Speaker 1: Hello, it's Alec Baldwin. We're going to rebroadcast an episode
Speaker 1: from our archives. This week we have a show recorded
Speaker 1: live in Vermont with Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, who
Speaker 1: you know, of course as Ben and Jerry. They've gotten
Speaker 1: a lot of my business over the last many years.
Speaker 1: We'll have new episodes of Here's the Thing beginning March fifteenth.
Speaker 1: Until then, enjoy my talk with Ben and Jerry. I'm
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen marks the fortieth anniversary of the first Ben
Speaker 1: and Jerry's scoop shop in a converted Vermont gas station.
Speaker 1: Back then, it was just Ben Cohen, the rootless art teacher,
Speaker 1: and Jerry Greenfield, the diligent premed who were friends from
Speaker 1: middle school Jim class. They figured they'd move on from
Speaker 1: ice cream in a few years when it became boring
Speaker 1: or unprofitable. But of course history had other things to say. Today,
Speaker 1: you'd be forgiven for thinking of Ben and Jerry as
Speaker 1: more milk and cream than flesh and blood. But it
Speaker 1: was the real people behind the pints that emerged when
Speaker 1: the two joined me for a rare joint interview last month.
Speaker 1: Our conversation was taped in front of a live audience
Speaker 1: at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington,
Speaker 1: just a couple of miles from the site where Cohen
Speaker 1: and Greenfield set up shop in Please help Me Welcome,
Speaker 1: Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. I knew I should have
Speaker 1: gone into the ice cream business. Look at that applause.
Speaker 1: You've got to look at that, you know, looking at
Speaker 1: you were a story and seeing your lives before you
Speaker 1: became these huge successes. You've been in each other's lives
Speaker 1: for a long long time. You know, both of you
Speaker 1: grew up in Brooklyn and then you met in Merrick
Speaker 1: Long Island where you met in school. Why you stayed
Speaker 1: so close to him? And then you go, I've just
Speaker 1: never run into a better friend to spend my life with. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, he's kind of smart, he's funny. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he has a real he has very strange eating habits
Speaker 1: and such as well. You know, the earliest memories actually
Speaker 1: I have of his eating habits as he was once
Speaker 1: attempting to survive on these one calorie candies that his mom,
Speaker 1: I guess packed for him in his little sandwich bag.
Speaker 1: For school lunch and uh, and we were in gym
Speaker 1: class together and he killed over. He fainted and uh,
Speaker 1: you know it's some kind of strange liquid came out
Speaker 1: of some facial orifice and the coach covered it up
Speaker 1: with the gym mats so that he could show it
Speaker 1: to the nurse when the nurse came by. In the
Speaker 1: movie version of Your Life, I'm gonna have that kid
Speaker 1: run up and go, Jerry, are you okay? And he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: what's your name? And you're like Ben, my name is Ben,
Speaker 1: Thanks buddy, And that's where we all was born there. Y. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The second food memory I have of Jerry is uh,
Speaker 1: when he was surviving on what he called slop, which
Speaker 1: was he would mix together cream of wheat and cream
Speaker 1: of mushroom soup and he kept it around in this
Speaker 1: jar that he kept in his car and he would
Speaker 1: kind of drink out of it. And thank god, Ben
Speaker 1: created all the flavors. So that was a slop something
Speaker 1: that was consumed over the course of a day a week.
Speaker 1: I I uh, I was trying to be healthy, and
Speaker 1: so I was I have I have no trouble eating
Speaker 1: the same food over and over day after day. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just sort of that he does not lived to
Speaker 1: eat no imagination does eat a lot, but uh he
Speaker 1: he doesn't care what he eats. Let's talk about Ben
Speaker 1: for a minute. You love Ben that I love so.
Speaker 1: Uh We we met first of all because we were
Speaker 1: both fat kids in junior high school and you know,
Speaker 1: uh we were not exactly in the main stream of
Speaker 1: social activities. We were both kind of nerdy kids, and
Speaker 1: uh so we we hung out together a lot, and
Speaker 1: we remained nerdy kids. So I think that was that
Speaker 1: was of cream of wheat qualifier. And you know, plus
Speaker 1: we we always did like to eat together. I mean
Speaker 1: we would have food together, and uh Ben, Ben was
Speaker 1: the first person who talked to me about taught me
Speaker 1: about uh wet crunch and dry crunch. Ben's really into
Speaker 1: textures in foods. I used to talk a lot about
Speaker 1: eating through the pain. So food was a big glue
Speaker 1: in your relationship, very much, right. And when you say,
Speaker 1: what's in the ice cream is his hemisphere and what's yours?
Speaker 1: Uh well, I used to make it, but you know what,
Speaker 1: what's one of the inch same things? You know, So
Speaker 1: you think of Ben and Jerry as you think of
Speaker 1: all these incredible flavors, and so people assume that Ben
Speaker 1: made some of the flavors and Jerry made some of
Speaker 1: the flavors. Jerry, what were your flavors? And it's kind
Speaker 1: of a long pause at that point. We had stop
Speaker 1: on the menu for a while. But so you're the
Speaker 1: business end. No, no, neither one of us. No. So
Speaker 1: you know, they were all a really good joint. What
Speaker 1: are you saying? What you Uh, it's legal here, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we're recording up there. Ben came up with
Speaker 1: the flavors. I would make the ice cream. We started
Speaker 1: with this little shop right here in Burlington. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and for those people who remember forty years ago, about
Speaker 1: two weeks after we opened up, we closed the store
Speaker 1: because we couldn't figure out if we were making any
Speaker 1: money to stay in business. And we put up a
Speaker 1: little sign on the door that said closed. And uh,
Speaker 1: we had an accountant who walked in the door and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I can help you. And so I saved that first shop. Ye.
Speaker 1: But but but I want to go back and forth
Speaker 1: that because in you're lives, there's a lot of uh,
Speaker 1: you're going to go to college to medical school's conceptually right,
Speaker 1: we consider I'll take it um. And you wanted to
Speaker 1: become a scholar, but you were into pottery, pottery, and
Speaker 1: then you end up teaching pottery. Where again, was it
Speaker 1: those who can't do? You know, well, that can't make
Speaker 1: a lot of money selling ice cream. But but but
Speaker 1: you were you were where did you end up teaching?
Speaker 1: That was in the in the Adondex in the town
Speaker 1: called Paradox, at the at the Highland Community School for
Speaker 1: Disturbed teenagers. But there's one section there. I think when
Speaker 1: you guys are not in the same city and you're
Speaker 1: not around anything for a few years, correct, when when
Speaker 1: we decide I did that we were going to make
Speaker 1: ice cream together. We were not in the same place
Speaker 1: and you were not in the same place for how long?
Speaker 1: Oh it was years. But we made a vow. So
Speaker 1: we decided we were gonna learn how to make ice cream,
Speaker 1: and so we pledged to each other that we were
Speaker 1: going to start making test batches of ice cream wherever
Speaker 1: it was we were living and report the results back
Speaker 1: and whatever. And I never made any but we also,
Speaker 1: I think we're clear on that it should have been Ben.
Speaker 1: Ben was the guy who stopped doing his homework. What
Speaker 1: in junior high school. I mean I was the guy
Speaker 1: I finished all my homework. I should have been making
Speaker 1: the ice cream. But I only mentioned that five year
Speaker 1: gap because this is back in the time of there
Speaker 1: are no cell phones and there is no internet. So
Speaker 1: maintaining that friendship, I mean, your friendship is integral to
Speaker 1: this home. We wrote letters, Well, we had a chain
Speaker 1: letter that we wrote to a group of friends, and
Speaker 1: you know, each person would America enter the they're comments
Speaker 1: and then send the letter around to the next person,
Speaker 1: and you know, it just kind oft on circulating like that.
Speaker 1: So you stayed in touch all that time. We didn't
Speaker 1: We didn't lose touch. And what was the what facilitated
Speaker 1: you getting back here and opening that first place in
Speaker 1: Burlington in the former gas station that you opened up him? Well,
Speaker 1: I failed at being a potter, No nobody would buy
Speaker 1: my pottering. And he failed at being a doctor. He
Speaker 1: couldn't get into medical school. So we figured we're not
Speaker 1: getting anywhere in the world, and um, maybe we should
Speaker 1: start our own business. Did you know what kind of
Speaker 1: business were you? Right? I mean, that's interesting. You didn't
Speaker 1: decide to go into like, you know, the camping gear business, right,
Speaker 1: it had to be food, and uh, we were originally
Speaker 1: going to open a restaurant. We had one friend who
Speaker 1: knew something about business. He said, whatever you do, don't
Speaker 1: open a full service restaurant. If it's got to be food,
Speaker 1: open a very limited menu kind of place. And we
Speaker 1: wanted to live in a rural college town. So the
Speaker 1: idea was to take a food trend that was just
Speaker 1: starting off in the big cities, take it to a
Speaker 1: rural college town. And uh, the food trends that were
Speaker 1: happening was bagels or ice cream, and uh, we thought
Speaker 1: we would do bagels. And you couldn't make bagels either,
Speaker 1: could That's kind of like sculpting, isn't it. That's kind
Speaker 1: of like potter me. You gotta shape it, your throw
Speaker 1: into a kiln, right right, right. It's a little more
Speaker 1: forgiving than pottery. But you left up the pottery and
Speaker 1: the bagels. Apparently. I was actually a baker's helper once
Speaker 1: and I got fired. But when you was signed on
Speaker 1: to that, you like the idea of a food business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we didn't know anything about anything. We knew we
Speaker 1: liked to eat, and uh, I mean you know when
Speaker 1: you say a food business, Uh, we weren't really thinking
Speaker 1: about a business. For us. It was kind of a
Speaker 1: venture open up a shop, and we thought we would
Speaker 1: do that for a couple of years, and then we
Speaker 1: thought we would try something else. You know. We we
Speaker 1: talked about becoming cross country truck drivers together after that.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's not thank God for all our
Speaker 1: sakes you do that. We'll be back after this. You
Speaker 1: use you opened the first store in Burlington's Win seven
Speaker 1: and and what was ice cream in America? Then? Well,
Speaker 1: ice cream in Burlington was you had the U v M.
Speaker 1: Dairy Bar and you had a Sewer's ice cream at
Speaker 1: the bus station in downtown Burlington and that was really
Speaker 1: the only Wasn't that enough? Well the bus station was
Speaker 1: a pretty seedy place at the time. Uh no, uh clear.
Speaker 1: And there was Uptons, the pinball parlor, oh Upton's right.
Speaker 1: Cream also, Now for you to go back, when you
Speaker 1: were a child, what was ice cream and your child
Speaker 1: were you? Were you an ice cream person? Yeah, we
Speaker 1: always had ice cream in our freezer and we would
Speaker 1: get half gallons from the supermarket and uh it was
Speaker 1: just kind of a staple in our house. Briars. Same
Speaker 1: for you. Well, when I was a kid, because you
Speaker 1: talked about the beginning of the era of the super
Speaker 1: premium ice cream, people spending more money for better quality
Speaker 1: ice cream. But when I was a kid, you went
Speaker 1: to Howard Johnson's on the highway in Massive Peak where
Speaker 1: I was from, and they scooped ice cream, which was
Speaker 1: pretty good ice cream. There was carvel. You bought ires
Speaker 1: by the container and took briars home from the supermarket
Speaker 1: where you had the vendors and trucks like Mr Softie
Speaker 1: and Good Humor was the big one on when I
Speaker 1: could be at Truck's, you know, patrolling the neighborhood when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. And then we get into the
Speaker 1: era of you know, fruzing glagia and hogging does and
Speaker 1: so forth. When you started making ice cream, did you
Speaker 1: say to yourself, this is who we are, we're gonna
Speaker 1: make We just wanted to make the best ice cream
Speaker 1: we possibly could and our model was Steve's ice Cream
Speaker 1: in uh Summerville, mass What made a good ice he
Speaker 1: was He was one of the first homemade ice cream
Speaker 1: parlors on the East Coast. He was making ice cream
Speaker 1: in a five gallon rock salt and ice freezer in
Speaker 1: the window and uh, you know, people were lined up
Speaker 1: around the block. There was a there was a player
Speaker 1: piano on the line. You could, you know, put a
Speaker 1: quarter in and make the player piano play and and
Speaker 1: it was great ice cream. He was doing nixings. Uh
Speaker 1: you know, so you'd get a scoop of ice cream,
Speaker 1: you know, vanilla, chocolate, coffee. You say, I want a
Speaker 1: scoopa ice cream and I want heath bars mixed in,
Speaker 1: and they would, right. They were the cold Stone forerunner.
Speaker 1: So in the beginning, what kind of menu did you have?
Speaker 1: Was it basic flavors or were you throwing you know, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, spare parts in there. From the beginning, always
Speaker 1: started with vanilla. We started with chocolate, We started with coffee,
Speaker 1: you know, the real basics. Uh. We Ben had not
Speaker 1: yet flourished as an ice cream creative. I think one
Speaker 1: of the first flavors we came out with that was
Speaker 1: a real knockout as far as we were concerned was
Speaker 1: cantaloupe we we made. I mean, it was great ice
Speaker 1: but we don't see that on the menu anymore than
Speaker 1: you don't. I mean the reason why you don't see
Speaker 1: it on the menu anymore is in order to make
Speaker 1: cantalope ice cream. You need overripe cantalopes, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the produce wholesalers in town really liked us because, you know,
Speaker 1: we'd call up and we'd say, hey, do you got
Speaker 1: any overripe cantalopes? And they just couldn't wait to get
Speaker 1: rid of the overripe cantalopes. And Jerry would be scooping out, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the stuff that wasn't rotten, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: pushing up the overripe. Absolutely avoided the stuff that was rotten.
Speaker 1: I did not use that, and you know, and it
Speaker 1: was great. I mean it wasn't It tasted just like
Speaker 1: a cantaloupe, except it was creamy and frozen and uh,
Speaker 1: but the problem is you can't do it in large
Speaker 1: quantities because not everybody would be there, like Jerry, you know,
Speaker 1: scooping it out. You know, it's very much a hand operation.
Speaker 1: So you come up with the flavors. You're like Jerry
Speaker 1: cut and scoop. Though, well it was more like that
Speaker 1: way with the heath bars. Uh. You know, at the beginning,
Speaker 1: we were buying heath bars that were individually wrapped, and uh,
Speaker 1: Jerry would line them unwrapped and and line them up
Speaker 1: on a cutting board and we had this big two
Speaker 1: handled knife. Uh and he would cut him what how
Speaker 1: many ways, which which into thirds and then the other way.
Speaker 1: Well it was just thirds. Uh. So we were doing
Speaker 1: this and it was our most popular flavor, and you
Speaker 1: know he was doing it a lot and uh and
Speaker 1: then you know, we hired our first guy who knew
Speaker 1: something about business and who was Cheeko Lager. By the way,
Speaker 1: he uh he uh he cheeko loggerg like beer, logger
Speaker 1: like beer. He name his Cheeko Logger Cheeico Logger. That's
Speaker 1: the fakest name I've ever heard in my life. He
Speaker 1: owned the bar. Uh, this is real name, like Andy Horowitz.
Speaker 1: And if he wants to have one guy with a
Speaker 1: different man Chico Lagger and uh what did? He called
Speaker 1: up the heath bar company and said, you know, we're
Speaker 1: using all these heath bars. Can't we buy them unwrapped?
Speaker 1: And they said, huh uh, you know we have boxes
Speaker 1: and boxes full of all these factory second heath bars
Speaker 1: that you know there's something slightly wrong with and we
Speaker 1: didn't wrap them. You want those? And he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll take them. And you know it was a great
Speaker 1: deal in terms of money. And you know this guy,
Speaker 1: you know, he was an NBA. You know, he does
Speaker 1: his calculations and figures out out the cost of money
Speaker 1: and the interest in all this kind of crap and
Speaker 1: ended up ordering like a ton of heath bars. And
Speaker 1: he's got him piled up in the office behind his chair.
Speaker 1: And uh so we had a storm in the freezer
Speaker 1: so that they didn't you know, melt or go bad
Speaker 1: or whatever. We had them stored on the top rack
Speaker 1: in the pallettes in in this walk in freezer. And
Speaker 1: one day somebody went to get the pallette down and
Speaker 1: he dropped him on the floor before Jerry could cut
Speaker 1: him up, and then opened we opened up the box
Speaker 1: and they were broken exactly right. And that became the
Speaker 1: new method of breaking up the heath bars. So so
Speaker 1: for months everything Jerry's and the freezer going step back, cheek,
Speaker 1: I tell them already, tell him already, sweep him up.
Speaker 1: Let's go. So you open up in burly To and
Speaker 1: it's seventy And when do things start to fizz a
Speaker 1: little bit? When do you think you're onto something? What's
Speaker 1: the sign that you're onto something other than you're scooping,
Speaker 1: a lot of slowing down a little before we started fizzing.
Speaker 1: Why it turned into the winter from the summer, and
Speaker 1: that explains why there weren't really many other ice cream
Speaker 1: barlors here in burl at the time. Yeah, what did
Speaker 1: your competitors do during the longer than they close? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, Sewards was selling a lot of sandwiches and
Speaker 1: hot doors. You didn't want to do that, no, because
Speaker 1: that was the sign of an ice cream shop that
Speaker 1: was going out of business. They started to sell all
Speaker 1: this other crap. What do you do? We started to
Speaker 1: sell all the crap. We were saying discount on broken
Speaker 1: heath balls, we were selling soups and crepes. Actually, you know,
Speaker 1: Jerry was in charge of the ice cream. I was
Speaker 1: in charge of all the other crap, and we don't
Speaker 1: sell any of that any And you you were deciding
Speaker 1: what that would be. You with a decider of that
Speaker 1: as well, pretty much, I think, I mean we discussed
Speaker 1: it together, but we came up with a great ice
Speaker 1: cream marketing promotion in the winter. It was called pop
Speaker 1: sid Biswie, which stood for penny off per Celsius degree
Speaker 1: below zero Winter Extravaganza. They all remember it. Everybody remembers
Speaker 1: that promotion at then and Jerry's the colder it gets
Speaker 1: the more you say. So, it's a miracle that you're
Speaker 1: up here with me today about your great success. When
Speaker 1: you tell me that acronymic what is it again? Pop
Speaker 1: sid Biswie penny off Percelsius. She had a screwy way
Speaker 1: of selling ice cream. We have TV commercial that had
Speaker 1: pop sid bizwe in it. It put up each letter
Speaker 1: one at a time, BOPCG one. Did you win some
Speaker 1: marketing of boards? But you would literally discount purther weather
Speaker 1: and that's what saved you. You think, no, but but
Speaker 1: one of the great things that grew out of that.
Speaker 1: So that was our first winter. We were really struggling, uh,
Speaker 1: and Ben and I said to each other, boy, if
Speaker 1: we're still in business after a year, we'll celebrate by
Speaker 1: giving out free ice cream to everybody. Because we didn't
Speaker 1: think we were going to stay in business, and there
Speaker 1: was really not much there. Uh. But we were in
Speaker 1: business after a year, and that was our first free
Speaker 1: cone Day, which still takes place every year. It's around
Speaker 1: the first Tuesday in April. You can get in line
Speaker 1: as many times as you want at any Ben and
Speaker 1: Jerry's shop. And when do really thinks start? When do
Speaker 1: you look at each other and say, we gotta take
Speaker 1: this to another level? We things started getting worse, uh,
Speaker 1: and we said, we're never gonna make it with an
Speaker 1: ice cream shop. We need to find another way to
Speaker 1: bring in more money. And so we started selling ice
Speaker 1: cream to some local restaurants that had asked for it.
Speaker 1: Ben became our roots salesman. He would go around and
Speaker 1: selling ice cream and then he was passing by all
Speaker 1: these mom and pop stores that he was going by
Speaker 1: delivering ice cream to restaurants, and he thought we should
Speaker 1: package our ice cream into pine containers and he could
Speaker 1: sell it in there. And that is what started the
Speaker 1: business going forward. Yeah, there were stores, m and what
Speaker 1: year did that start to take off? I don't know.
Speaker 1: We we don't remember this, okay, okay, I'm just curious
Speaker 1: about when do you do? You mean right now it's
Speaker 1: a I mean, let's not kill ourselves. It's a huge company.
Speaker 1: When did you go public? We went public first just
Speaker 1: within the state of Vermont. Uh. The idea was to
Speaker 1: make the community the shareholders of the business. Uh. We had,
Speaker 1: you know, a bunch of venture capitalists that were approaching
Speaker 1: us saying they wanted to invest in the business, and
Speaker 1: we said, no, we don't want to do it that way.
Speaker 1: We want to use this need for cash as an
Speaker 1: opportunity to make the community the owners of the business.
Speaker 1: Worked out great. We sold out the offering. It was
Speaker 1: the first ever in state public stock offering, and you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people bought stock and happily the stock
Speaker 1: went up. A lot of people made a bunch of money.
Speaker 1: People's kids went to college on manager's stock. What was
Speaker 1: unique about that was there was a very low minimum purchase.
Speaker 1: There was a hundred and twenty six dollars. So it
Speaker 1: was not aimed at sophisticated investors. It was aimed at everybody.
Speaker 1: So the Vermont offering was in eighty four, and then
Speaker 1: we had a public offering nationally in ninety eight five,
Speaker 1: and then you sell the company to Uni Lever in
Speaker 1: two thousand. The company got sold. The company got to
Speaker 1: keep it independent. You did, you did explain to people
Speaker 1: how that works. Mean you have a board and uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, I just would assume a company named Ben
Speaker 1: and Jerry, and Ben and Jerry are alive, and I'm
Speaker 1: assuming that they're involved they're calling the shots. How does
Speaker 1: a company get sold by your board if you don't
Speaker 1: want it to get sold to you, a Leaver? How
Speaker 1: did that work out? I mean, in the end you
Speaker 1: said that we have when things with you to Lever
Speaker 1: A fine, it worked out well, But how did it
Speaker 1: get sold? Uh? There was a CEO who was running
Speaker 1: the company at the time who um saw way for
Speaker 1: him to make a bunch of money by selling the company,
Speaker 1: and uh, you Lever was courting him. They were courting
Speaker 1: each other, I think, and so Uni Leaver ended up
Speaker 1: offering so much money for the stock, so much above
Speaker 1: what the price that it was trading at, that the
Speaker 1: board had no choice legally but to recommend uh sale. Right.
Speaker 1: Do they have other ice cream popsicle briars Klondike, Uh,
Speaker 1: Magnum magnum, tlenty tolenty go. They're a very big ice
Speaker 1: cream every shelf of the freezer case. If you like
Speaker 1: ice cream, you've probably already heard this one. But there's
Speaker 1: no better ice cream conversation in our archives than with BARBERA.
Speaker 1: Streisand I would have my kind of coffee ice cream
Speaker 1: briars and sit in my bed and dream, go to
Speaker 1: the movie. Sometimes on a Saturday afternoon the Lowis Kings.
Speaker 1: We had the greatest ice cream and we also, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're, you're like me. Somebody'll say what was the
Speaker 1: best part of the summer, I'd say, what is this
Speaker 1: restaurant that has the best coffee ice cream with chocolate
Speaker 1: covered Hanzel notes the rest of that interview and many
Speaker 1: more that Here's the Thing dot org when we come back,
Speaker 1: the skinny on Ben and Jerry's rolls at the company
Speaker 1: after it was brought out by Unilever and the real
Speaker 1: story behind Cherry Garcia. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were
Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing Now more of my interview
Speaker 1: with the tycoons of Truffle Kerfuffle, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield.
Speaker 1: The company they founded was acquired by Dutch conglomerate Unilever
Speaker 1: in two thousands. You're not involved. They run the company.
Speaker 1: You're you're not on the board. What's that like for
Speaker 1: you that your name is on it? Like, like I
Speaker 1: wonder is you're still walking down the street and people
Speaker 1: are saying I got a flavor for you, and they
Speaker 1: still think you're the pipeline, You're the conduit, uh for
Speaker 1: the record. We love it when people come up and say,
Speaker 1: I've got a flavor for you that we want that kay.
Speaker 1: I was once that an event and these these two
Speaker 1: women came up to me and they said, you know
Speaker 1: how you know girlfriends are always bringing over a pine
Speaker 1: of Ben and Jerry's to their friend who just broke
Speaker 1: up with their boyfriend to kind of soothe them. Well,
Speaker 1: we think you should come out with a flavor that's
Speaker 1: in a pink container called you can do Better Scotch.
Speaker 1: Keep up, and I keep on telling the company, this
Speaker 1: is a winner. You should come out with this. I
Speaker 1: mean coffee ice cream with a butter Scotch ripple. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is incredible flavor. They say, oh, we got a
Speaker 1: flavor department. Go back then, go go go go do
Speaker 1: whatever it did you do? That's what they say. What
Speaker 1: can I say? You know, it's one thing to enter
Speaker 1: a business because I have no business sense at all.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have zero business sense. You know, when
Speaker 1: people talk about ice cream, it's you know, a handful
Speaker 1: of flavors of which you're at the top of the pile,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm I want to congratulate you. And it's
Speaker 1: just amazing to have done that, you know, to have
Speaker 1: built a business and then that successful. You know, we
Speaker 1: had a saying Jerry and I, it's easy to make
Speaker 1: it lousy, it's hard to make it right. It's really
Speaker 1: hard to shove that chocolate chip cookie dough into the
Speaker 1: pints of ice cream so that each point gets the
Speaker 1: right amount of chocolate chip cookie dough. You know, we
Speaker 1: used to slice open point containers four ways and to
Speaker 1: force actions to inspect, uh, the number of chunks of
Speaker 1: cookie dough that ended up in each section. And then
Speaker 1: in complex flavors like heath Bar Crunch or New York Superfudge,
Speaker 1: not only were you counting the number of chunks of
Speaker 1: heath Bar, but you were counting three different size variations
Speaker 1: that all had to appear right. I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: reason why nobody else was making ice cream like this.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really go through the machinery that easily. You know,
Speaker 1: there's nothing easier to make than a homogenious liquid or
Speaker 1: semi liquid like mayonnaise. How many facilities do you have
Speaker 1: around the country to make ice cream like plants that
Speaker 1: manufactured the ice cream, Well, there's two here in Vermont,
Speaker 1: there's one in Nevada. You think that's it. It's pretty
Speaker 1: much refrigerator truck and truck it all around the country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the country, and then there's another plant in the Netherlands.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And that's about the whole thing, right, Ain't
Speaker 1: nothing else. Uh, we're not really part. You're supposed to know, Jerry,
Speaker 1: he makes the flavors. You count the money, Jerry, what's
Speaker 1: going on? Well, I think this just goes to show
Speaker 1: that Ben and I are not really on top of things.
Speaker 1: I mean, now, when you license, I'm assuming there's a
Speaker 1: licensing involved. What's the first signature flavor you come up with?
Speaker 1: The first one unusual when we came up with was
Speaker 1: Oreo Mint Oreo Mint, and you gotta cut a deal
Speaker 1: with Oreo. Well we didn't. And then we got a
Speaker 1: letter from uh Nibisco, which owns Oreo, and it was
Speaker 1: a really nice stationary that it was, and that they
Speaker 1: explained that Oreo is their most valuable trademark and they
Speaker 1: will go to the ends of the earth to defend
Speaker 1: and there's trademark and under no circumstances could we call
Speaker 1: our ice cream Oreo mint. However, we could call it
Speaker 1: mint with Oreos. So we said okay, and we changed
Speaker 1: the packaging and they were fine, and then you know
Speaker 1: about I don't know, five or eight years later, we
Speaker 1: got another letter from the legal department at NIBISCO which
Speaker 1: began by saying, Oreo is their most valuable trademark. They
Speaker 1: will go to the ends of the earth to defend it,
Speaker 1: and under no circumstances could we pluralize their trademark. You
Speaker 1: may not call your ice cream mint with Oreos, you
Speaker 1: may call it mint with Oreo cookies. So, you know,
Speaker 1: we changed the packaging again and didn't hear from them
Speaker 1: until I started doing this online demonstration demonstrating the size
Speaker 1: of the Pentagon budget in relationship to the education budget
Speaker 1: and the healthcare budget and the alternative energy budget, et cetera,
Speaker 1: using stacks of Oreo cookies. Each Oreo cookie would equal
Speaker 1: ten billion dollars. So I'd come out with this, you know,
Speaker 1: huge stack representing the Pentagon, and then you had this
Speaker 1: least little little stacks research and we got another letter
Speaker 1: from the Labor Department of Oreos UH saying, far be
Speaker 1: it from us to abridge your First Amendment rights of
Speaker 1: free speech. But we're getting a lot of complaints from
Speaker 1: our shareholders that the Nibisco company agrees with the point
Speaker 1: you're trying to make about the excessive Pentagon budget. Could
Speaker 1: you please refrain from doing that? You know, I felt
Speaker 1: that wasn't right. But it's their cookie company, right, it
Speaker 1: is their cookie company. But you see these advertisements where
Speaker 1: they're talking about some competitor and they're calling the competitor
Speaker 1: by brand name, And so I talked to a trademark lawyer,
Speaker 1: and uh, I said, what's the story here, and they said,
Speaker 1: you can use a competitor's name as long as there's
Speaker 1: no other product that will do to make the point
Speaker 1: you're trying to make. So I wrote him a letter
Speaker 1: back saying, look, I've researched every other chocolate sandwich cookie
Speaker 1: and no other chocolate sandwich cookie has OREOS high quality standards,
Speaker 1: and that in other chocolate sandwich cookies, the amount of
Speaker 1: white stuff in the middle tends to vary from cookie
Speaker 1: to cookie. And I'm sure they can understand how in
Speaker 1: my demonstration each cookie equaling ten billion dollars, it was
Speaker 1: off by just a little and I never heard from
Speaker 1: them again. You can't take on the Pentagon using HI cookie.
Speaker 1: That's that's not gonna work. So did you learn a
Speaker 1: profound lesson from your dealings with Nibisco, and you went
Speaker 1: on to do other flavor Cherry Garcia. Obviously, when you
Speaker 1: did other signature brands like that, did you get into
Speaker 1: more or did you get letters from a dear Mr Cohen,
Speaker 1: the estate of Mr. Garcia would like to make it
Speaker 1: known to you in regards to Cherry Garcia, it was
Speaker 1: a flavor that one of our fans came up with.
Speaker 1: They wrote us an anonymous postcard saying dead paraphernalia always sells,
Speaker 1: So you know, it took me a long time, what
Speaker 1: over a year to come up with a flavor that
Speaker 1: was deserving of honoring this guy. What I don't remember
Speaker 1: you was he alive when it happened? He was? Did
Speaker 1: he acknowledge what you did? Well? His lawyer did you know?
Speaker 1: He was like, you know, Uh, We sent him the
Speaker 1: first point off the line. We overnighted it on dry ice,
Speaker 1: and his wife called up and said, you know, he
Speaker 1: can't have any right now because he's in the hospital
Speaker 1: and diabetic coma, but I really liked the flavor. And
Speaker 1: then a few months later we got a call from
Speaker 1: his lawyer, whose name happens to be how can't. Uh
Speaker 1: he said, uh, you know, yeah, it's a really good flavor.
Speaker 1: But we think Jerry's entitled to a little piece of
Speaker 1: the action here, and we gave him. We gave him
Speaker 1: a little piece of the and now is a state
Speaker 1: occasionally argues over who pick up the little piece of
Speaker 1: the action. But you've been politically engaged your entire life,
Speaker 1: not so much, you know. I think it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: more after I moved to Vermont. What happened when you
Speaker 1: moved to Vermont. Part of it was having gone to college.
Speaker 1: I went to college during the late sixties and early seventies.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of social movements going on at
Speaker 1: the time. And soon thereafter I came to Vermont, which, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just a wonderfully community oriented state. You
Speaker 1: can go talk to your legislators in mont Pelier. I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's it's very down home and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of grassroots activism here. And so I've become very
Speaker 1: supportive of the Progressive Party in Vermont. There's a it's
Speaker 1: a third party here in Vermont. Uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: plus there's Bernie h and there there is there is
Speaker 1: nobody like Bernie Ben and I were surrogates for Bernie
Speaker 1: in in the last presidential primary. UH. And you know
Speaker 1: what's among the amazing things about Bernie, besides what he's
Speaker 1: been fighting for for his whole political career, is that
Speaker 1: he is not for sale. And you do do not
Speaker 1: find people in the political world with that level of integrity.
Speaker 1: And what about a year junior high in high school,
Speaker 1: I wanted to go uh down South with the Freedom Writers,
Speaker 1: and my parents wouldn't let me so. Again during that
Speaker 1: same period of time, I grew up on Long Island.
Speaker 1: My parents would every once in a while drive into
Speaker 1: New York City and we would drive over the Triboro
Speaker 1: Bridge and you get let off a street and on
Speaker 1: one side of the street there's dilapidated housing and people
Speaker 1: living in poverty, and on the other side there's people
Speaker 1: living in wealth. And it didn't seem right to me,
Speaker 1: and that affected me quite a bit. I think it
Speaker 1: was Desmond Tutu who said that, Uh, in situations of injustice,
Speaker 1: you cannot be neutral. If an elephant is standing on
Speaker 1: the tail of a mouse, you can say you're neutral,
Speaker 1: but the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. When being
Speaker 1: confronted with injustice, you have. You know, you have three choices.
Speaker 1: You can either ignore it, you can complain about it,
Speaker 1: or you can do something about it. Did you guys
Speaker 1: set up a charitable foundation for the company or do
Speaker 1: you guys have your own foundation that you funnel money
Speaker 1: into from individually or from the company. What's the mission?
Speaker 1: What do you target? You're mostly income disparity, the arts.
Speaker 1: What are you doing well so for for the Ben
Speaker 1: and Jerry's foundation. Uh, it's social justice and grassroots organizing
Speaker 1: for that. And and the interesting thing about the foundation
Speaker 1: at the company is that the final decisions about where
Speaker 1: the money goes is done by employees who volunteer their
Speaker 1: time to make those decisions. And uh, they are remarkable,
Speaker 1: they do an incredible job. But I think what's important
Speaker 1: to understand is that, uh, you know, the major effect
Speaker 1: that Ben Injuries has and the major contribution that Ben
Speaker 1: Injuries has to society is not about the foundations. It's
Speaker 1: not about donating money. It's about integrating those social concerns
Speaker 1: into our day to day business activities and using the
Speaker 1: businesses voice. So going back to the public sale Invermonts,
Speaker 1: certainly that and I'm also talking about uh speaking out
Speaker 1: on social and political issues, and we're gonna get to
Speaker 1: campaign finance reform and protest about you know, all kinds
Speaker 1: of things that are worrisome in this country that people
Speaker 1: have been led to believe it's ineffective, and it is
Speaker 1: not ineffective. If you see something wrong in this country,
Speaker 1: you need to scream as loud as you possibly can.
Speaker 1: You've got to protest, you've got to demonstrate, you've got
Speaker 1: to get active. It's the patriotic thing to do. They're
Speaker 1: they're they're working for you. I'm in a room with
Speaker 1: congressmen and senators and I'm gonna I'm looknna like you know,
Speaker 1: you're on the clock, buddy. Campaign finance reform, and it's
Speaker 1: the lynch pin at every problem with oursel. How did
Speaker 1: you get involved with that issue? I was working for
Speaker 1: a long time on shifting a bunch of priorities from
Speaker 1: the Pentagon to social needs and didn't get anywhere. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of that reason was because of so
Speaker 1: many defense contractor political donations, So that was one factor.
Speaker 1: And then I was Jerry and I were both active
Speaker 1: in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Originally it was laser
Speaker 1: focused on economic disparity, but as it started broadening and
Speaker 1: everybody who was protesting whatever came into that movement. The
Speaker 1: message starters to get garbled, and I felt like it
Speaker 1: was important to focus and the the common denominator between
Speaker 1: health care and issues of the environment and energy independence
Speaker 1: in Wall Street banks, the common denominator was money in
Speaker 1: politics that uh, you know, all these corporations and high
Speaker 1: high wealth individuals are paying Congress is not to pass
Speaker 1: laws that protect people, but to press laws that protect corporations.
Speaker 1: So I got into working to get money out of politics.
Speaker 1: You see, the tax cut to put more money into
Speaker 1: the bank accounts of a class of people, typically Goop supporters,
Speaker 1: who uh and if it's if it's a significant amount
Speaker 1: of money for these people, you see, we're Kushner paid
Speaker 1: no taxes all these years. And the Democrats I want
Speaker 1: to win the midterms because because I want to see
Speaker 1: Trump's tax returns. You know, they announced they're gonna get
Speaker 1: his through their hands on his tax returns, and uh,
Speaker 1: that will be thrilling, that'll be okay, okay, um. But uh,
Speaker 1: we have some I mean, we just have some mind
Speaker 1: blowing questions from the audience. They're really just great questions.
Speaker 1: Someone actually wrote down, they wrote vanilla or chocolate. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that was that wasn't a question. We went over some
Speaker 1: of the backstage to see which ones they have not
Speaker 1: been asked, you know, fifty billion times before. But I
Speaker 1: love this one, which is what's and you hold your answer?
Speaker 1: You actually you go first. You go first, because I
Speaker 1: know your answer. What's the longest you've ever gone without
Speaker 1: eating ice cream? I have gone months without eating ice cream.
Speaker 1: I would probably say two or three months. You've gone
Speaker 1: two or three months, and then what happens and they
Speaker 1: find you in a pile the I'm I'm a feaister
Speaker 1: famine kind of. I have a freezer at home that's
Speaker 1: got a couple of hundred points in there, several gallons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you never know when someone's gonna drop by your
Speaker 1: house and you didn't have any ice cream there, I
Speaker 1: would beat the crap at it. I mean, this guy
Speaker 1: says he's gone several months. All I know is that
Speaker 1: every once in a while he comes to me kind
Speaker 1: of sheepishly, he says, two points less. Night. We were
Speaker 1: a very very self disclosing backstage about our ice cream.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, what's the worst sound in the world.
Speaker 1: That spoon scrape in the bottom. I didn't even at
Speaker 1: the height of my ice cream addiction. I'd be sitting
Speaker 1: I was divorced, I'm living by myself, I'm miserable, and
Speaker 1: what's better medicine than a pint of ice cream? And
Speaker 1: I'd be sitting there watching CNN, and I'd be like,
Speaker 1: I know, nine o'clock, it's almost ten o'clock. I mean, also,
Speaker 1: I hear that scrape in said, I'd be like that,
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, I didn't eat that whole thing myself.
Speaker 1: That's not possible. What's the longest you ever went without
Speaker 1: ice cream? A couple of weeks? Maybe one week? Speaking
Speaker 1: of speaking of getting screwed, And I really probably should
Speaker 1: come up with a question that's not unkind of Republicans
Speaker 1: applauding the house of your Republican if you're a Republicans,
Speaker 1: applaud if you're Republican. We have four Republicans in this
Speaker 1: com I love this town, I love this time. There's
Speaker 1: four Republicans here. What do we do if the Democrats
Speaker 1: don't take control? What are we gonna do? You know,
Speaker 1: I have a new life philosophy. Lower your expectations, but
Speaker 1: assume the best it's a fine line, and I'm assuming
Speaker 1: the best. I think we've already lowered our expectations. M
Speaker 1: hm as no, there's they can possibly go. Okay, how
Speaker 1: do you learn to stick to your lips out? Like?
Speaker 1: I mean? Do you do exercises? It's funny you say that.
Speaker 1: They came to me and they said do I was
Speaker 1: gonna do a movie and they said, do you want
Speaker 1: to play Trump? Lauren called me, Laurence, my dear friends,
Speaker 1: you might play Trump. I said, are you? Why do
Speaker 1: you freaking mind? I don't want to play Trump? I said,
Speaker 1: who the hell wants to do that? I was gonna
Speaker 1: go do a movie. Then the movie fell apart, and
Speaker 1: I called up. When I go, all right, I'll come
Speaker 1: to Trump. He's like, and literally the joke is he goes,
Speaker 1: it's three shows. We're to do three shows before the election.
Speaker 1: And then he's gone, it's gonna be fine, it's good,
Speaker 1: big Red. So I'm like, all right, what the hell?
Speaker 1: I do it for three shows? And then they and
Speaker 1: then um and I said to myself for the cold opening,
Speaker 1: it's fast, it's brassy, we're firing the canon. It's in
Speaker 1: front of a live audience. Even though we're on TV.
Speaker 1: It's it's like, I want to make this, in one sense,
Speaker 1: as two dimensional as the man himself is. And and
Speaker 1: so I said to myself, you have to raise your
Speaker 1: left eyebrow like this, and then sometimes try to stick
Speaker 1: your mouth at as far as you can, like trying
Speaker 1: to suck the windshield out of a car, and just
Speaker 1: make it completely stupid. I mean to make it silly
Speaker 1: and stupid, because it's not you know, if we did
Speaker 1: the really finely etched one, that's a David Fincher movie.
Speaker 1: So we're not gonna be doing that. Um. Who do
Speaker 1: you think of the Democrat that can beat Donald Trump? Bernie?
Speaker 1: It is he drives a loyal you're tuning your burn, Bernie,
Speaker 1: Well you guys or something else? Now? I love this question.
Speaker 1: How do you feel Ben and Jerry's has shaped the
Speaker 1: culture of Vermont? You know, I think before Ben and Jerry's,
Speaker 1: Vermont was pretty much known from maple syrup. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: I think after Ben and Jerry's, I think they're started
Speaker 1: to be all these other specialty food companies, great cheese companies.
Speaker 1: The name Vermont came to stand for really high quality
Speaker 1: specialty food products. I think Vermont is UH is known
Speaker 1: as entrepreneurial partly as a result of Ben and Jerry's
Speaker 1: I think because of many things, including Bernie Sanders Romana
Speaker 1: seen as progressive and and one of the remarkable things
Speaker 1: about Ben and Jerry's UH is that even after it
Speaker 1: was sold to this giant multinational, and even after Ben
Speaker 1: and I have nothing to do with the company, the
Speaker 1: company continues to be incredibly outspoken about really serious issues
Speaker 1: like it's publicly supported Black Lives Matter, it's publicly supported
Speaker 1: gay marriage. UH, it's publicly supported Occupy Wall Street, which
Speaker 1: is essentially an anti corporate thing. And what's so wonderful
Speaker 1: about it is Ben and I have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with that. It's it's the company itself and the value.
Speaker 1: You know, it's about the people. You can say all
Speaker 1: you want about agreements and whatever. It's about the people
Speaker 1: involved and and the people at the company are incredible. UM.
Speaker 1: That's great. Um. The last question I have in a
Speaker 1: comment is that your wife is a like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and did that play an important role in your success?
Speaker 1: I just had this image of like you in bed
Speaker 1: with your wife, you're in the kitchen table, like then
Speaker 1: you call Jerry him you're sorry. I called Ben this
Speaker 1: morning just to say hello, and then he called me
Speaker 1: this afternoon to ask what are you wearing tonight? And
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I'm gonna be wearing a button
Speaker 1: down shirt and uh, some jeans, and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: I was going to wear a jacket and I said, no,
Speaker 1: we can just be ourselves, I mean, you know. And
Speaker 1: then I proceeded to get dressed up in my button
Speaker 1: down shirt in my jeans, and my my dear wife said,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna go like that. So I said, okay,
Speaker 1: you want the jacket and she said, yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: lot better. So I had to call Jerry up and say, no, Well,
Speaker 1: let me just say that, you know, I think it's
Speaker 1: amazing to sit with the two of you, who a
Speaker 1: are synonymous with a with a product that people really
Speaker 1: enjoy and love. I mean, who doesn't love ice cream,
Speaker 1: and be your incredible friendship, I mean learning about you
Speaker 1: in some more detail about what a great friendship you've had,
Speaker 1: but also what great citizens the two of you are
Speaker 1: and what you've done with this company. Crowd credible serf
Speaker 1: Ben and Jerry Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. They invented
Speaker 1: cookie dough ice cream, heath bar crunch, and many many more.
Speaker 1: But one flavor they didn't invent is s'mores. That one
Speaker 1: comes to us from the fevered imagination of a man
Speaker 1: who might sound familiar to Here's the Thing listeners, our
Speaker 1: engineer Zach McNeice and his mother Sandra. They submitted the
Speaker 1: idea of s'more's ice cream to Ben and Jerry's. Now
Speaker 1: every year hundreds of coupons for free pints arrive in
Speaker 1: the mail from Vermont. Nobody asks, they just come. Ben
Speaker 1: and Jerry are men of their word in commerce, as
Speaker 1: in friendship. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing as a
Speaker 1: production of w n y C Studios technical production by
Speaker 1: Zach Smore's McNeese. Thanks this week to Vermont Public Radio.