Speaker A
Yeah. The following is a special video presentation of the Hennepin County Library. Hi, welcome to a discussion with Fred Chico Lager.
Fred 'Chico' Lager discusses how Ben & Jerry's built a socially responsible business with humor, employee care, and innovative practices.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Social responsibility can coexist with business profitability through intentional policies and profit sharing.
- Employee motivation and equitable treatment are central to Ben & Jerry's success and culture.
- Maintaining a strict executive-to-entry-level pay ratio fosters fairness but can complicate recruitment.
- Founders' passion and commitment, including long work hours, are critical in early business growth.
- Giving back to the community through foundations and ethical sourcing is integral to the company's identity.
What the video covers
- Fred 'Chico' Lager, former CEO of Ben & Jerry's, shares insights from his book 'The Inside Scoop' about the company's founding and growth.
- Ben & Jerry's started with $12,000 in an abandoned gas station and grew to $4 million in sales by 1984.
- The founders learned ice cream making through a $5 correspondence course and worked extremely long hours to build the business.
- The company emphasized a culture of giving 110% and shared prosperity with employees through profit sharing and equitable pay ratios.
- Ben & Jerry's maintained a maximum 5:1 pay ratio between top executives and entry-level employees, later adjusted to 7:1.
- The company faced challenges recruiting senior managers due to its pay ratio policy but remained committed to social responsibility.
- Ben & Jerry's donates 7.5% of pre-tax profits to a foundation supporting nonprofit organizations nationally.
- The business philosophy integrates social conscience with profitability, including ethical ingredient sourcing.
- The discussion highlights the importance of employee motivation, company culture, and balancing social goals with business growth.
- The video includes anecdotes about company slogans, legal battles, and product quality.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Overview with Fred Chico Lager
- 02:19Early Growth and Founders' Background
- 03:40Challenges and Long Hours in Business
- 04:49Employee Profit Sharing and Company Culture
- 06:09Pay Ratio Policy and Recruitment Challenges
- 07:42Balancing Social Responsibility and Profitability
- 09:58Social Contributions and Foundation Giving
- 12:23Company Philosophy and Business Practices
- 15:29Legal Battles and Marketing Campaigns
- 23:14Product Quality and Innovation
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
I'm Eileen Kavanaugh from the Hennepin County Library Program office, and my guest today is the author of Ben and Jerry's The Inside Scoop.
Speaker A
Welcome, Chico. Good to have you here. Pleasure to be here. This book is such a fun read.
Speaker A
When I first picked it up, I thought, who wants to read a business book, especially during the summer of '94, as we are here.
Speaker A
And then I just read a chapter, as I often do, to decide whether I like a book well enough to continue.
Speaker A
And it was great. The story of two real guys who decided to make their living selling ice cream, basically.
Speaker A
And I wondered why you, who have been CEO with Ben and Jerry's for about 8 years or so, decided to take two years of your life and write the story.
Speaker A
Well, it's interesting. I actually decided that I was going to write a book about the company back in around 1984.
Speaker A
The business at that point was about $4 million in sales, but it had already experienced some really exceptional growth.
Speaker A
Ben and Jerry are very captivating, entertaining individuals, great personalities, and our business just seemed to lend itself to great storytelling.
Speaker A
So it seemed like the story of how these two guys started with no business experience and $12,000 in cash in an abandoned gas station in downtown Burlington, Vt, and were creating a really successful and very innovative and very entertaining business would make a really good read.
Speaker A
So I started actually making notes to myself and writing down quotes all the way back in 1984.
Speaker A
And they learned how to make ice cream by a $5 correspondence course. It's true.
Speaker A
Penn State University, I think it actually cost more than that now, but they actually still do offer the course.
Speaker A
But it was a $5 correspondence course. They split it. They each threw in 2 1/2 bucks and they were open book tests and they got A's on all of them.
Speaker A
Amazing. It is two things really struck me about this book, well, more than two, but two things I thought were really important and how honest you were about the many mistakes that were made in the course of the business,
Speaker A
even after it became a profitable business and the amazingly long hours that people spent.
Speaker A
How were people motivated to? Ben says he worked 80 to 100 hours a week.
Speaker A
It's true. Ben in the early days used to joke that the business was running them. They weren't running the business. It's a commitment that is pretty typical actually for entrepreneurs who are running small businesses.
Speaker A
It's that type of commitment that's really required to succeed. And when you're struggling to make your business a success, when you're struggling to survive, to pay your bills and to pay yourself a salary, you do whatever it takes.
Speaker A
And we were very successful because we were able to really convey that whatever it takes attitude, not just at the top of our organization, but it really filtered down.
Speaker A
And we really had that throughout the organization with even the people who were making the ice cream would put in phenomenal hours for us when we needed them in order to fill the orders.
Speaker A
Well, someplace it seems to me, it said that the philosophy was give 110%. That's fine. But did the company give 110% back to the employees?
Speaker A
Well, we tried, you know, in the early days, you know, the company was, I would say it tried to be a very good employer and I think it treated the employees really well, although financially the rewards were not that great because there really wasn't that much money.
Speaker A
But we made a commitment to our employees around the phrase link prosperity. And the commitment was that as the business grew and became more successful that we would share that success not just with a few people at the top of the
Speaker A
organization, but throughout the organization. So we instituted a profit sharing plan that split up 5% of our pre-tax profits amongst all the employees.
Speaker A
And it was based on how long people had worked at the company. It wasn't based on salary or rank or stature within the organization.
Speaker A
The company was essentially perkless. Everybody got the same benefits, including the infamous three free pints a day.
Speaker A
So there was stock given to the employees, 10% across people's salary across the board.
Speaker A
So through things like this, we conveyed a caring attitude towards our employees and they were willing to put in the hours and put in the efforts feeling that it was going to pay off down the road.
Speaker A
Another unique aspect of Ben and Jerry's was the fact that they had a ratio of initially 5 to 1, the top, if I'm correct, the top paying person in the company only received five times as much as the entry-level person.
Speaker A
It's true. That was quite amazing. It is amazing. It's since gone up to 7 to 1 and even today in 1994, it's subject to continued debate amongst the board of directors as to whether or not it's a good policy.
Speaker A
The concept behind it is really a good one. The idea is that people throughout the organization contribute to the company's success.
Speaker A
And it's not just a few people at the top who make a business successful, but the people on the line who are actually making the ice cream also contribute greatly to how successful the business is.
Speaker A
So from a conceptual standpoint, it makes a lot of sense. Where it hits the rubber and where you start to run into some problems is that it creates somewhat of a limit in terms of what you can pay at the top.
Speaker A
And we've run into some problems recruiting some senior level managers as a result, because obviously Ben and Jerry's doesn't operate in a vacuum.
Speaker A
And when we go to recruit senior managers, we're competing with other businesses that don't operate under this same limitation.
Speaker A
And we found in a lot of our recruiting efforts that we've gone out and had to literally try to convince people to come to work for Ben and Jerry's and take a pay cut, which is a very difficult thing to do.
Speaker A
I mean, Ben and Jerry's is a fun place to work, but there aren't too many people who want to take a 30 or 40% pay cut in order to have the honor of the ice cream.
Speaker A
That's right. I mean, the ice cream is good, but I don't think it's quite that good.
Speaker A
Well, you said that when people had an objection when they interviewed that they were told, well, there is no ceiling for the executive position.
Speaker A
So you just have to see to it that you're paying the entry-level people 1/5 of what you're getting.
Speaker A
It's true. And you know, we did regularly raise our entry-level wages. We were raising them at least annually, sometimes twice a year. Our entry-level wage in '94
Speaker A
now in our factory is $8 an hour, which is actually fairly good. But the reality is that when you raise the bottom, everything goes up.
Speaker A
And in order to give a reasonable raise to your senior level managers, you have to add about a half million dollars to your payroll.
Speaker A
And you begin to wonder whether you can actually afford that. So I mean, it creates a nice tension to a certain extent.
Speaker A
But you know, as the business grew beyond $100 million in sales, that's when we made the adjustment to 7 to 1.
Speaker A
And now as the company gets even bigger than that, we're looking at it again.
Speaker A
So you've kind of answered my next question, which is how does a company remain socially responsible, as Ben and Jerry's has been committed to doing, and still show some profitability?
Speaker A
Well, we do it in a number of ways. You know, traditionally social responsibility has meant giving a percentage of your profits to nonprofit organizations.
Speaker A
And there's some companies in Minnesota that have been very progressive and have been leaders in that field.
Speaker A
Ben and Jerry's does give 7 1/2% of our pre-tax profits to a foundation that then distributes the money to nonprofit organizations nationally, both in Vermont and across
Speaker A
And there's some companies in Minnesota that have been very progressive and have been leaders in that, in that field.
Speaker A
Ben and Jerry's does give 7 1/2% of our pre tax profits to a foundation that then distributes the money to nonprofit organizations nationally, both in Vermont and across the country.
Speaker A
But what we found is that there's a lot more than a business can do than just give away a percentage of its profits.
Speaker A
And what we try and do is factor in a way of giving back to the community into day-to-day business decisions whenever possible.
Speaker A
And I can give you an example of how we do that. One example would be through ingredient purchases.
Speaker A
Obviously, we're making ice cream and we're buying a lot of ingredients for that product.
Speaker A
One of the ingredients in our chocolate fudge brownie ice cream are the brownies. Now, we could have gone to a traditional Baker and purchased the brownies from them, but instead we went to a bakery called the Grayston Bakery, which is in Yonkers, NY.
Speaker A
And the interesting thing about Grayston is that they hire the homeless and then they use the profits from the bakery to provide transitional housing for their employees, which is all designed to try and break the cycle of homelessness and try and get people off to a good start,
Speaker A
a new start to their lives. And by Ben and Jerry's purchasing our brownies through Grayston, we're able to give them a contract that was worth about $1,000,000, add about 15 employees, an entire new production line.
Speaker A
And that's a way through just a normal daily business decision that we were able to do something very valuable for a community.
Speaker A
So it's kind of like a Pebble in the pond. It it goes beyond your own company and and beyond your own community actually too.
Speaker A
Absolutely. I mean, Ben, Ben likes to talk about the fact that business is the most powerful force in society and that if we're going to just leave it to the politicians to solve our problems, we'll never really get there.
Speaker A
Ben sort of started from the very beginning. This this wasn't a concept that developed.
Speaker A
He said from the very beginning when he had his little scoop shop that he wanted to return something to the community.
Speaker A
And one of the returns that he believed in too was celebration, community celebrations. It's true on the, on the very first anniversary of the, the very first scoop shop in the original gas station, which was in, in, in May of 1979, they held Free Cone Day, which was an event in which they scooped
Speaker A
free ice cream all day long to everybody who came into the shop. And on the posters that promoted Free Cone Day, there was a quote from each of the two founders.
Speaker A
Jerry's quote was, if it's not fun, why do it? And Ben's quote was business has a responsibility to give back to the community.
Speaker A
And they before they were even making any money, they were giving away free ice cream.
Speaker A
They were sponsoring community celebrations, free movie festivals that they showed against the wall of a building next to the gas station.
Speaker A
It was, it was very much a part of their personalities and the values that have really come to define the Business Today were really in evidence in the early days of the, of the gas station.
Speaker A
They were 60s people. Is that part of the milieu out of which they came and out of which this idea of socially responsible business came?
Speaker A
Absolutely. You know, the, the, the 60s were a very transformational time, You know, when people started really questioning authority in the way things were.
Speaker A
And one of the, the interesting things about Ben and Jerry's is it's, it's not only a company that gives back, but it's also a company that's run in a way that really questions the traditional assumptions of the way in which a business is supposed to operate.
Speaker A
Do you think that American business would be better off if all CE OS were paid at a 7 1/2 to one?
Speaker A
Well, you're asking, you're asking their own person. Because I was, I was not one of the biggest fans of that policy.
Speaker A
Not not really so much for personal reasons, because I had, I had some equity in the business.
Speaker A
I had purchased some equity in the business. So I, I really felt that, you know, my compensation was, was actually OK, but as the person responsible for running the business, I wanted to attract and bring in really good qualified senior level managers,
Speaker A
people who were better than me, people who had expertise in manufacturing ice cream, who could teach us things that we didn't know.
Speaker A
And in order to bring in that expertise, I felt that we needed to be a little more competitive in terms of the salary and the compensation that we were offering.
Speaker A
So I really support the concept of a compressed salary ratio. I don't think seven or five were the right number.
Speaker A
I certainly don't agree that, you know, businesses should be paying the 304 hundred 1000 times what their what their entry level people are making to to the senior level people.
Speaker A
I mean, Michael Eisner at Disney has done a phenomenal job there and I'm a big fan of Disney, but you know, the people who run the Jungle Cruise who give you such a great experience when you're in one of their parks do a great job too.
Speaker A
And, and I just think there needs to be a little more balance between the two.
Speaker A
Do you think this, this sort of speaks of the American business greed or the fact that I think you've said maybe in the book someplace that American business has lost its soul or that business can lose its soul by,
Speaker A
by having these vast needs to, to make more and more profit without regard to any of the other aspects of the business?
Speaker A
It's, it's possible. You know, we, we found that it really works for us. A, a connection to the community, a connection to our employees, a connection to our customers has really worked for us.
Speaker A
I think in general, all businesses, if they could rediscover that, I think that would be a really positive thing.
Speaker A
And it's, it seems as if one of the lessons has been you can make a, a profit, at least a reasonable profit I assume too, and do all these other things besides.
Speaker A
Absolutely. I mean, we, we discussed early on what impact, you know, all of these programs and all of these policies would have on our company.
Speaker A
And we knew that if we weren't going to be profitable, that nobody would take us seriously.
Speaker A
And we were committed to being successful by the same standards by which Wall Street judges any other firm, despite the fact that we were also doing these things.
Speaker A
And I think in general that we've been able to do that. You've talked about all this as quote, company culture.
Speaker A
How does company culture get communicated to the say, the new employee who was just coming on the line?
Speaker A
Well, it's it's really important to to Orient and, and pass on your culture and your values and the Ben and Jerry's we did it a number of ways.
Speaker A
You know, there is a formal orientation program for a new employee who would who would be with a group of other new employees.
Speaker A
Here's some of the war stories in the early days of, of how the company had started because somebody who comes into the company now when it's $100 million company doesn't have the same perception of, of what the business was like in the early days, how it had struggled.
Speaker A
We also pass on our culture through a series of company wide or or site wide meetings, which are as much celebrations as they are opportunities to pass on information.
Speaker A
And we also have a very good newsletter that circulated truly more of a newspaper, an in house publication every two weeks.
Speaker A
And you know, we try and not just have it be dry news. This is what's going on.
Speaker A
But the aspects of the culture that you want to pass on to your employees really have to be cherished and celebrated and really and really actively worked on if you want people to understand them and appreciate them.
Speaker A
Ben and Jerry's made some big news here in the Twin Cities back in 1984.
Speaker A
Can you tell us about that? Sure. That was when we had a, a bit of a dispute with the Pillsbury company and I drove by what was the slogan about the Doughboy?
Speaker A
The slogan we used was what's the doughboy afraid of the the origination of the of the dispute.
Speaker A
Pillsbury had just purchased Haagen Dazs, which was the number one brand of super premium ice cream.
Speaker A
And that was our our largest direct competitor. And in 1984, Ben and Jerry's had just entered the Boston market.
Speaker A
We at that point in time we had been selling in Vermont and New Hampshire and Maine.
Speaker A
And Boston was really our first large urban market. And we went into the marketplace and we're doing, you know, reasonably well.
Speaker A
We weren't setting the world on fire. We had, we went in with a, a $20, 000 marketing budget and which was, you know, really peanuts.
Speaker A
But after we've been there about 3 months or so, our distributors, the people who sold our ice cream to the supermarkets started to get calls from a vice president at Haagen Dazs.
Speaker A
And the calls essentially went along the lines of, you know, you're selling Haagen Dazs and Ben and Jerry's and you're going to have to make a choice.
Speaker A
If you're going to keep Haagen Dazs, you're going to have to drop Ben and Jerry's.
Speaker A
And these were independent distributors who carried not just Haagen Dazs and Ben and Jerry's, but you know, 30 or 40 lines of ice cream, full service ice cream distributors.
Speaker A
Well, at the time, Ben and Jerry's was just a little speck in the marketplace and Haagen Dazs was the market leader.
Speaker A
And given a choice, the distributors clearly would have picked Haagen Dazs, although they very much wanted to continue to carry both brands.
Speaker A
Well, our initial reaction was was one of humor because we couldn't believe that Ben and Jerry's was of concern to to Haagen Dazs or Pillsbury.
Speaker A
We didn't. We were very flattered that they had even noticed us. But we realized that this was a very serious, a very serious challenge for us because it affected our ability to distribute our product into the marketplace.
Speaker A
And we knew that in a court of law we would be at a decided disadvantage to Pillsbury.
Speaker A
I think there's 20 plus lawyers on Pillsbury's in house legal department plus a lot of very well respected law firms on retainer.
Speaker A
So in addition to pursuing it legally, which we did do, we also launched the What's the Doughboy Afraid of campaign.
Speaker A
And we started that off by having Jerry come out to Minnesota and he did a one man picket in front of Pillsbury's world headquarters with with a sign that said, what's the doughboy afraid of?
Speaker A
And he was handing out Flyers kind of like the other people used to protest against the war and remarketing in the Twin Cities at the time.
Speaker A
At the time we were we were just in New England. We weren't out here.
Speaker A
You know, admittedly, it was a it was a promotional event. It was designed to try and get some media attention.
Speaker A
We felt that if our consumers and if people found out about what Pillsbury and what Hagen us were trying to do.
Speaker A
That they would react the same that way that we did, which was, you know, kind of indignant, you know, kind of thinking that it was we we thought it was illegal, but we also felt like morally that it was
Speaker A
a case of, you know, this Fortune 500 company trying to squash this small entrepreneurial have this obvious unfairness.
Speaker A
The bully on the street. Absolutely. And we and we intentionally positioned the slogan was intentional in that we didn't want to position it against Ben and Jerry's against Haagen Dazs because that was 1 Ice Cream Company against another.
Speaker A
But Ben and Jerry's against Pillsbury was these two hippies against the Fortune 500, which has which just had this wonderful appeal to the media.
Speaker A
And sure enough, you know, it started, I think the Minneapolis Star and Tribune picked it up and there was a thing on Minnesota Public Radio.
Speaker A
And because Minnesotans love to support the underdog, they do. Jerry got a lot of support.
Speaker A
I mean, they were one or two executives from Pillsbury who towed the company line.
Speaker A
But most people who went by were very supportive. And it's steam rolled. You know, we got attention in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, USA TODAY.
Speaker A
And eventually the media attention was giving us such, such name recognition and we were getting such positive public relations benefit out of it that I think it really brought Pillsbury to the negotiating table.
Speaker A
And we were able to, they backed off and were able to negotiate an agreement out of court.
Speaker A
Wonderful and, and get a lot of publicity in the phenomenal publicity. I mean, at the time we were a $4 million company and I wouldn't put a dollar value on the, on the, the PR that we received, but it was millions and millions of dollars far beyond what,
Speaker A
what we could have afforded at the time. Well, it's kind of interesting because Haagen Dazs also started as a small company and was sort of marketed as that sophisticated import ice cream when in fact it wasn't imported at all.
Speaker A
And, and Haagen Dazs means nothing. It, it's sort of a fake. It is Danish name.
Speaker A
It's an, it's an interesting company. I mean, Haagen Dazs was founded by the late Reuben Mattis, who really created, you know, super premium ice creams.
Speaker A
He, he lowered the amount of air, he raised the butter fat and he really came out with the first really high quality product and he did a, a tremendous marketing job, as you say.
Speaker A
He, he called it Haagen Dazs because he thought the high quality ice cream would appeal to people who were into higher quality products that the, that the cachet of being European or foreign sounding would be a benefit to them.
Speaker A
And in fact, the ice cream was being made at first in the Bronx and then in New Jersey.
Speaker A
And the words Haagen Dazs have absolutely no meaning. Well, it's, I should go back to the whole idea of super premium ice cream and, and maybe we should say what that is as, as opposed to running the mail ice cream.
Speaker A
Well, the main thing that differentiates super premium ice cream is the amount of air, which is called overrun.
Speaker A
Most ice creams, they'll start out with a gallon of the basic ingredients, just the liquid ingredients.
Speaker A
And in the process of freezing the ice cream, they will whip enough air into the ice cream so that you wind up with two gallons of of ice cream.
Speaker A
So you've actually doubled it and it's very light. As a result, a super premium ice cream only has about 20% air, so it's a much heavier, denser, richer and creamier product.
Speaker A
It also has a much higher butter fat content, so it's a lot creamier. And super premium ice creams also tend to be all natural with all natural ingredients.
Speaker A
You know, ice cream is unusual in that it's one of the few products that's not sold by weight.
Speaker A
But an interesting thing that you can do is to go to the supermarket and pick up a pint of a super premium ice cream.
Speaker A
Pick up a pint of Ben and Jerry's and pick up a pint of a regular ice cream, a Briar's or even a, a lower quality ice cream.
Speaker A
And just feel them in your hand. And you will feel that the Ben and Jerry's weighs almost twice as much as the as the regular ice cream.
Speaker A
And that's because the regular ice cream has so much air in it, right? I found it was hard to get a spoon through.
Speaker A
It's much, it's much. Well, you have to, you have to properly temper your ice cream before you eat it.
Speaker A
Tell us a little bit about America's love affair with ice cream. I assume Ben and Jerry knew something about this before they started the business.
Speaker A
Well, you know they did and they didn't. I mean they were, they were big consumers.
Speaker A
They like to eat. The main reason why they they went into a food business was that they like to eat.
Speaker A
They were, they were by their own admission, self-described nerds and a little chubby as youth.
Speaker A
But they wanted to go into business together in 1978 and thought that a food business would be a good idea.
Speaker A
Their first choice was actually a bagel business, but the ovens for making bagels were too expensive.
Speaker A
So they they settled on ice cream. But you know, at the time, their aspirations were only to have this small homemade ice cream parlor.
Speaker A
They didn't have any aspirations for this national business that it became. So they didn't, they didn't, they weren't really thinking in terms of, well, ice cream will be a product that, you know, will enable us to grow our business.
Speaker A
It was was this will be a fun product. We can have fun with our customers, we'll enjoy making it.
Speaker A
And, and it was that type of attitude that they brought to their business. Is it true that Ben developed the stronger flavors because he had sinus trouble and he couldn't taste the the milder flavors?
Speaker A
It's true. Jerry was the chief ice cream maker. Ben was the the chief taster.
Speaker A
And Ben has some sort of sinus condition that that dates back to his youth.
Speaker A
It's it's unexplained. And Jerry would make batches of ice cream and bring them to Ben and Ben would would taste them.
Speaker A
And he said, boy, it tastes great, but I can't tell what flavour it is.
Speaker A
So Jerry would go back and increase the amount of flavouring in it. And in addition to that, the signature of the company has become the large chunks of cookies and candies.
Speaker A
And one of the reason why we did that was to give the the texture variation so that Ben would would have a mouthfeel to the ice cream that he could really relate to because he was having trouble discerning the different flavours.
Speaker A
Well, with only two minutes left, I think we ought to taste some Ben and Jerry and, and tell people that there's a, a new option now there for Ben and Jerry's, there is a new option.
Speaker A
These are our, our smooth line, a line of, of ice cream that is unfettered by chunks.
Speaker A
And it's for people who are too tired to chew as Ben says. And we've had, I think we have 3 flavors here.
Speaker A
The Aztec Harvest coffee, which is a coffee flavour that the ingredients are sourced directly from a cooperative in Mexico with a higher percentage of the of the funds going directly to the farmers.
Speaker A
We have vanilla caramel fudge, which is an incredible ice cream. That's one of my one of my favorites.
Speaker A
And we have a White Russian, which was an old flavor that we brought back.
Speaker A
This was one that we is this just plain old vanilla kind of perked up.
Speaker A
This is vanilla with coffee flavoring and it's it's it's named after the drink White Russian, although it doesn't have any vodka in it, but it has a variety of coffee flavors to it.
Speaker A
Hard to know what to try first. What do you suggest? Well, I'm going to go for the vanilla caramel fudge.
Speaker A
OK, I'll do coffee. OK, you got your spoon. Got my spoon. Now, what do you mean by whether this seems to be a tempered about right?
Speaker A
Is that the term right? You know ice cream, when it's, when it's manufactured ice cream comes out of the freezers at about about 20°.
Speaker A
It's kind of like the consistency of a soft serve. And then it goes into a hardening freezer and it's brought down in temperature to about 20° below 0, which is rock hard.
Speaker A
You would not be able to eat it. And that's how it's stored and shipped.
Speaker A
But the proper eating temperature for ice cream is about 10°. So before you eat your ice cream, you want to you want to temper it.
Speaker A
This ice cream has been perfectly tempered. Perfect. It's but I have to try some of that White Russian before, before we have to go 30 seconds, 30 seconds for a White Russian.
Speaker A
They're all so good. I want you to know, I did research into this even without the coupon that's on the back of the book.
Speaker A
I bought two kinds of the frozen yogurt and the WAVY gravy. WAVY gravy is the is the first ice cream, actually the first food packaged in a tie dyed container we've made.
Speaker A
We've made food processing history with that, with that product named after the announcer at Woodstock.
Speaker A
We're going to have to stop eating. At least stop talking. Thanks for being with us, Chico Fun.
Speaker A
A fun interview with you. It's been a pleasure, Eileen. A presentation of the Hennepin County Library.
Topics:Ben and Jerry'sFred Chico Lagersocially responsible businessemployee profit sharingbusiness culturepay ratioentrepreneurshipice cream businesscorporate social responsibilityHennepin County Library
