PUBLISHED December 29th, 2014 04:00 pm | UPDATED April 21st, 2016 08:26 am
Starting out as a small-time ice cream parlour in an American gas station in Burlington, Vermont, almost 40 years ago, Jerry Greenfield just wanted to be a part of the community along with his good friend and business partner, Ben Cohen. What they didn’t foresee though, was how their tiny business became one of the world’s largest distributors of ice cream, transforming into the household brand of Ben & Jerry’s.
With their success matched by the desire to contribute to the community, these ice cream giants were one of the pioneers of corporate social responsibility. So we at City Nomads jumped at the chance to speak with this humble man from Brooklyn who dreamed big and believed in his goals from the very beginning when he was in town judging The Hub’s Join Our Core competition.
1) Support is very important for start-ups and who was your biggest supporter in the early days of Ben & Jerry’s?
(From Left: Ben Cohen & Jerry Greenfield)
It is. I think working together with Ben who was a good friend of mine, we really supported each other. Neither one of us had any idea what we were doing. And we had no business training, no experience, plus we just learned how to make ice cream from a book, so we really needed to support each other, and we were very very good friends so we completely trusted each other. We both knew that the other person was working really hard so we wanted to work just as hard to keep up our end of the bargain.
2) If you didn’t name the company after yourself and Ben, what would it have been?
We thought about a name called Josephine’s Flying Machine. (Laughs) But seriously, I think we made the right choice with Ben & Jerry’s. We started as a homemade ice cream parlour, and in the United States there was a tradition of homemade ice cream parlours being named after the people who started them. There was Steve’s Ice Cream, Bob’s Ice Cream and so we thought, why not just tell people who we were, instead of trying to pretend to be something different.
3) What do you think gives Ben & Jerry’s the edge over your competitors?
I think it’s a combination of many things like very high quality ice cream for one – there’s lots of milk and cream, and not much air, making it very rich and dense. There are unusual flavours of combinations of big chunks with cookies, candies and also swirls. I think also being a community-based company gave us an edge, where the mission of the company is not just to make money, but to try and help social and environmental needs. I think it’s all of those things together.
4) It’s admirable to meet someone who has an ethical approach to business, what were the challenges of maintaining that approach?
I think the challenge of having a social mission is to get everybody within the company to understand what’s being done. The other challenge is all the people on the outside of the company – there are always all these forces that push you to become more like everybody else, more conventional and mainstream. Anytime you’re doing anything different, people on the outside think you’re crazy. So you need to be committed enough so you can resist the outside pressure to conform.
5) What do you think you would have been if you didn’t start Ben & Jerry’s?
(From Left: Ben Cohen, Jimmy Fallon & Jerry Greenfield)
I was trying to get accepted into medical school, but all the medical schools I applied for rejected me. It was a blessing in disguise, I was very lucky, the ice cream world is lucky, and the medical world is also lucky. (Laughs)
6) Was it difficult selling off your company?
It was extremely difficult. It was very painful. We wanted Ben & Jerry’s to remain independent but it became a public company which meant anybody could purchase shares, and the acquiring Unilever offered so much money that our board of directors couldn’t find an alternative that would be satisfactory to the shareholders. There wasn’t anything bad about Unilever, we just wanted to stay independent but we were not able to do it.
7) What can you do in life now that you were too busy to do back then?
Ben and I still work at the company. We get to choose what things we want to be involved in, so I actually have a great role. I can pick the things I really want to support. I also do work with non-profit organizations and I also get to travel to a lot of places like London, Singapore and Tokyo!
8) Any improvements you’d like to see in the current food industry?
Of course! (Laughs) Well, I guess that some very good trends in the food industry is that there is much more interest in sustainable production, wholesome and healthy foods, of knowing where your foods come from, so I think those are all very positive. They just tend to be at a smaller level, and I would like to see that grow and become much more prominent in the food industry. And I do have to add that while I’ve been in Singapore, the food I’ve been eating is incredibly delicious.
9) What do you think of the idea of teaching the ice cream trade to the less fortunate? How do you think that will pan out?
Yeah! It’s interesting because to make ice cream on a small scale is not technically difficult, and it’s not expensive to get the equipment to do it. I think if somebody was interested, I’d be happy to talk to them.
10) Which company today has earned your respect?
I love Patagonia. They are a company that is committed to environmental sustainability. They only use organic cotton for their shirts, they make wet suits for people to go underwater but they’ve created a different kind of material, which is sustainable as compared to neoprene. So they’re very innovative and committed.
11) Any advice for budding entrepreneurs?
(Jerry Greenfield at The Hub’s Join Our Core competition)
Anytime you start any new venture, it will probably not go smoothly. And so you need to be prepared for things not to work the first time you try them, you need to be prepared to have your venture go through twists and turns that you don’t anticipate and so you need to be very flexible and resilient. You need to be able to bounce back when things don’t go as you hope.
By Joel Conceicao