a daily basis, and that is life is too serious to be taken seriously. It's it's really true. You know, one of the uh the founding um underlying uh themes of the business was uh a quote of Jerry's that was on a uh flyer that we

put out when uh they did their first free cone day on the first anniversary at the gas station. And uh Jerry's quote was, "If it's not fun, why do it?" And that has uh been something that we've tried to uh to live up to. As I as I

said, you know, we often times uh get caught up as everybody else does in the in the nitty-gritty of running a business. Certainly, as it gets bigger, it becomes more challenging, but uh to whatever extent we can, we're looking

for uh for offbeat things to do and things to make it uh funky and weird and interesting. But still, as you said, you there are certain practical things about running any kind of business in this country. And I'm not sure that you could

have fun and lawyers in the same sentence, but you've got to have lawyers to run a business. You do have lawyers.

We we have uh good lawyers, and fortunately, our lawyers uh share our sense of humor or at least are willing to go along with some of our more uh our more offbeat schemes. You know, when we had a scuffle with the Pillsbury

Corporation, uh we retained excellent antirust council, but we also launched uh our infamous What's the Doughboy Afraid of campaign, which we kicked off by sending Jerry to Minneapolis to do a one-man picket in front of Pillsbury's world headquarters. And uh we did a

number of uh offbeat things to bring attention to our our plight. Uh we had uh billboards in Boston. Uh we had uh banners that were flown behind planes over Boston College football games and and our lawyer uh was was very willing

to let us you know push that and and go the extra mile whereas some lawyers might have said you know why don't you cool that that'll just get you into trouble and millions of dollars in free publicity as a result. Absolutely. It

was uh it was really a windfall for the company when we started uh having our problems with Pillsbury. we were a $4 million company and uh a couple years later by the time we finished we were up to 20 million. So the the publicity and

the uh and the name recognition that we received as a result of the Pillsbury case was really invaluable. And and what's really interesting about that is that that's a an instance where we took a potential liability. Uh an instance

where our direct competitor, a multi-billion dollar company, was trying to uh intimidate our distributors and disrupt our channels of distribution.

And we were able to turn that into an asset, a PR promotional campaign that gave us millions of dollars worth of free publicity.

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[Music] Now, how do you keep a company like Ben & Jerry's from eventually transmogrifying into the kind of company that would do to Tom and Billy's whatsbury tried to do to Ben & Jerry's?

I mean, well, I think the the values in terms of how the business is run come from the people who are running it. And uh Ben and Jerry are still very actively involved in the business and as much as

possible we are trying to run the business in a way consistent with the values and the way in which the business has always been run in terms of how it interacts with the community in terms of how it interacts with its employees.

It's it's certainly a challenge as you get as you get bigger. Uh there's no doubt that uh running a $140 million business that distributes its product nationally is much different than running uh a homemade ice cream parlor in in the corner in Burlington, Vermont.

But uh you can retain aspects of your of your values and your culture with Fred Chico. It did also occur to me for the bookstore browser who's looking who's looking at the jackets and he says says former CEO. I

says this isn't one of those kiss and tell. Well, now I'm going to tell you all the the dirt on Ben and Jerry's, is it? It it isn't. Although it it's a very candid book and it and uh it's kind of a

warts and all story. It talks openly about some of the conflicts and some of the the difficulties that the company has has had. You know, a lot of what the company uh what has been written about the company has been, you know, had a

sort of PR gloss to it. And uh as I mentioned, there's there's difficult aspects and challenges that the business has has faced. And uh you know it's important that people know that uh it's not just a bowl of cherries that there

are pitfalls that that we have fallen into. We've been involved in uh lawsuits and scrapes and stuff like that. And uh the book deals with those openly and honestly and I think u there's learn there's things to be learned from that

as well. You wouldn't be human beings if you didn't have conflicts from time to time. Absolutely. You know and unfortunately you wouldn't be a business in America if you weren't either a sewer or a sue from time to time. You know, if

I've just coined some phrases there. Suie is what they uh what they what they say to call the pigs. Bill Yeah. See, that's this is where the razor blade comes in. You know, I can substitute a a a more rational and more

sane question later on and leave your very good answer into that that inane question. It what what is what is maybe the the silliest question you've ever been asked about one of your ice creams?

About one of the ice creams? Well, they they often ask, you know, who comes up with the flavors and uh there's there's a a whole bunch of there's there's virtually a story behind every flavor. You know, Cherry Garcia was a flavor that was

suggested to us by two dead heads by way of uh an anonymous postcard. And in the postcard, they said that uh we should name a flavor after Jerry Garcia. And they assured us that it would sell because dead paraphernelia always sold.

And uh sure enough, they were right. And we were, it's a funny story, but we were able to actually track them down. Uh we put it out through the the Grateful Dead fan magazine that we were looking for

the people who had suggested the flavor. And uh sure enough, we got a uh a letter from somebody saying, "Thanks for making it. I hear you're looking for me." And we still had the original postcard. We matched up the handwriting. We brought

them into our annual shareholders meeting. And they were uh their pictures are in the book. They're they're prototypical deadheads. Now, Wavy Gravy strikes me as a terrific name for an ice cream. Wavy gravy was the announcer at Woodstock and

uh the interesting thing about Wavy Gravy, it's the first packaged food that's been put out in a tie-dyed package and uh very colorful and uh Wavy is an interesting character. He uh he lives out in San Francisco and and he

does a lot of work with kids and uh part of the uh the proceeds from the uh the flavor are going towards his Camp Winter Rainbow.

How does Ben and Jerry's decide which social conscience or whi which causes because you know once you start whether you're an individual or a company once you start giving away some money or being socially active suddenly boy you

got people all over you want a little piece of you. It's true you know most of the uh the uh the donations that the company has uh has been making go through a foundation the Ben & Jerry's Foundation which receives 7.5% of the

company's pre-tax profits. And uh there's a separate foundation board. Uh various employees serve on that committee and they review grant applications and decide uh where the money goes. Uh lately we've been focusing in on uh kids as as a main

focal point for the campaign and we've been working a lot with the Children's Defense Fund uh in their campaign.

You personally, I'm sure like ice cream a lot. You know, I I do like ice cream.

And uh the interesting thing is when you're when you work at Ben & Jerry's uh you tend to not eat ice cream too much recreationally because in the course of doing your job uh dayto-day you're forced to eat ice cream. So that did

occur to me when I'm in the kitchen if I make I make chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen and yeah I'll have one or two when they come out of the oven cuz they smell so good but after a while

just I just get kind of sick of chocolate chip cookies. Well I won't say that I ever got sick of the ice cream because I never got sick of it. I was just eating. I was eating my fill, my

daily requirement at work. You know, from time to time, people would come into my office and say, you know, taste these. Tell me which one you like better. Or, you know, we're working on this new flavor. What do you think of

this? So, uh, by the time you got home, typically you would have already eaten, uh, you know, 4 to 8 ounces worth of ice cream during the course of that day. Why aren't you big as a balloon then? Well,

lately I've been eating mostly our frozen yogurts, which uh which are lower in fat and which uh which are really good for people who are a little more conscious of uh of what they consume. Now, you can get your copy of

Ben and Jerry's the inside scoop by Fred Chico Logger by tapping the link in our show notes, by clicking the link in the description below if you're watching this on YouTube, or by going to our website, herdverthingthing.com. We may earn an

Amazon commission if you make a purchase. Herverthing.com is where you can also find my 1994 conversation with another well-known entrepreneur of tasty treats. Famous Amos' Wally Amos. I love selling cookies. I love eating them, making them. I love everything about

chocolate chip cookies. There are millions of people that identify me and cookies. I've created a lot of goodwill.

That Goodwill didn't belong to Famous Amos. It belonged to Wally Amos. and my 2011 interview with the sisters who started a chocolate shop that became legendary in Washington DC, Francis and Ginger Park. Anything covered in chocolate works, even insects. We

actually get requests for that. We haven't gone that far. We will never carry chocolate covered insects. Never.

That would require sampling and I don't think I'm up for that. And of course, we post new episodes of Now I've heard everything every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And you can find us every place you find podcasts. And thank you so much

for listening. Next time on Now I've Heard Everything. It's the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the effective end of the war in Vietnam.

So we'll revisit my 2002 conversation with the former premier, the former vice president of South Vietnam, Nuin Caoi.

They call me flamboyant, controversial, lady killer. Uh, they call me Butcher, Warunger, maybe killer. That's next time. Now I've heard everything.

I'm Jules Thompson. [Music]