Ben & Jerry's

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield open their first ice cream shop in Burlington, Vermont. Ben & Jerry's opens first international shops, in Canada and the Caribbean. Ben Cohen steps aside to let a professional manager take the CEO position. Ben & Jerry's has been distinguished by a corporate philosophy that stresses social action and liberal ideals in addition to profit making. Its innovative and creative marketing devices have further expressed this unorthodox spirit. When confronted with a declining market for superpremium ice cream, its founders turned increasingly to professional managers and finally sold out to Unilever, which promised to maintain Ben & Jerry's traditional values while taking the brand to new heights. Ben & Jerry's was founded in May 1978, when Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield opened an ice cream shop in Burlington, Vermont. Cohen had been teaching crafts, and Greenfield had been working as a lab technician when the two decided that 'we wanted to do something that would be more fun,' as Greenfield later told People magazine. In addition, the two wanted to live in a small college town. In 1977, they moved to Burlington, Vermont, and completed a five dollar correspondence course in ice cream making from Pennsylvania State University. With $12,000 in start-up money, a third of which they borrowed, the two renovated an old gas station on a corner in downtown Burlington and opened Ben & Jerry's Homemade. The first Ben & Jerry's store sold 12 flavors, made with an old-fashioned rock salt ice cream maker and locally produced milk and cream. Initially, ice cream production ran into some glitches. 'I once made a batch of rum raisin that stretched and bounced,' Greenfield told People. With time, however, the pair's rich, idiosyncratic, chunky offerings such as Dastardly Mash and Heath Bar Crunch gained a loyal following. In the summer of 1978, Ben & Jerry inaugurated the first of the many creative marketing ploys that would help drive the growth of their company when they held a free summer movie festival, projecting films onto a blank wall of their building. By 1980, Ben & Jerry had begun selling their ice cream to a number of restaurants in the Burlington area. Ben delivered the products to customers in an old Volkswagen squareback station wagon. On his delivery route, he passed many small grocery and convenience stores and decided that they would be a perfect outlet for their products. In 1980, the pair rented space in an old spool and bobbin factory in Burlington and began packaging their ice cream in pint-size cartons with pictures of themselves on the package. 'The image we wanted was grass roots,' Cohen later told People. The popularity of Ben & Jerry's products brought the company growth, despite the laissez-faire attitude of its two proprietors. At one point, the two were forced to close the doors of their store for a day to devote themselves to sorting out paperwork. In 1981, Ben & Jerry's expanded its pint-packing operations to more spacious quarters behind a car dealership. Shortly thereafter, the company opened its second retail outlet, a franchise on Route 7 in Shelburne, Vermont. Despite its exclusively local operations, Ben & Jerry's first gained national attention in 1981 when Time magazine hailed its products as 'the best ice cream in the world' in a cover story on ice cream. In the following year, Ben & Jerry's began to expand its distribution beyond the state of Vermont. First, an out-of-state store opened, selling Ben & Jerry's products in Portland, Maine. Then, the company began to sell its pints in the Boston area, distributing their goods to stores through independent channels. At the same time, Ben & Jerry's continued its policy of promoting itself through unique and whimsical activities. In 1983, for instance, the company took part in the construction of the world's largest ice cream sundae in St. Albans, Vermont. With its continuing expansion, Ben & Jerry's developed a need for tighte