This is the story of Ben & Jerry’s before the became an
international powerhouse. They started small and used their innovative idea to
grow and until recently they’re factory was the largest building in Vermont
(until UVM created their Student Center on campus.) They used only the finest ingredients from
local sources, boosting the Vermont dairy sector. Through the support of local
industry and products they have created a product that builds local businesses and promotes local well-being with sustainable, healthy, socially conscious methods.
This synopsis comes directly from my father who had the
unique opportunity to see this growth of a national symbol and an international
commodity first hand.
Ben and Jerry: start
local, buy local – go global.
I knew them back when they were just Ben and Jerry, two guys
with an idea and a "how to make ice cream" correspondence course from
Penn State University under their belts.
It was 1981. Burlington Vermont. I was an 18 year old college freshman
in the Animal Science department at the University of Vermont. My work-study job, a fine job at $4.25 an
hour, was working in the UVM Dairy Plant. I made cottage cheese and ice cream
mix from UVMs local herd of Holstein dairy cows. That ice cream mix was used to
make some fabulous ice cream with all fresh ingredients at the tiny UVM Dairy
Bar just down the hall from where the mix itself was made.
One of my duties was to help these two crazy looking guys
from New York, long hair, beards and not well showered, load up their broken
down (yellow, held together with rust) Ford F-150 pickup which, like these two
guys, had certainly seen better days, with 50 20-liter boxes of fresh ice cream
mix. They knew not to buy the better
truck until their little shop in downtown Burlington started to turn a bit of
profit. Their idea was simple: take the best, freshest and only locally
produced ingredients and turn it into gourmet ice cream. They became locally famous for big chunks of
chocolate, strawberries, cherries, or my favorite, heath bar wrapped in
decadently rich ice cream. Their trick
was to whip half as much air into the mix making it not go as far, but be twice
as creamy and therefore charge 3 times as much. It was a profit making venture
from the beginning but it was what they did with their profits that has made
them famous. They started the whole idea (I may be wrong on ‘who’ actually
started it but they were close) of socially conscious investing. You might not
get the biggest return, but it was the right thing to do. And the response was
overwhelming. Their little shop “Ben and
Jerry’s Homemade” was festooned with rainbows, black and white checkered floor
and black and white enigmatic cows on the walls. It literally made you walk in
and ask, “homemade what?” then walk out with a thick and rich cone of ice cream
with a funny name like Cherry Garcia, Phish Food, New York Super Fudge Chunk,
Chocolate Cookie Dough and pleased that you were supporting a local business
that itself was supporting local business.
Ben and Jerry started from humble beginnings with a strong
desire to help build local resiliency in other local humble businesses and they
went on to eventually stop buying their mix from the UVM dairy plant and make
their own in what would become Vermont’s largest building. They offer tours
daily and you can find their locally owned and operated franchises in nearly
every college town in America and now even Europe. Ben and Jerry made it
popular to do the right thing with their corporate profits during a time (the
80’s) when it was not fashionable…they help make it so and the world can thank
these two former New York cab drivers who took a mail in college course and
went on to make the ‘world’s best ice cream…or at least Vermont’s Finest.
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