How Ben & Jerry's Created A Values-Based Business

“If you don’t like the way business is done, then why don’t you change it?”

Those words, according to Ben & Jerry's ice cream company co-founder Jerry Greenfield, helped shape a company that has become nationally known for not only its ice cream, but the values-based way it conducts business.

Greenfield keynoted Financial Advisor magazine’s fourth annual Invest In Women conference in Houston on Monday with a story about a pair of peace and love ice cream guys who became unconventional businessman.

Ben & Jerry’s co-founders, Greenfield and Ben Cohen, started out as school friends in New York's Long Island. After high school, the two men went off to college. Greenfield went to Oberlin College with hopes of attending medical school and Cohen went to Colgate University and then the University Without Walls at Skidmore College before quitting college altogether.

Greenfield applied to medical school twice and was rejected both times before he took Ben up on an idea to start an ice cream business. The two men researched the most viable places to set up their ice cream shop and settled upon Burlington, Vt., where ice cream competitors were scarce, said Greenfield.

In the summer of 1978, Ben & Jerry's opened their first ice cream shop. Jerry said that summer was successful, but the following winter challenged the two men to find ways to keep their business going. For example, they tried to discount their ice cream based on how cold the weather got, with what they called the "Penny Off Per Celsius Degree Below Zero Winter Extravaganza," said Greenfield. They also sold ice cream to local restaurants.

One winter, Cohen decided to take their ice cream on the road to mom-and-pop grocery stores. This idea was what led Ben & Jerry’s down the path of manufacturing and distribution, into major markets such as Boston and Connecticut, said Greenfield.

Eventually, the two men began to realize their impact in the food industry. One of Ben & Jerry’s distributors disclosed that Haagen-Dazs (which was owned by the Pillsbury company at the time) threatened to drop the distributor’s services if the distributor continued to carry Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Haagen-Dazs had been around for over a decade longer than Ben & Jerry’s and the distributor decided the smaller operation wasn’t worth the trouble.

While Greenfield was concerned about the state of Ben & Jerry’s, he said Cohen began to laugh.

“I can’t believe that Haagen-Dazs and Pillsbury is worried about little ol’ Ben & Jerry’s,” Greenfield recalled Cohen saying.