Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream

Jerry Greenfield shares the story of Ben & Jerry's, blending entrepreneurship with social responsibility and business innovation.

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Key Takeaways

Business success can be achieved alongside strong social responsibility and philanthropy.
Innovative employee management and community engagement are key to sustainable growth.
Values-driven marketing resonates deeply with customers and builds brand loyalty.
Even after acquisition by a large corporation, original founders can influence company culture.
Entrepreneurship can be a force for positive social change.

What the video covers

Jerry Greenfield and Ben Cohen founded Ben & Jerry's in 1978 in Burlington, Vermont, starting with 12 flavors in a gas station.
The company is known for its unique flavors and commitment to social responsibility and philanthropy.
Jerry Greenfield discusses their progressive approach to employee management and community-oriented business practices.
Ben & Jerry's grew into a $300 million empire while integrating humanitarianism into their business model.
The company was acquired by Unilever about 10-11 years ago, but Jerry and Ben remain involved without authority.
Jerry shares personal anecdotes about their early days, including their motivation to start the business after working as lab technicians.
The talk highlights how Ben & Jerry's pioneered public stock offerings with social impact and gave a high percentage of profits to charity.
Jerry emphasizes the importance of values-driven marketing and the integration of social justice into business.
The presentation was hosted by Villanova University and sponsored by several centers focused on entrepreneurship and social responsibility.
Jerry reflects on the challenges and successes of balancing profitability with social good in the ice cream industry.

Chapters

How did Ben & Jerry's start their business?

Jerry Greenfield and Ben Cohen started Ben & Jerry's in 1978 by opening an ice cream parlor in a converted gas station in Burlington, Vermont, initially offering 12 flavors.

What makes Ben & Jerry's business model unique?

Ben & Jerry's integrates social responsibility and philanthropy into its business practices, combining profitability with humanitarianism and progressive employee management.

Is Ben & Jerry's still an independent company?

No, Ben & Jerry's was acquired by Unilever about 10-11 years ago, but Jerry Greenfield and Ben Cohen remain involved in the company without formal authority.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

We would like to welcome everyone to tonight's event, an evening of entrepreneurial spirit, social responsibility, and radical business philosophy featuring Jerry Greenfield with Ben & Jerry's. Thank you all for coming, and we'd like to remind you of professional etiquette, so please silence all phones, close all laptops, and remove your hats.

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professional etiquette, so please silence all phones, close all laptops, and remove your hats. Uh Jerry Greenfield and his long-time friend and business partner Ben Cohen are the men behind one of the most talked about and least conventional success stories in American business.

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Jerry Greenfield and his long-time friend and business partner Ben Cohen are the men behind one of the most talked-about and least conventional success stories in American business.

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As stated by entrepreneur.com, "Whoever coined the phrase nice guys finish last obviously never met Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield." By making humanitarianism and philanthropy integral parts of their business ethic, they found a way to combine profitability with social

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Co-founder of Ben & Jerry's, Jerry Greenfield has helped to transform the storefront venture into a $300 million ice cream empire by making social responsibility a key determinant of their success.

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Jerry Greenfield went to high school in Merrick Island, and it was there that he first met Ben Cohen, his current business partner. At Oberlin College, Greenfield got his first taste of the ice cream industry when he took a job as

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As stated by entrepreneur.com, "Whoever coined the phrase 'nice guys finish last' obviously never met Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield." By making humanitarianism and philanthropy integral parts of their business ethic, they found a way to combine profitability with social responsibility, created a progressive new approach to employee management, and built one of the largest ice cream empires in the world.

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to fulfill a dream they both shared, running a food business together. After a bit of research, the duo opened Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream Parlor in Burlington, Vermont in May of 1978.

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Jerry Greenfield went to high school in Merrick Island, and it was there that he first met Ben Cohen, his current business partner. At Oberlin College, Greenfield got his first taste of the ice cream industry when he took a job as a scooper in his college cafeteria. After graduation, he worked as a lab technician in New York and lived with his school buddy, Ben. In 1977, with Jerry thoroughly tired of his occupation as a lab tech, the two friends decided to fulfill a dream they both shared: running a food business together. After a bit of research, the duo opened Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream Parlor in Burlington, Vermont, in May of 1978.

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from distribution to orientation to employee motivation. Ben and Jerry's has come a long way since 1978, starting with only 12 flavors and operating from a dilapidated gas station. Today, Ben and Jerry's company is a model for American business

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Ben & Jerry's soon became known throughout Vermont for their rich, unusual flavors, and community-oriented approach to business. Jerry began by making all the ice cream, but as the company expanded into new markets, he soon found himself handling everything from distribution to orientation to employee motivation. Ben and Jerry's has come a long way since 1978, starting with only 12 flavors and operating from a dilapidated gas station. Today, Ben & Jerry's company is a model for American business success, and Greenfield and Cohen have been recognized for fostering their company's commitment to social responsibility by the Council on Economic Priorities and the US Small Business Administration.

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At Villanova, Tyra and I are currently the outgoing presidents of Business Without Borders, a VSB society that seeks to address the noticeable dichotomy between the social justice values on which Villanova prides itself, and the money-driven image of business

Speaker A

At Villanova, Tyra and I are currently the outgoing presidents of Business Without Borders, a VSB society that seeks to address the noticeable dichotomy between the social justice values on which Villanova prides itself, and the money-driven image of business programs. Business Without Borders is proud to have Jerry Greenfield here tonight to change that stigma and prove that business can benefit society in many ways.

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We would like to recognize our major sponsor who has made this presentation possible tonight, the Joseph F. Azrack 1969 Endowed Distinguished Speaker Series, as well as the Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship Center, the Center for Global Global Leadership, the Center for Marketing and Public

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We would like to recognize our major sponsor who has made this presentation possible tonight, the Joseph F. Azrack 1969 Endowed Distinguished Speaker Series, as well as the Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship Center, the Center for Global Leadership, the Center for Marketing and Public Policy, the Beyond Ideas Program, Villanova Business Without Borders, and the Clay Center VSB. Without further ado, please join us in giving a warm Villanova welcome to Jerry Greenfield.

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Well, nice to see everybody. How's things? Good? Good. Uh you guys can all hear me okay?

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Well, nice to see everybody. How's things? Good? Good. You guys can all hear me okay?

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Uh my flight was all about 2 and 1/2 hours delayed and uh I was just kind of sitting in the airport in Burlington hoping that I was going to be able to show up. So, that was good and uh

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Good. Well, I'm very excited to be here, especially because I thought I almost wasn't going to get here.

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So, this was like a double whammy. I wasn't going to make it and the ice cream wasn't going to make it.

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My flight was about two and a half hours delayed, and I was just kind of sitting in the airport in Burlington hoping that I was going to be able to show up. So, that was good, and this was compounded with the terrible idea that the ice cream that we were shipping here never made it.

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up. I hope it's I hope it's decent flavors. Uh you know, they the great thing for me is that I I find that when I bring ice cream, uh I am usually much more warmly received and I I really appreciate that.

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So, this was like a double whammy. I wasn't going to make it, and the ice cream wasn't going to make it.

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Uh I'm I'm going to talk about Ben & Jerry's, uh how the company got started and how we've tried to operate.

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The ice cream didn't make it, but fortunately, we were able to get in touch with a local scoop shop, and so they are going to be dropping off ice cream. So, I have no idea what's going to show up. I hope it's decent flavors.

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Uh and uh the other thing that I think it's helpful to understand is that Ben & Jerry's is no longer an independent company. Uh it got bought oh, probably about 10 or 11 years ago by this uh larger business, Unilever.

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You know, the great thing for me is that I find that when I bring ice cream, I am usually much more warmly received, and I really appreciate that.

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They they have a very good sense of humor. On the same day they bought Ben & Jerry's they also bought Slim Fast.

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As I said, I'm very excited to be here. I was just telling folks in the back there's just a really nice energy and a really nice vibe here. So, thank you guys for coming.

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Which means that anybody could buy shares in the company and Unilever offered so much money that our board of directors was not able to find an alternative. Uh So Ben and I still work at the company.

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I'm going to talk about Ben & Jerry's, how the company got started, and how we've tried to operate.

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Uh and we also have no authority. So it's it's a nice combination. Something you guys can shoot for in your in your careers.

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You may notice Ben is not here, so I'll be able to tell some really good stories about Ben.

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We were running around the track together. There was a pack of kids up in the front and there was Ben and me in the back. The coach was yelling at us.

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And the other thing that I think is helpful to understand is that Ben & Jerry's is no longer an independent company. It got bought, oh, probably about 10 or 11 years ago by this larger business, Unilever.

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And Ben would yell back at the coach, "Gee coach, if I don't do it in under 7 minutes the first time, I'm certainly not going to do it the second time." And that was when I realized that Ben

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Unilever is a multi-billion dollar company that has brands like Ragu spaghetti sauce and Wish-Bone salad dressing, Dove soap.

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Ben did not want to go to college, uh but his parents wanted him to go. His older sister and his father filled out his applications for him. He ended up choosing Colgate, uh in upstate New York, because the brochure said they had

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They have a very good sense of humor. On the same day they bought Ben & Jerry's, they also bought Slim Fast.

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Uh he went to Skidmore for a little while, he dropped out of there. He went to NYU for a while, he dropped out of there.

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Selling the company was not something we wanted to do. We wanted to stay independent. But we were a public company at the time,

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And you don't have to take tests, you get credit simply for learning. And Ben dropped out of there, too.

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which means that anybody could buy shares in the company, and Unilever offered so much money that our board of directors was not able to find an alternative. So Ben and I still work at the company.

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mopper, he was in a baker's helper. Uh this was in a period of 2 or 3 years, so he wasn't on the career path. Uh I, as was mentioned, went to college, I did 4 years straight, I was pre-med.

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We're the co-founders still. We have good jobs. We have jobs where we have no responsibility,

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I got a job as a lab technician in a biochemistry research lab, so that I could uh enhance my resume. I reapplied to medical school, got rejected from all those medical schools, got another job as a lab technician in a

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and we also have no authority. So it's a nice combination. Something you guys can shoot for in your careers.

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We were We were pretty much failing at everything we were trying to do. And we thought, "Well, why don't we try to get together, do something fun, be our own bosses?" And since we always like to eat, we

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Well, okay. So Ben and I are old friends from junior high school. We met growing up in Long Island. We met in seventh grade in gym class where we were the two slowest, fattest kids in the class.

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We learned how to make ice cream from a $5 correspondence course from Penn State University.

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We were running around the track together. There was a pack of kids up in the front, and there was Ben and me in the back. The coach was yelling at us.

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An excellent course. You guys probably haven't taken any correspondence courses, have you? Well, the way this one worked was they send you a textbook in the mail.

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"Gentlemen, you've got to run the mile in under seven minutes. If you don't, you're going to have to do it again."

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You mail it into your professor. They grade it. And they mail it back to you. And we got a 100 on all our tests.

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And Ben would yell back at the coach, "Gee coach, if I don't do it in under seven minutes the first time, I'm certainly not going to do it the second time." And that was when I realized that Ben was somebody I wanted to get to know. So we went through junior high school and high school together. Came time to go to college.

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So, you know, we We got A's on our tests. We figured we were ready to make ice cream.

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Ben did not want to go to college, but his parents wanted him to go. His older sister and his father filled out his applications for him. He ended up choosing Colgate, in upstate New York, because the brochure said they had fireplaces in the dorm rooms, and Ben thought that was really cool. So, Ben went there for a year and a half, and he dropped out.

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city. And then we thought it would be good if it were warm. You know, we're going to sell ice cream and whatever.

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He went to Skidmore for a little while, he dropped out of there. He went to NYU for a while, he dropped out of there.

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This was before there were personal computers. I mean, this was really ancient history. Uh so so we did this uh research project to find out the perfect place. You know, Ben had the American Guide to Colleges.

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Then Ben signed up with one of these really progressive college programs called University Without Walls. So, at University Without Walls, you don't have to go to class, because the world is your campus.

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college towns already had ice cream parlors. Uh so we decided to discard the idea of warm.

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And you don't have to take tests, you get credit simply for learning. And Ben dropped out of there, too.

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Uh and we picked Burlington, Vermont, uh the home of University of Vermont, beautiful town. It's about an hour south of the Canadian border.

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Still a little too much structure for Ben. He worked a series of jobs. He was a taxi cab driver in New York City, he was a short-order cook. He was a pottery wheel deliverer, he was a night mopper, he was a baker's helper. This was in a period of two or three years, so he wasn't on the career path.

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So we moved to Burlington. Uh and then we needed to get some money. So Ben and I had each saved $4,000.

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I, as was mentioned, went to college, I did four years straight, I was pre-med.

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Uh we were we were pretty young. We were 26. We had just moved to Vermont.

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I applied to about 20 medical schools, I got rejected from those 20 medical schools.

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Didn't seem that stable. Uh we didn't have any job experience. We didn't have any business experience.

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I got a job as a lab technician in a biochemistry research lab, so that I co-

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a really good business plan. And that will convince the bank that that we know what we're doing.

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Uh we we didn't know how to write a business plan. But we have a friend, Jeff Furman, who used to work for the Small Business Administration in New York City.

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And Jeff got us a copy of a business plan that was for a pizza parlor in New York.

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So Ben and I essentially copied the business plan. Except every place where it said slice of pizza, we crossed it out.

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And we wrote in ice cream cone. And we submitted it into the bank with a loan request for $18,000.

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The bank in turn resubmitted this proposal back to the Small Business Administration to see if they could get what was called an SBA guaranteed loan. If the SBA would guarantee the loan, the bank would be at no risk.

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So they sent this to the SBA and the SBA approved it again. Apparently, they really liked this business plan.

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Uh they approved it conditional upon us finding a location that they thought was suitable.

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So we looked all around Burlington. The place we fell in love with was this old abandoned gas station that was one block off the main street in town and it was right across the street from a park.

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But we could only get a one-year lease on the building and uh the loan from the SBA was going to be 7 years and they didn't think it was prudent to lend somebody money for 7 years if they had a

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one-year lease on a building and I guess that makes sense. Uh so anyway, we didn't get the loan from the SBA. We went back to the bank.

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They gave us $4,000 to go with our $8,000. So we had $12,000 to try to open up this ice cream parlor when we thought we had needed $26,000.

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So uh we had to make a few changes to the business plan. Uh we we bought all used equipment.

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The ice cream machine we bought was a used 5-gallon rock salt and ice ice cream machine, which is, you know, kind of like a home ice cream maker.

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Only it made 5 gallons at a time uh instead of a gallon and had a motor on it, so that was really good. And so, you know, we opened up in May of 1978. We renovated the gas station

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ourselves. It was really funky. Uh we opened up and it was a beautiful summer. It was It was like today. I mean, every day was like today. We were making ice cream. We were scooping ice cream. Everything was fabulous.

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On a good day, we could make about oh, 10 batches of ice cream. Uh that was kind of all we could do. And the summer was just fantastic.

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The winter came. It was minus 20° outside. Sure enough, people stopped buying ice cream cones.

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Uh we came up with what I think is is probably the best promotion in the history of Ben & Jerry's. It was called Popsicle Bizwe.

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Which stood for penny off per Celsius degree below zero winter extravaganza. So, the way this worked was uh when the temperature got below freezing, which is 32° F, but 0° C, we started taking money off the price of an ice cream cone. And

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the colder it got, the more money we took off the price of a cone.

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And the reason this was such a great idea was because the gas station was located caddy-corner to the Burlington Savings Bank, which had a flashing time and temperature display. So, we always knew exactly what the temperature was and exactly how much

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money to take off the price of a cone. But not even that was enough to get people in.

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Uh so, we got through the winter by selling ice cream to some of the local restaurants that had been asking for it.

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Then the next summer came, another beautiful summer. Making ice cream, scooping ice cream, everything was great.

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The winter came again, couldn't figure out what to do. Uh Ben had an idea.

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Uh you know, we we always had all these sales people that would stop into our shop.

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And they would sell us things like oh, napkins or chocolate syrup or something like that. And Ben thought that these people had the best job. Uh in his mind, what they did was they they drove around in their cars and they

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listened to music on their tape decks. And then every once in a while they'd have to stop in a store and sell them something, but then they'd get back in their car again and listen to music. And Ben

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thought this is what he wanted to do. So, Ben had this old station wagon that we put a nice tape deck into. I mean, this is how old we were. Tape decks, you know, cassette decks.

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Uh so we put a tape deck in Ben's car and then we built an insulated Styrofoam box that fit right in the back of Ben's car.

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And then what we would do is in the morning we would fill up this Styrofoam box with tubs of ice cream and Ben would drive around Vermont as fast as he could trying to sell the ice cream before it

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melted. So, that's how we got through the next winter. Eventually, we started selling more ice cream that would fit in the back of Ben's car.

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We bought an old ice cream delivery truck uh with about 250,000 mi on it.

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Ben became our truck driver. Put a really nice tape deck into the truck. Uh and Ben was driving around Vermont delivering ice cream and the truck was just breaking down all over the place.

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And it was costing us more money to repair the truck than we were making selling ice cream.

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Ben had another idea. He thought that uh we should start packaging the ice cream into pint containers, and that way he could stop off and sell it to these little mom-and-pop grocery stores that he was passing by as he was driving from

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one restaurant to another. So, we started doing that, and Ben got us oh 50 accounts in a month and a couple of hundred accounts after that, and and that's how Ben & Jerry's stumbled into ice cream manufacturing and

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distribution. Uh We got a couple of other local ice cream distributors, one in upstate New York, one in New Hampshire to start delivering Ben & Jerry's, and and then we got a big break. We got a couple of big ice cream

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distributors, one in Boston and one in Connecticut, to start delivering Ben & Jerry's, and it was really the first time we were going to be selling ice cream into major markets where we weren't the guys next door. So, you know, it was a

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big challenge for us. Uh pretty much right after these distributors took on the product, we got this urgent phone call from them one day. They said uh "Listen, we need to talk.

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We can't do it over the phone. Uh we need to meet someplace really private." And we said, "Okay." So, we decided to meet in this dark corner of a restaurant at Logan Airport in Boston. You know, so this really private place. We sit down

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with these two guys, and they said, "Listen, we've got some bad news. Uh Häagen-Dazs ice cream, which had just been bought by the Pillsbury Corporation, had come to them and told them that if they continued to carry Ben & Jerry's on

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their trucks, they weren't going to sell them Häagen-Dazs anymore." And as these distributors told us, you know, "Look, we like you guys. we like your ice cream, but Häagen-Dazs is the most profitable item we carry on our trucks,

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and we can't afford to be without it. So, we're going to have to drop your product.

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So, they told us this. Ben started laughing. He just thought this was hilarious. They said, "Ben, this is incredibly serious. Why are you laughing?" Uh Ben said, "I can't believe that Häagen-Dazs and Pillsbury is worried about little old

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Ben and Jerry's in Burlington, Vermont." Uh but they were, and it was a real problem.

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Uh first of all, it seemed like what they were doing was illegal, that it's a restraint of trade under federal antitrust laws, which says that a company that controls the major part of a market can't use its power and position to keep

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competitors out. So, we thought, "Okay, we'll sue Pillsbury. That'll be fun." They Pillsbury was about a $4 billion company at the time. Then we thought we could file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, but everybody we talked to

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told us that the Federal Trade Commission was much more interested in helping big companies get bigger as opposed to helping small companies survive.

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So, we thought, "Well, if we're going to go down, we'll at least take our case to the people." And so, we started the What's the Doughboy Afraid of? campaign.

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So, this was kicked off by me going to Minneapolis to the Pillsbury world headquarters, where I was a one-person picket line. I I had my little picket sign. It said, "What's the Doughboy Afraid of?" and I was walking up and down on the sidewalk in

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front of the Pillsbury building and handing out leaflets to people, and nobody had any idea why I was there.

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Uh then we took out a a small classified ad in the back of Rolling Stone magazine.

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It said, "Help two Vermont hippies fight the corporate giants." We started flying aerial banners around the sports stadiums in Boston. It said, "What's the Doughboy afraid of?" Then we took out signs on the sides of the transit buses in Boston

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that had these two pudgy white hands coming out from behind the sign squeezing a pint of Ben & Jerry's. It said, "Don't let Pillsbury's dollars strangle Ben & Jerry's." And then we said, "We're going to go straight to our customers."

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So, we printed an 800 number, a toll-free number on all our pint containers. And then Ben and I recorded a phone message explaining the situation and asking people if they were interested to leave their name and address to receive a Doughboy mail-in

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kit. So, the Doughboy mail-in kit consisted of a letter to the Federal Trade Commission. There was a letter to the chairman of the board of Pillsbury which essentially said, "Why don't you guys pick on someone your own size?"

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There was a bumper sticker, this black evil-looking bumper sticker that said, "What's the Doughboy afraid of?" There was a T-shirt offer. You could purchase a T-shirt. On the front it said, "What's the Doughboy afraid of?" On the back it said,

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"Ben & Jerry's Legal Defense Fund Major Contributor." They cost $10. So, uh we recorded this phone message. We hooked it up to these answering machines that were then connected to this 800 number on the pint containers and we started getting all these phone

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calls. We started getting several hundred phone calls a week, mostly between the hours of midnight and 3:00 a.m.

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Uh Oh, and the story got picked up in the media. There was an article about it in The Wall Street Journal. There was a big story about it in The New Yorker magazine.

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There was a cover story on the Sunday magazine section of the Boston Globe. Because there was so much public outcry, Pillsbury backed down.

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They allowed these distributors to carry Ben & Jerry's on their trucks right next to all the other brands that they carried.

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And that's really what permitted Ben & Jerry's to eventually get distributed across the country.

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Well, it was just after this time uh Ben and I looked at each other one day and we said, "Boy, what the heck is going on here? We're not ice cream guys anymore. We're becoming businessmen.

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We're not spending our time making ice cream and scooping it over the counter to our customers. We're we're spending our time hiring people and firing people and talking with lawyers and accountants and writing memos and correspondence.

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Uh It wasn't exactly our idea of a good time. Plus we had grown up in the '60s. You guys have all read about the '60s, right?

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Peace and love, that whole thing and uh you know, we had a pretty uh negative idea about business and we felt like our business was just becoming another cog in the economic machine and we didn't really want any part of that.

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So, we decided to get out. And uh then Ben ran into this this friend of his, Maurice Perper. Maurice was this kind of older eccentric restaurateur down in southern Vermont.

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And Ben was telling Maurice that we were going to get out of the business. And Maurice said, "Ben, the business is your baby. It's just starting to take off." And Ben said, "Well, Maurice, you know what business does? It takes advantage

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of its employees, spoils the environment, and exploits the community." And Maurice said, "Well, Ben, if there's something you don't like about the way business is done, why don't you just change it?" And as Ben says, that had never really

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occurred to him before. So, at that point, we decided to stay with the business and see if we could make it something that that we were really proud of, that was supportive of the community, supportive of employees.

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And at that time, old Ben & Jerry's was was probably doing about $3 million in sales. We were uh making ice cream in a in a rented 3,000-sq-ft facility using World War II vintage equipment. Uh we didn't have room for our ingredients or

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our finished goods. We couldn't meet our orders. We were really bursting at the seams.

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Uh and we were at the the point of a a business where it needs to take in some money to get to the next level.

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And the normal thing for a business to do at that point would be to take in some venture capital.

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Uh money from a small number of of well-to-do investors who invest in your business in the hopes that the business will grow and and they'll make a really good return on it.

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And what we decided to do was to to use this need for cash as an opportunity to make the community owners of the business so that as the business prospered, the community as owners would automatically prosper and not be dependent upon the

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businesses' kindness or generosity. And the way we found to do that was to hold what became the first-ever in-state Vermont public stock offering.

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Selling stock in the company to Vermonters, people that had been supporting the business since it began.

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Uh as I said, it had never been done before. Ben unearthed this obscure law that said you could do this.

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So, you know, we went and we talked to our business advisers. They said, "This is a terrible idea.

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Uh first of all, it's never been done before. Uh second of all, you should take the money from the venture capitalists because when you need more money, they'll have more to give you.

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Uh third of all, there's not very many people in Vermont. There's only 600,000 people in the entire state.

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Uh and those that are there don't have very much money." And we said, "Well, we don't care.

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Uh if we're going to grow our business, we want to do it in a way that's consistent with our values." So, the company couldn't find anybody to underwrite the offering. Uh the company underwrote it itself.

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Ben and I registered as stock brokers, if you can believe that. Uh and we had a very low minimum purchase of $126 so that people of essentially any economic situation could participate.

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Normally, uh public offerings are reserved for so-called sophisticated investors, people with several thousand dollars.

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But, that's not who we were looking for. We were We were looking for our neighbors. Uh we did road shows around the state. We advertised the offering in the first section of the newspaper, right next to the clothing ads and the

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supermarket ads, said get a scoop of the action. Uh at the end of the offering, which we sold out, we raised $750,000.

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One out of every 100 families in Vermont had become owners in Ben & Jerry's. So, we were very excited. We continued to operate the company.

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About a year and a half later, we needed more money. Uh at that point, we decided to have a national public offering.

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And in conjunction with that, we set up the Ben & Jerry's Foundation as the charitable arm of the company.

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And the foundation was to receive 7 and 1/2% of the company's pre-tax profits, which was the highest percentage of any publicly held company. The corporate average is around 1 and 1/2%.

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And the reason we chose such a high percentage was that our feeling at the time was that a business is essentially a machine for making money.

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So, that if we wanted to be as of much benefit to the community as possible, we should give away as much money as possible.

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So, we had the stock offering. We set up the foundation. Uh everything was going fine. The company was giving 7 and 1/2% of the pre-tax profits.

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And in no time at all, the foundation was overwhelmed with grant requests from non-profit organizations doing incredibly worthwhile work. Issues like hunger, housing, what have you. And the the foundation could fund only a minuscule percentage of the requests

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that were coming in. And as we thought about it, we realized that all the foundations in the country are in the same situation.

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There are these tremendous unmet human needs, and not nearly enough money to go around.

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And we started to wonder why that was. And because we found ourselves in business, we started off by thinking about business and the definition of business.

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Now, you guys are all business students. You understand all this. Uh the the normal definition of business is that business is an entity that produces a product or provides a service, right? Yeah.

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Well, at Ben & Jerry's, we started to define it differently. We said that business is a combination of organized human energy plus money which equals power.

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In fact, it's become clear that business is really the most powerful force in our society today.

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And it's a relatively new phenomenon. It didn't always used to be the case. If if you look back historically, originally, religion was the most powerful force.

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And then it came to be governments, nation-states. And today, it's business. And you can see that reality echoed in the buildings in the major cities around the world. The oldest big ornate buildings are religious buildings.

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The second oldest big ornate buildings are governmental buildings. And today, the big ornate buildings being built are commercial buildings.

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And as this most powerful force, business, and particularly big business, has an incredible influence uh on our country.

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Ranging from influence on elections through campaign contributions, uh influence on legislation through lobbying, business controls all the mainstream media through ownership.

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And business has a huge impact on on how all of us are treated both as employees and as consumers.

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And the interesting thing is that all this influence that's wielded by business is done in the relatively narrow self-interest of business, which is to make money.

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And that's really the big difference with business as this most powerful force and religion and government.

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Because religion and government have always had as part of their purpose looking out for the common welfare, for the public good.

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But that's never been the domain of business. I mean, it's not that business is bad or negative or evil. I mean, heck, look at me. I'm a business guy.

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You guys are all business guys. It's not that business it's bad. It's just that business pretty much tends to act in its own self-interest, making money.

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Uh well, what we started to learn at Ben & Jerry's is that there's a spiritual aspect to business, just as there is to the lives of individuals.

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As you give, you receive. As you help others, you are helped in return. As a business supports the community, the community supports your business.

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It's, you know, nothing that far-fetched. It's things that we all kind of understand. We just don't always get there.

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You know, I think most of us uh believe there's a spiritual part to us as individuals. For some reason, when we gather together in a group and call ourselves a business, we throw that idea out the window.

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Well, you know, Ben and I, we we speak to uh to business groups occasionally and uh as you might imagine, this idea of spirituality in business uh it's not your normal business rap, you know uh uh and even though it's a return to very

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traditional values it still meets with incredible resistance. Uh Schopenhauer, the philosopher, said that all truth passes through three stages.

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First, it is ridicule. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

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So this idea of spirituality in business is is somewhere along that continuum. You know, several years ago, Ben and I got invited to go to a CEO weekend workshop at Emory University in Atlanta. And there were CEOs there from some of the

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biggest most successful companies. There was a CEO from Home Depot, from UPS from Sears Ben and I were not exactly sure why we were invited.

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Maybe they thought we would bring dessert, which we did. Uh but we were there and after a weekend, what we learned is that the people running these successful, powerful businesses are by and large really good, caring people. They have

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strong social values. They contribute their own time and money to causes they believe in.

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And so the question arose for us, well, if if business is this most powerful force and the people running these businesses are these good, caring people why isn't business doing more to help address the growing social and environmental

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issues in our country. And the reason we came up with is that you only get what you measure.

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And in business, what we measure is profitability. How much money do we make or how much money is left over or however you want to put it. And so that's what everybody in the business focuses on.

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That's what keeps us all aligned and working together. And it's really a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it keeps people in an organizational focused and working together.

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On the other hand, it puts blinders on people so that you don't always see the enormous impacts that business has both socially and environmentally in this single-minded pursuit of profit.

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Well, so we said, "Gee, if the problem is how we measure our success, why don't we just change it?" And so that's what we decided to do. We decided to redefine the bottom line.

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To have a two-part bottom line at Ben & Jerry's. And we'll measure our success not just on how much money we we make, but how much are we able to improve the quality of life in the communities where we operate.

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And if you look back to the annual reports of Ben & Jerry's going back to 1988, you'll see that there's a social report that's right next to the financial report.

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So, uh, we called an all company meeting. And you know, it was about this size room and about this many people. And Ben and I got up in the front just like I'm up here now, and we said, "Okay, from now on, we're

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going to have a two-part bottom line. We're not just going to measure our success by how much money we make. We're going to see how we're able to improve the quality of life in communities where we operate.

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And people loved it. Everybody stood UP AND CHEERED. YEAH! AND THEN THEY ALL WENT BACK TO WORK.

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AND A few weeks later, some of our managers came to us and they said, "We've got a problem." We said, "Oh?" They said, "Yeah, that two-part bottom line, it sounded great, but we find that when we take company energy and

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resources to give back to the community, it takes away from our ability to make money and vice versa." And we said, "Huh.

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That is a problem." And we thought about it and we realized that the solution to that dilemma is to find those courses of action that have a positive impact on both of those bottom lines, making money and giving back to the community.

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You know, and when we first thought it, uh when I say it, when you first hear it, when anybody hears it, it sounds, "Oh boy, that's really nice and warm and fuzzy." And then you think about it some more and you think, "Well,

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you can't really do that." And the reason we all think that you can't really do that is because that's the way we've been conditioned to think.

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That if you want to make some money, you do it over here. If you want to do some good, you do it over here.

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You can't combine the two. But what we've been discovering is that if you get rid of that mindset, the opportunity to address both of those bottom lines is essentially limitless.

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And I'll give some examples of how Ben & Jerry's has been able to do it.

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Uh you know, I think it's I think it's helpful to realize that when we first started trying to do it, we had no idea what we were doing. Uh and so it was it was a process of innovation just like

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any other process of innovation. You come up with some ideas, you try it, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work. When it doesn't work, you try to learn from it, you make improvements, and you try again.

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You know, in that respect it's no different from trying to figure out anything else that you don't really know how to do.

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You know, it's like new flavors at Ben & Jerry's. You know, most new flavors don't make it. They don't they don't get out of the lab. They they never see the light of day. They just, you know, you try, but they don't make it. Uh

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You know the expression many are called, few are chosen. At Ben & Jerry's we have many are called, few are frozen.

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So so it's it's really the field in which we labor. And and the way we approached it was we said uh let's look at all the normal day-to-day business activities that we engage in and see if there are ways that

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we can integrate social and environmental concerns into those day-to-day activities. So what we would be doing is not something that's ancillary to the business, but is central and integrated into what we do.

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So we said, "Okay, uh we're an ice cream company. We do need to come up with new flavors." We became aware of a bakery outside of New York City in Yonkers that's owned by a religious community and they work with

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people who are out of the economic mainstream. Uh And we said, "Boy, I wonder if there are any baked goods that the Greyston Bakery makes that we could put into an ice cream flavor.

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And we discovered they made some really good brownies. So, Ben & Jerry's came up with this flavor, chocolate fudge brownie.

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Uh an incredibly successful and popular and profitable flavor. Ben & Jerry's now makes the flavor chocolate fudge brownie in ice cream pints, in ice cream mini cups, in frozen yogurt pints, in half baked. Who was telling me their

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favorite flavor is half baked? Somebody I just talked to. Yeah, there they are. Uh those are those brownies. So, simply by purchasing those brownies from the Greyston Bakery, Ben & Jerry's is able to support the work they do.

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Uh Ben & Jerry's gets all these benefits. And I think last year the company bought over $8 million worth of brownies from Greyston.

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Uh another thing we need to do as an ice cream company is to sell ice cream. Ben & Jerry's has about 200 franchised ice cream shops.

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14 of those are what we call partner shops. They're owned and operated by non-profit social service agencies who work with at-risk youth.

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Uh so, for those shops, uh any money they make from their shops goes back into funding their programs.

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They provide job training and job experience for the young people they work with. For Ben & Jerry's, the company makes the same amount of money selling ice cream to those shops as as any other conventionally owned shop.

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And simply by having them in business allows the company to be able to support their work.

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Uh another example about year and a half or 2 years ago, Ben & Jerry's made a commitment to source all of its its ingredients fair trade certified. So, fair trade certification is a program whereby products such as cocoa or vanilla or

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coffee that are that's grown by uh small farmers in developing countries. Uh fair trade guarantees them a fair price for their products, no matter what the market price is. Often times the market price is below their cost of

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production. Uh so, Ben & Jerry's has said, uh by the end of 2013, the company is going to transition to 100% fair trade ingredients in all ice cream flavors for any ingredient that is available fair trade.

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Uh the company has made a commitment that it doesn't want to profit off the backs of its small farmer producers.

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So, those are a few examples. You know, one thing that's a little interesting and ironic is that several years ago Ben & Jerry's started to get criticized in the media that we were cynically trying to manipulate our customers

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into buying more ice cream by doing good deeds. Our response is that our actions are based on deeply held values. And also, we understand that true marketing is an integrated and holistic attempt to meet another set of our customers' needs.

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Our customers needs to have business be addressing social and environmental problems in our country.

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You know, what we found is that doing business this way provides all sorts of benefits to the company. I mean, you guys are business students. You're always hearing about things like added value, unique selling proposition, operating in a caring and loving way

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automatically bestows those things onto your company. Uh it helps with recruiting, it helps with retaining employees and and most of all, it helps with customers.

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What we've been learning at Ben & Jerry's is that there is a spiritual aspect to business just as there is to the lives of individuals.

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As you give, you receive. As you help others, you are helped in return. And just because the idea that the good that you do comes back to you is written in the Bible and not in some business textbook

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doesn't mean that it's any less valid. We're all interconnected. For business and people, it's all the same.

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Well, thank you guys so much. I have Uh so, I'm happy to answer questions about uh essentially anything.

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Uh flavors, uh my personal life, uh what's the situation with ice cream? It looks like Autumn is probably back there sorting through it.

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How about if we get a report on ice cream and we'll start taking questions?

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Yes. How do you get um celebrities like Stephen Colbert to get like flavors on with you guys? How's that whole process work?

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Uh can everybody hear the questions? So, you know, the the first uh flavor named after a person uh was Cherry Garcia.

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And that that was uh an anonymous suggestion from a customer that we make the flavor. And we actually didn't go through any process with that.

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We made the flavor, shipped some to Cherry to Jerry Garcia, and heard back from his lawyer.

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So uh And you know, his his lawyer said, uh you know, you really should have gotten in touch because this is an implied endorsement. And we said, "Gee, all we want to do is pay tribute to Jerry Garcia."

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And we had no interest in being in some kind of legal issue with the Grateful Dead. I mean, who wants to be in a hassle with the Grateful Dead, right? I mean, so we said, "We'll do anything you

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want." And uh so they uh there's a royalty that still gets paid uh now to Jerry Garcia's estate. Uh and he he gives it or had been giving it to the Rex Foundation. So, flavors after that, uh let me see what they were. You

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know, there's Fish Food, uh there's uh Stephen Colbert, there's Late Night Snack with Jimmy Fallon. There There might be one or two more.

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Uh either I guess we get in touch with them. Uh it somehow gets generated within the company.

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We get in touch with people to see if they're interested. We see if they would be willing to donate whatever royalty they get to some nonprofit that they're involved with. And they all do. Uh Fish works with the

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WaterWheel Foundation, uh which cleans up Lake Champlain. Jimmy Fallon's working with Fair Trade University. Stephen Colbert has his own foundation. Uh so they they all come about sort of in different ways.

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Yes. Um it's a two-part question. One, what is your favorite flavor and has it changed? And two, what is the next flavor that's going to be released?

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Uh No, no, no. So, and after this we're going to get a report on the ice cream.

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You got the flavors? Yeah. All right, let's get it now. What do you say? Let's hear the flavors.

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We have sweet cream, cookie dough, chocolate, and vanilla. All right. It was really a last minute thing. Uh all right, so my favorite flavor had been Heath Bar Crunch. I've now switched over to Americone Dream.

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New flavors, uh you know, the company just came out with uh Greek frozen yogurt. So, uh I guess that's what's new.

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There's four flavors of Greek frozen yogurt. Uh who else? You don't have to ask questions. It's okay. Yes.

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I'm going to ask about uh are your employees from Vermont or from the local area? And what about I guess like some of the first employees that you had when you when you guys were just winging it.

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Are they still with the company? Uh well, so most of the ice cream about 80% of the ice cream is still manufactured in Vermont.

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Uh you know, I'd I'd say all all the manufacturing folks are from Vermont. Some of the staff at Ben & Jerry's, you know, probably comes from here and there, but they're mostly from Vermont.

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Uh we have many many long time people at the company. Uh I think cuz it's a good place to work and also there's there's not a lot of uh big industry in Vermont, so there's not there's not that many options for people

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to switch. You know, a lot of people from Ben & Jerry's have moved on to either Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. Are you guys familiar with Green Mountain Coffee? They're uh exploding in terms of their growth.

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So, they're just sucking up uh people right and left. Uh Seventh Generation. You guys familiar with them? That's uh an online green products company.

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Yes. Can you talk a little bit about what it's been like to work with uh Unilever as your parent partner? It seems to me there have been a number of entrepreneurial, socially minded businesses that have either voluntarily or involuntarily been bought out or part

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of bought out like Stonyfield Farms and Can you talk a little bit about it? It seems like you've been able to retain a lot of autonomy and maintain your social commitment and culture and so surprising to me also.

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It's surprising to me also. Uh and you know, it it it's been 11 years or so. So, it's there there been ups and downs. We're actually in a in a really good place now.

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Uh and I'm not I'm not quite sure how we got here because probably 3 years ago it was really close to blowing up.

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Uh so, just to give you that perspective. Uh and I'll I'll I'll just mention briefly. So, Stonyfield Stonyfield Farms yogurt got bought by Dannon I don't know, 3 or 4 years ago. Uh and they have they have an unusual

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arrangement. They Stonyfield gets to operate pretty much autonomously so long as they meet their yearly plan that they work together with with Danone.

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And so long as the founder, Gary Hirshberg, is still alive. And I think and he's, you know, he's in his 50s. I think when he goes, all bets are off.

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But so long as he's still around, everybody feels good about it. Uh so, at Ben & Jerry's, we have a somewhat unusual arrangement with Unilever.

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There's an independent board of directors of Ben & Jerry's, which uh oversees what is called the social mission and the essential integrity of the brand.

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So, any decisions that relate around that, the CEO works with the board on. And then Unilever itself uh oversees the financial mission and the operations.

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Uh it's working really well now because the CEO, who's appointed by Unilever, is a great guy who values the mission of Ben & Jerry's, who is very comfortable with risk and taking public positions on issues that not everybody agrees with. And so, he's

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very unusual in that respect. Uh You know, I'll give a couple of examples. Ben & Jerry's uh ha- has sort of a uh history and a heritage of of speaking out on issues uh that are not necessarily in the

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company's self-interest. And that's really unusual in business. In the late '80s, Ben & Jerry's came out with a an a chocolate-covered ice cream bar on a on a stick and called it a Peace Pop. This is during the Cold War.

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And uh and that uh and on the packaging uh the packaging talked about uh taking 1% of the country's military budget and putting it towards peace through understanding activities. The idea being that uh if people in different countries got to know each

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other, they wouldn't really want to blow themselves up. Uh so this was very controversial within the company.

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Uh people were saying business really doesn't have any uh right to be taking a stand on what is essentially a government program.

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Uh what do we know about the Defense Department budget? Uh distributors and retailers are going to boycott us.

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And to his credit, Ben pretty much shoved it down the company's throat. And uh nothing bad happened. You know, there were some people who disagreed, but most people really respected that a company was willing to speak out on an

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issue that that was not about making more money. And since then, the company's spoken out on issues like uh marriage equality.

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Uh It's uh it's come out with a flavor talking about uh reducing the country's nuclear arsenal.

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Uh uh the company came out in support of Occupy Wall Street. Uh And it it it's just so counter to what businesses typically do.

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Businesses never want to alienate any potential customers. They never want to say anything that's risky.

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They try to stay out of the news. And Ben has always felt like the strongest bonds you can build with customers are over shared values.

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That it's not about product. it's not about cute advertising campaigns. When when you work together with your customers to bring about a different kind of world, that's a different relationship than simply just selling products or services to your customers.

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Ben has always felt like we're never going to get 100% market share. I mean, who gets 100% market share? It's much better to deeply bond with people who you agree with.

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Yeah. So a benefit corporation is a recently new entity that allows companies to incorporate and state that their purpose is not only to generate a profit, but to do a social good. And actually, your brownie distributing company Benefit corporation.

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B corps, yeah. I'm wondering in your in your home, and I'm sure you would want to be a B Are you guys planning to promote B corps in your very new entity, and they're trying to get passed through the

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It was passed through the It's currently passed through now. What was the last part?

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They're passed through only six states right now. It's like Yeah, Vermont is a state that that has B corps.

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Yeah, I I'm I'm very familiar with B corp, and I am a huge supporter of B corp. I think they do incredible work.

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Uh I know some of the folks there. Uh Ben & Jerry's is working on seeing if it could become a B corp, which would be a a really unusual thing, because it's it's owned by this larger multinational.

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Uh so, they're seeing if they can if Ben & Jerry's can change its charter to to meet those needs. But, you know, I I I think B corporations, having having a legal setup whereby corporations can state that their goal is not simply to

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maximize shareholder value, but is to have public benefit is is fantastic. So, you would like to take one more question?

Speaker A

Okay. Yes. All right. So, obviously you've achieved a lot of financial success, and I was wondering if you believe that you've achieved your goals of helping others socially.

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And if not, what do you plan to do in the future to continue to benefit Wow.

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Uh you know, uh I think uh Ben & Jerry's has been really successful not not so much for uh what it's actually been able to achieve because the company is is relatively small. It's visibility is much larger than

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uh than the actual size of the company. I mean, a company like Unilever is about I think $60 million and Ben & Jerry's is in the hundreds millions. So, you know, it's like it's this tiny thing, but I

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think what Ben & Jerry's has demonstrated is that you can have a company that leads with its values and still you can be as successful financially as any other business. It's not to say that you need to operate that

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way because there are many different ways to operate a business and there's many different ways to have businesses be successful, but I think there there used to be the feeling conventional business thinking that if you want to be a a caring business that

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you couldn't do it and still be as successful as other businesses. So, that's that's what I'm really happy about the company doing. Uh for myself you know, I'm I'm on the way down, you know, uh you guys are

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on the way up and I sort of tried to do what I can do, but you guys are the future and it's a wonderful thing. I mean, it's really it's great. I'm thrilled about it. I have a I have a 23-year-old son who just

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graduated college. He has no idea what he's doing and I feel great about that, too.

Speaker A

All right, well, let's go.

Topics:Ben & Jerry'sJerry Greenfieldsocial responsibilityentrepreneurshipbusiness ethicsphilanthropyice cream industryUnilever acquisitionemployee managementVillanova University

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