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How Ben and Jerry Built Their Ice Cream Empire
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Apr 1, 2025
Weird History is going to cool off with some history about Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. Founded in Burlington, Vermont, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield were childhood friends who decided to make an ice cream business happen. And man did it ever. Ben & Jerry's has become one of the most recognizable and fan-favorite ice creams across America. Sit back with a pint of Half Baked and enjoy this delicious video.
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For over 40 years, Ben & Jerry's have served up the cold stuff with a side of political activism
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With almost a hundred different flavors to choose from, they've got enough ice cream to spread over three dozen countries in five separate continents
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So how did a couple of Vermont-based hippies come to create a global empire
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Today on Weird History Food, we're scooping up the history of Ben & Jerry's
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Let's get into a little peace, love, and ice cream. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield grew up together in Merrick, New York
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a hamlet on the south shore of Long Island. They met in the fall of 1963
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while being made to run around the track during junior high gym class. According to their own company's literature
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they were both the slowest and fattest kids around, and the two naturally formed a friendship
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while slowly chugging along at the back of the pack. As the two got older, though, they each went their separate ways
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Jerry went to Oberlin College and graduated on a pre-med track, but he was then rejected by all of the medical schools he applied to
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Ben briefly went to school too, but he dropped out of Colgate University during his sophomore year and pursued his dream of becoming a potter
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His pottery business never found success, though, and he had to supplement his income with all sorts of odd jobs all the while
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After years of failure, the two met back up and decided to go back to the drawing board
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And in 1977, they decided they'd start a business together. Their great idea
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A New York-style bagel shop in Burlington, Vermont. The only problem? Bagel-making equipment was well beyond their limited means
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So they quickly decided to pivot, and the two instead enrolled in a $5 course on ice cream making at Penn State University
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There, they learned the tricks of the ice cream trade, and Ben and Jerry were finally ready to make their big splash in Burlington
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They managed to pool together $12,000, each contributing $4,000 of their own money, along
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with another $4,000 from a bank loan. They then headed to the Green Mountain State and used the money to renovate an old gas
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station when they converted the building to meet their needs. Since Ben has anosmia, a condition that makes him unable to smell and greatly diminishes
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his sense of taste, Jerry was put in charge of designing all of their ice cream flavors
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Because of this, Jerry was likewise named the company's first CEO, a position that they
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tried to make up to Ben by placing his name first in the company's Ben & Jerry's name
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Still, Jerry always made sure to put big chunks and swirls of stuff into all of his creations
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just to make their ice cream more enjoyable for Ben, and giving him a uniquely stuffed full of stuff
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quality along the way In May of 1978 each man 27 years old the first ever Ben and Jerry location opened for the summer season Since Vermont isn exactly known for its hot weather the two figured they
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have to sell some warmer foods as well in order to stay in business year round. So initially
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while Jerry was busy designing and making all of the ice cream, Ben made crepes, hot soups
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and pottery. Yeah, he still hadn't dropped the whole pottery thing. Their original flavors were
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French vanilla, honey orange, honey coffee, chocolate fudge, wild blueberry, Oreo mint
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mocha walnut, and maple walnut, none of which are still sold today
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Still, this initial lineup was so successful that they dropped the crepes and soups within
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just one year, and they were exclusively an ice cream shop by the 1979 season
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What's more, they began selling their ice cream in nearby stores that same year
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1979 also featured the company's first ever free cone day, a way for Ben & Jerry to thank the community for giving them a successful first year in business
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The word spread fast that they were on to something special. And just two years later, Ben & Jerry's would open their first franchised location
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and Time Magazine would declare their ice cream the best in the world
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Ben & Jerry's is known for their super premium ice cream, a denser-than-normal type of ice cream that has less air and more butterfat than traditional American ice cream
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When Ben & Jerry's first opened for business, Haagen-Dazs, a New York ice cream chain with a faux Scandinavian name
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had the super-premium market cornered. Haagen-Dazs, which first opened nearly two decades prior, promoted itself as both upscale and vaguely European
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They were the Baines accent of frozen dairy. Of course! Ben and Jerry both knew they'd have to take a different approach to marketing if they wanted to compete
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So they focused their marketing instead on more down-to-earth imagery that played upon their wholesome small-town origins
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Hi, I'm Ben. I'm Jerry. You know, we may not have the money to go on TV for 30 seconds, but we sure do make some of the best ice cream you ever tasted
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Look for us on top of every pint. Their original packaging likewise featured a picture of the two men looking hippie-like and scruffy as ever
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along with an illustration of a bearded man churning ice cream all by himself
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In 1983, they further updated the design by introducing a painting of a cow to the cartons
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Renowned cow artist Woody Jackson designed the cow, and the Ben & Jerry's cow is even named Woody in his honor
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With the subsequent rise in popularity of both Ben & Jerry's and Haagen-Dazs
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the super premium ice cream market grew nearly 150% between 1980 and 1984
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The ever doughboy took notice of this trend and in 1984 Pillsbury bought Haagen for itself Pillsbury then but allegedly began to pressure restaurants and stores to drop Ben Jerry ice cream altogether
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and to exclusively sell their newly acquired Haagen-Dazs ice cream. Since Haagen-Dazs was the bigger, more popular brand, many companies capitulated
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While this practice, known as restraint of trade, is illegal under federal antitrust law
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Ben and Jerry's lawyer assured them that they could in no way win a case against the $4 billion puffy Hillsbury behemoth
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Do you think they want their stockholders and the public thinking that their management isn't imbued with all the principles of fair play and justice, the very values that make this country what it is today
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So the two men instead sought out extrajudicial means of dealing with their problem
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Resisting the urge to roll on the doughboy, they started an entire public campaign that plastered
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What's the doughboy afraid of? Everywhere they could think of. The slogan appeared on banners towed by small planes and on the side of municipal buses
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They even bought an entire ad for the campaign in Rolling Stone magazine. Jerry then headed to Minneapolis and went to Pillsbury's headquarters himself
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There, he started a one-man picket line to gin up support. But the two men's subsequent press conference only brought in one single reporter
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They had to pivot if they wanted to fight off the doughboy's predations, and so they made an appeal directly to their customers
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On every pint they sold, they stuck a What's the Doughboy Afraid of? sticker to its side
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along with an 800 number that customers could call if they wanted to know more about the situation
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They soon began to receive hundreds of calls each night, most of them coming in between midnight and 3 a.m
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And they, in turn, provided interested customers with Doughboy kits that contained aggressive letters
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for both the chairman of Pillsbury and the Federal Trade Commission. At last, they found a strategy that worked
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Their doughboy kits generated enough buzz to get them articles in the Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, the New York Times, and more
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Shortly thereafter, Pillsbury backed off their questionable practices, and Ben & Jerry's was able to grow bigger and better than ever before
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In 1987, Ben & Jerry's had grown into a $30 million enterprise that spanned 35 U.S. states
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That same year, at the recommendation from two random deadheads in Portland, Maine, Ben & Jerry's launched their first ever music-inspired ice cream flavor
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They called it Cherry Garcia, named after everyone's favorite jam band frontman, Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead
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In the years since, Cherry Garcia's success has led the company to try out over a dozen other music-inspired flavors
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including Fish Food named after Fish Bohemian Raspberry named after the Queen Song and rather recently Mint Chocolate Chance named after Chance the Rapper Starting in 1988 these creative takes
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on naming their ice creams spread into the political realm as well. It started with the
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innocuous Rainforest Crunch, a flavor meant to garner support for protecting the Amazon
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along with a later One Sweet World, a flavor that partnered with the Dave Matthews Band to
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generate revenue for the Save Our Environment organization. Much of the company's early
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The activism likewise revolved around environmental projects, along with awareness campaigns surrounding food industry practices, such as the use of the growth hormone RBGH and the broader use of GMOs
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In the year 2000, though, Ben & Jerry sold their company to the British multinational, multibillion-dollar corporation Unilever for $326 million, with the contractual caveat that Unilever installed an independent board that would further advance their social and political campaigns
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Later, political ice cream flavors, underneath Unilever's control, launched the 2009 creation of Yes, Pecan, a play on Democratic President Barack Obama's Yes, We Can campaign slogan, and the later Pecan Resist, an ice cream flavor attacking the Republican Donald Trump presidency
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The Ben & Jerry's brand has aligned with the Democratic Party, even as the founders maintain their anti-establishment image concerning both campaign finance law and U.S. interventionist policies
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In 2016, for instance, the OG Ben & Jerry even allowed themselves to get arrested at a capital protest against corporate money in federal elections
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And they fell under democratic scrutiny in 2022 for Ben's apparent opposition to supplying military aid to Ukraine
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Activism aside, Ben & Jerry's, the brand, continues to sell almost a billion dollars worth of ice cream each year
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In the U.S. alone, that adds up to nearly 200 million pints of ice cream per year
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Over the course of the company's history, they've created over 300 original flavors and have even launched a pair of ice creams made specifically for dogs, including both Poncho's Mix and Rosie's Batch
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Since most of these flavors have either been limited release, regional exclusives, or have been otherwise discontinued, Ben & Jerry's has also constructed outside of its waterberry factory an entire flavor graveyard that showcases the deceased likes of Wavy Gravy, Sugar Plum, and Creme Brulee
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each with its own headstone and epithet. The graveyard receives over 300,000 visitors per year
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all looking to pay their respects to the company's bygone flavors. Still though, after all this time
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the company has kept up its annual free cone day tradition that started back in 1979
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serving up over a million free scoops of ice cream in the spring of every year
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So for those brave enough to stand in long lines across the globe free and creamy goodness awaits
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The Graveyard
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