Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Two thousand eighteen marks the 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 gym 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 night. Please help me welcome,
Speaker 1: then 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: your story and seeing your lives before you became these
Speaker 1: huge successes. You've been in each other's lives for a
Speaker 1: long long time. You know, both of you grew up
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn and then you met in Merrick Long Island,
Speaker 1: where you met in school. Why have you stayed so
Speaker 1: close to him? And then you go, I've just never
Speaker 1: run into a better friend to spend my life with. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, he's kind as smart, he's funny. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: he has a real he has very strange eating habits
Speaker 1: and well, you know, the earliest memories actually I have
Speaker 1: of his eating habits as he was once attempting to
Speaker 1: survive on these one calorie candies that his mom, I
Speaker 1: guess packed for him in his little sandwich bag for
Speaker 1: school lunch. And uh, and we were in gym class
Speaker 1: together and he keeled over. He fainted and uh, you
Speaker 1: know it's some kind of strange liquid came out of
Speaker 1: some facial orifice and the coach covered it up with
Speaker 1: the gym mats so that he could show it to
Speaker 1: the nurse when the nurse came by. In the movie
Speaker 1: version of Your Life, I'm gonna have that kid run
Speaker 1: 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 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 with the worse 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. That I love so. Uh. We we
Speaker 1: met first of all because we were both fat kids
Speaker 1: in junior high school and you know, uh we were
Speaker 1: not exactly in the main stream of social activities. We
Speaker 1: were both kind of nerdy kids, and uh so we
Speaker 1: we hung out together a lot, and we remained nerdy kids,
Speaker 1: so I think that was that was and you know,
Speaker 1: plus we we always did like to eat together. I
Speaker 1: mean we would have food together and uh Ben, Ben
Speaker 1: was the first person who talked to me about taught
Speaker 1: me about uh wet crunch and dry crunch. Ben's really
Speaker 1: into textures in foods. I used to talk a lot
Speaker 1: about eating through the pain. So food was a big
Speaker 1: glue in your relationship, very much, right. And when you
Speaker 1: say what's in the ice cream? Is his hemisphere and
Speaker 1: what's yours? Uh, well, I used to make it. But
Speaker 1: you know what, what's one of the interesting things? You know?
Speaker 1: So you think of Ben and Jerry as you think
Speaker 1: of all these incredible flavors, and so people assume that
Speaker 1: Ben made some of the flavors and Jerry made some
Speaker 1: of the flavors. Jerry, what were your flavors? And it's
Speaker 1: kind of a long pause at that point we had
Speaker 1: for a while. But so you're the business end. No, No,
Speaker 1: neither one of us. No, So you know they were
Speaker 1: all a really good joint. What are you saying you? Uh,
Speaker 1: it's legal here, you know, yeah, well do you think
Speaker 1: we're recording up here? Ben came up with the flavors
Speaker 1: I would make the ice cream. We started with this
Speaker 1: little shop right here in Burlington. Uh. And and for
Speaker 1: those people who remember forty years ago, about two weeks
Speaker 1: after we opened up, we closed the store because we
Speaker 1: couldn't figure out if we were making any money to
Speaker 1: stay in business. And we put up a little sign
Speaker 1: on the door that said closed. And uh. We had
Speaker 1: an accountant who walked in the door and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I can help you. And so I saved that first shop. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but what I want to go back and forth
Speaker 1: that because in your lives there's a lot of Uh,
Speaker 1: you're going to go to college, to medical school. That's
Speaker 1: conceptually right, yea, I'll take it. Um. And you wanted
Speaker 1: to become a you were into pottery, pottery, and then
Speaker 1: you end up teaching pottery. Where again, was it those
Speaker 1: who can't do you know, well that you can't make
Speaker 1: a lot of money selling ice cream. But but but
Speaker 1: you you were you were where did you end up teaching?
Speaker 1: That was in the in the Adondos in a 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 decided that we were going to make ice cream together,
Speaker 1: we were not in the same place and you and
Speaker 1: 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 but I never made any but whatever.
Speaker 1: We also, I think we're clear on that it should
Speaker 1: have been Ben. Ben was the guy who stopped doing
Speaker 1: his homework. What in junior high school? I mean, I
Speaker 1: was the guy I finished all my homework. I should
Speaker 1: have been making the ice cream. But I only mentioned
Speaker 1: that five year gap because it's back in the time
Speaker 1: of there art no cell phones and there is no internet.
Speaker 1: So maintaining that friendship, I mean, your friendship is integral
Speaker 1: to this. Who we wrote letters, Well, we had a
Speaker 1: chain letter that we wrote to a group of friends,
Speaker 1: and you know, each person would America enter the their
Speaker 1: comments and then send the letter around to the next person.
Speaker 1: And you know, it just kindt on circulating like that.
Speaker 1: So you stayed in touch all that time, so we
Speaker 1: didn't we didn't lose touch. And what was the what
Speaker 1: facilitated you getting back here and opening that first place
Speaker 1: in Burlington in the former gas station that you opened up? Him? Well,
Speaker 1: I failed at being a potter. H No, nobody would
Speaker 1: buy my pottery. And he failed at being a doctor.
Speaker 1: He couldn't get into medical school. So we figured we're
Speaker 1: not getting anywhere in the world, and um, maybe we
Speaker 1: should start our own business. Did you know what kind
Speaker 1: of business were you? Right? I mean, that's interesting. You
Speaker 1: didn't decide to go into like, you know, the camping
Speaker 1: gear business, right, it had to be food. And uh,
Speaker 1: we were originally going to open a restaurant. We had
Speaker 1: one friend who knew something about business. He said, whatever
Speaker 1: you do, don't open a full service restaurant. If it's
Speaker 1: got to be food, open a very limited menu kind
Speaker 1: of place. And we wanted to live in a rural
Speaker 1: college town. So the idea was to take a food
Speaker 1: trend that was just starting off in the big cities,
Speaker 1: take it to a rural college town, and uh, the
Speaker 1: food trends that were happening was bagels or I scream,
Speaker 1: and uh, we thought we would do bagels and you
Speaker 1: couldn't make bagels either. Could That's kind of like sculpting,
Speaker 1: isn't it. That's kind of like pottery. You gotta shape it,
Speaker 1: your throw into a kiln, right right, right. It's a
Speaker 1: little more forgiving than pottery. But you fle up the
Speaker 1: pottery and the bagels. Apparently. I was actually a baker's
Speaker 1: helper once and I got fired, but and you was
Speaker 1: signed on to that. You like the idea of a
Speaker 1: food business. Yeah, because we didn't know anything about anything.
Speaker 1: We knew we liked to eat, and uh, I mean
Speaker 1: you know when you say a food business, Uh, we
Speaker 1: weren't really thinking about a business for us. It was
Speaker 1: kind of a venture open up a shop, and we
Speaker 1: thought we would do that for a couple of years
Speaker 1: and then we thought we would try something else. You know.
Speaker 1: We we talked about becoming cross country truck drivers together
Speaker 1: after that. So you know, it's not like God that
Speaker 1: you you you opened the first store in Burlington when
Speaker 1: seven and and what was ice cream in America? Then? Well,
Speaker 1: ice cream in Burlington was you had the UVM Dairy
Speaker 1: Bar and you had h. Seward's ice cream at the
Speaker 1: bus station in downtown Burlington, and that was really the
Speaker 1: only Wasn't that enough? Well the bus station was a
Speaker 1: pretty seedy place at the time. Uh no, uh clear.
Speaker 1: And there was Uptons the pinball parlor. Oh, Upton's right right.
Speaker 1: Ice Cream also not for you to go back when
Speaker 1: you were a child, what was ice cream and your
Speaker 1: child were you? Were you an ice cream person? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we always had ice cream in our freezer and we
Speaker 1: would get half gallons from the supermarket and uh it
Speaker 1: was just kind of a staple in our house. Kind briars.
Speaker 1: Same for you bribes. Well, when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: because you talk about the beginning of the era of
Speaker 1: the super premium ice cream people spending more money for
Speaker 1: better quality ice cream. But when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: you went to Howard Johnson's on the highway in massive
Speaker 1: people where I was from, and they scooped ice cream,
Speaker 1: which was pretty good ice cream. There was carvel. Uh.
Speaker 1: You bought briars by the container and took briars home
Speaker 1: from the supermarket, or you had the vendors and trucks
Speaker 1: like Mr Softy and Good Humor was the big one
Speaker 1: on when I could be at Truck's, you know, patrolling
Speaker 1: the neighborhood when I was a kid. And then we
Speaker 1: get into the era of you know, frozen glagi and
Speaker 1: hogging does and so forth. When you started making ice cream,
Speaker 1: did you say to yourself, this is who we are.
Speaker 1: We make We just wanted to make the best ice
Speaker 1: cream we possibly could. And our model was uh Steve's
Speaker 1: ice Cream in uh Somerville, mass What made a good
Speaker 1: ice He he was one of the first homemade ice
Speaker 1: cream parlors on the East coast. He was making ice
Speaker 1: cream in a five gallon rock salt and ice freezer
Speaker 1: in the window, and uh, you know, people were lined
Speaker 1: up around the block. There was a there was a
Speaker 1: player piano on the line that you could, you know,
Speaker 1: put a quarter in and make the player piano play
Speaker 1: and and it was great ice cream. He was doing Nixons, 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 for runner.
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 created. 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: cantalope we we made. I mean, it was great, you
Speaker 1: don't I mean the reason why you don't see it
Speaker 1: on the menu anymore is, in order to make cantalope
Speaker 1: 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,
Speaker 1: uh you know, the stuff that wasn't rotten, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, pushing up the overripe. Absolutely avoided the stuff
Speaker 1: that was rotten. I did not use and you know,
Speaker 1: and it was great. I mean, it wasn't it tasted
Speaker 1: just like a candaloup, except it was creamy and frozen
Speaker 1: and uh. But the problem is you can't do it
Speaker 1: in large quantities because not everybody would be there like Jerry,
Speaker 1: you know, scooping it out. You know, it's very much
Speaker 1: a hand operation. So you come up with the flavors,
Speaker 1: you're like Jerry cut and scoop those five. Well, not
Speaker 1: that it was more like that way with the heath bars. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know at the beginning, we were buying heath bars
Speaker 1: that were individually wrapped, and uh, Jerry would line them
Speaker 1: unwrapped and and line them up on a cutting board
Speaker 1: and we had this big two handled knife, uh and
Speaker 1: he would cut him what how many ways, which which
Speaker 1: into thirds and then the other way. Well it was
Speaker 1: just thirds. Uh. So we were doing this and uh
Speaker 1: it was our most popular flavor, and you know he
Speaker 1: was doing it a lot. Uh. And then you know,
Speaker 1: we hired our first guy who knew something about business,
Speaker 1: and who was Checo Lagger by the way. He uh
Speaker 1: he uh was his name Chico Lagger Logger like beer logger,
Speaker 1: like beer. He his name is Cheeko Logger, Chico Lagger,
Speaker 1: the fakest name I've ever heard in my life. He
Speaker 1: owned the bar. Uh his real name like Andy Harowitz
Speaker 1: and if it wants to have one guy with a
Speaker 1: different man, Chico Chico Lager and uh what did he?
Speaker 1: He called up the heath bar company and said, you know,
Speaker 1: we're 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 him. 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 the cost of money and
Speaker 1: the interest in all this kind of crap and ended
Speaker 1: up ordering like a ton of heath bars. And he's
Speaker 1: 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 palettes 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 we 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 heat box. So so
Speaker 1: for months afything, Jerry's and the freeze are going step back, Chico,
Speaker 1: I'll tell them already, tell them already, sweep them mop,
Speaker 1: let's go. So you open up in Burlington and it's
Speaker 1: seventy eight, 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 where you
Speaker 1: started fizzing? Why it turned into the winter from the summer,
Speaker 1: and that explains why there weren't really many other ice
Speaker 1: cream barlors here in at the time. Yeah, what did
Speaker 1: your competitors do during the longer? Do they close? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, sew Sewards was selling a lot of the
Speaker 1: sandwiches and hot door. You didn't want to do that, no,
Speaker 1: because that was the sign of an ice cream shop
Speaker 1: that was going out of business. They started to sell
Speaker 1: all this other crap. What do you do? We started
Speaker 1: to sell all the crap we were saying discount on
Speaker 1: broken heath balls. We were selling soups and crepes. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know, Jerry was in charge of the ice cream.
Speaker 1: I was in charge of all the other crap, and
Speaker 1: we don't sell any of that. An you just were
Speaker 1: deciding what that would be. You with a decider of
Speaker 1: that as well, pretty much, I think, I mean we
Speaker 1: discussed it together, but we came up with a great
Speaker 1: ice cream marketing promotion in the winter. It was called
Speaker 1: POP said Biswi, which stood for Penny Off per Celsius
Speaker 1: degree below zero Winter Extravaganza. They all remember it. Everybody
Speaker 1: remembers that promotion at Ben and Jerry's. The older 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: said Biswie, penny off pricelsis. She had a screwy way
Speaker 1: of selling ice cream. We have TV commercial that that
Speaker 1: had pop said Buswi in it. It put up each
Speaker 1: letter one at a time. P O PC D. Did
Speaker 1: you win some marketing a boy institution when you would
Speaker 1: literally discount per the weather and that's what saved you.
Speaker 1: You think no, no, but but one of the great
Speaker 1: things that grew out of that. So that was our
Speaker 1: first winter. We were really struggling, uh, and Ben and
Speaker 1: I said to each other, boy, if we're still in
Speaker 1: business after a year, we'll celebrate by giving out free
Speaker 1: ice cream to everybody. Because we didn't think we were
Speaker 1: going to stay in business and there was really not
Speaker 1: much there. But we wore in busines us after a year,
Speaker 1: and that was our first free cone Day, which still
Speaker 1: takes place every year. It's around the first Tuesday in April.
Speaker 1: You can get in line as many times as you
Speaker 1: want at any Ben and Jerry's shop. And when do
Speaker 1: we really thinks start, When do you look at each
Speaker 1: other and say we gotta take this to another level?
Speaker 1: We things started getting worse, uh, and so we said,
Speaker 1: we're never gonna make it with an ice cream shop.
Speaker 1: We need to find another way to bring in more money.
Speaker 1: And so we started selling ice cream to some local
Speaker 1: restaurants that had asked for it. Ben became our roots salesman.
Speaker 1: He would go around selling ice cream and then he
Speaker 1: was passing by all these mom and pop stores that
Speaker 1: he was going by delivering ice cream to restaurants, and
Speaker 1: he thought we should package our ice cream into pine
Speaker 1: containers and he could sell it in there, and that
Speaker 1: is what started the business going forward. Yeah, there were stores.
Speaker 1: H And what year did that start to take off?
Speaker 1: I don't know. We we don't remember this, Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just curious about when do you do? You mean
Speaker 1: right now? It's a I mean, let's not kill ourselves.
Speaker 1: It's a huge company. Where did you go public? We
Speaker 1: went public first just within the state of Vermont. Uh.
Speaker 1: The idea was to make the community the shareholders of
Speaker 1: the business. Uh. We had, you know, a bunch of
Speaker 1: venture capitalists that were approaching us saying they wanted to
Speaker 1: invest in the business, and we said, no, we don't
Speaker 1: want to do it that way. We want to use
Speaker 1: this need for cash as an opportunity to make the
Speaker 1: community the owners of the business. Worked out great. We
Speaker 1: sold out the offering. It was the first ever in
Speaker 1: state public stock offering, and you know a lot of
Speaker 1: people bought stock and uh, happily the aock went up.
Speaker 1: A lot of people made a bunch of money. People's
Speaker 1: kids went to college on Benajera's stock. What was unique
Speaker 1: 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 and then you
Speaker 1: sell the company to Unilever in two thousand. The company
Speaker 1: got sold. The company got you tried to keep independent.
Speaker 1: You did, you did explain to people how that works?
Speaker 1: Mean you have a board and uh, I mean I
Speaker 1: just would assume a company named Ben and Jerry, and
Speaker 1: Ben and Jerry are alive and I'm assuming that they're involved,
Speaker 1: they're calling the shots. How does a company get sold
Speaker 1: by your board if you don't want it to get
Speaker 1: sold to you a laver? How did that work out?
Speaker 1: I mean, in the end you said that we have
Speaker 1: when things with you to Lever at five that worked
Speaker 1: out well. But how did it get sold? Uh? There
Speaker 1: was a CEO who was running the Cuppenning at the
Speaker 1: time who um saw a way for him to make
Speaker 1: a bunch of money by selling the company, and uh,
Speaker 1: you Lever was courting him. They were courting each other,
Speaker 1: I think, and so you know, Lever ended up offering
Speaker 1: so much money for the stock, so much above with
Speaker 1: the price that it was trading at that the board
Speaker 1: had no choice legally but to recommend uh sale. Do
Speaker 1: they have other ice cream popsicle briars Klondike, uh Magnum
Speaker 1: magnum tlenty tlenty go. They're a very big ice cream
Speaker 1: and they've got every shelf of the freezer case. If
Speaker 1: you like ice cream, you've probably already heard this one.
Speaker 1: But there's no better ice cream conversation in our archives
Speaker 1: than with Barbara streisand I would have my kind of
Speaker 1: coffee ice cream briers and sit in my bed and dream,
Speaker 1: go to the movies sometimes on a Saturday afternoon. The
Speaker 1: Lowise Kings. We had the greatest ice cream, and we also, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're, you're like me. Somebody will say, what was
Speaker 1: the best part of the summer. I'd say, what this
Speaker 1: is this restaurant that has the best coffee ice cream
Speaker 1: with chocolate covered hazels. The rest of that interview and
Speaker 1: many more that here's the thing dot org when we
Speaker 1: come back. The skinny on Ben and Jerry's rolls at
Speaker 1: the company after it was brought out by Unilever and
Speaker 1: the real story behind Cherry Garcia. I'm Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you were listening to Here's the Thing now more of
Speaker 1: my interview with the tycoons of Truffle Kerfuffle, Ben Cohen
Speaker 1: and Jerry Greenfield. The company they founded was acquired by
Speaker 1: Dutch conglomerate Unilever in two thousand. You're not involved, they
Speaker 1: were in the company. You're you're not on the board.
Speaker 1: What's that like for you that your name is on it? Like,
Speaker 1: like I wonder is You're still walking down the street
Speaker 1: and people saying I got a flavor for you and
Speaker 1: they still think you're the pipeline, You're the conduit. For
Speaker 1: the record, we love it when people come up and
Speaker 1: say I've got a flavor for you that we want
Speaker 1: that k I was once at an event and these
Speaker 1: these two women came up to me and they said,
Speaker 1: you know how you know, girlfriends are always bringing over
Speaker 1: a pint of Ben and Jerry's to their friend who
Speaker 1: just broke 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: I keep on telling the company this is a winner.
Speaker 1: You should come out with this, I mean coffee ice
Speaker 1: cream with a butterscotch ripple. I mean, this is an
Speaker 1: incredible flavor. They say, oh, we got a flavor department.
Speaker 1: Go back then, go go, go, go do whatever it
Speaker 1: is you do. That's what they say. What can I say?
Speaker 1: It's one thing to enter a business because I have
Speaker 1: no business sense at all. I mean, I have zero
Speaker 1: business sense. You know, when people talk about ice cream,
Speaker 1: it's you know, a handful of flavors of which you're
Speaker 1: at the top of the pile, and I'm I want
Speaker 1: to congratulate you, and it's just amazing to have done that,
Speaker 1: you know, to have built a business in the mad successful.
Speaker 1: You know, we had a saying, Jerry, it's easy to
Speaker 1: make it lousy, it's hard to make it right. It's
Speaker 1: really hard to shove that chocolate chip cookie dough into
Speaker 1: the pints of ice cream so that each pint gets
Speaker 1: the right amount of chocolate chip cookie dough. You know,
Speaker 1: we used to slice open pint containers four ways into
Speaker 1: four sections 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: goes It doesn't really go through the machinery that easily.
Speaker 1: You know, there's nothing easier to make than a Homo
Speaker 1: genius liquid or semi liquid like mayonnaise. How many facilities
Speaker 1: do you have around the country to make ice cream,
Speaker 1: like plants that manufactured the ice cream. Well, there's two
Speaker 1: here in Vermont, there's one in Nevada. Do you think
Speaker 1: that's it. That's pretty much refrigerator, truck and truck it
Speaker 1: all around the country. Yeah, in the country. And then
Speaker 1: there's another plant in the Netherlands. Yeah. Yeah. And that's
Speaker 1: about the whole thing, right, Ain't nothing else? Uh, we're
Speaker 1: not really part. You're supposed to know, Jerry, he makes
Speaker 1: the flavors. You count the money, Jerry, what's going on? Well,
Speaker 1: I think this just goes to show that Ben and
Speaker 1: I are not really on top of things. I mean, now,
Speaker 1: when you license, I'm assuming there's a licensing involved. What's
Speaker 1: the first signature flavor you come up with. The first
Speaker 1: one unusual when we came up with was Oreo Mint.
Speaker 1: Oreo Mint. You got a kind of deal with Oreo,
Speaker 1: Well we didn't. And then we got a letter from
Speaker 1: uh Nibisco, which owns Oreo, and that was a really
Speaker 1: nice stationary then it was, And then they explained that
Speaker 1: Oreo is their most valuable trademark, and they will go
Speaker 1: to the ends of the earth to defend their trademark.
Speaker 1: And under no circumstances could we call our ice cream
Speaker 1: Oreo mint. However, we could call it mint with Oreos.
Speaker 1: So we said okay, and we changed the packaging and
Speaker 1: they were fine, and then you know about I don't know,
Speaker 1: five or eight years later, we got another letter from
Speaker 1: the legal department at Nibisco, which began by saying Oreo
Speaker 1: is their most valuable trademark, they will go to the
Speaker 1: ends of the earth to defend it, and or no
Speaker 1: circumstances could we pluralize their trademark. You may not call
Speaker 1: your ice cream mint with Oreos, you may call it
Speaker 1: mint with Oreo cookies. So you know, we changed the
Speaker 1: packaging again and didn't hear from them until I started
Speaker 1: doing this online demonstration demonstrating the size of the Pentagon
Speaker 1: budget in relationship to the education budget and the healthcare
Speaker 1: budget and the alternative energy budget, et cetera, using stacks
Speaker 1: of Oreo cookies. Each Oreo cookie would equal ten billion dollars.
Speaker 1: So I'd come out with this, you know, huge stack
Speaker 1: representing the Pentagon, and then you had this least little
Speaker 1: little stacks. And we got another letter from the Label
Speaker 1: Compartment of Oreos UH saying, far be it from us
Speaker 1: to abridge your First Amendment rights of free speech. But
Speaker 1: we're getting a lot of complaints from our shareholders that
Speaker 1: the Nibisco company agrees with the point you're trying to
Speaker 1: make about the excessive Pentagon budget. Could you please refrain
Speaker 1: from doing that. You know, I felt that wasn't right,
Speaker 1: But it's their cookie company, right, it is their cookie company.
Speaker 1: But you see these advertisements where they're talking about some
Speaker 1: competitor and they're calling the competitor by brand name, and
Speaker 1: so I talked to a trademark lawyer and uh, I said,
Speaker 1: what's the story here, and they said, you can use
Speaker 1: a competitor's name as long as there's no other product
Speaker 1: that will do to make the point you're trying to make.
Speaker 1: So I wrote him a letter back saying, look, I've
Speaker 1: researched every other chocolate sandwich cookie and no other chocolate
Speaker 1: sandwich cookie has Oreos high quality standards, and that in
Speaker 1: other chocolate sandwich cookies the amount of white stuff in
Speaker 1: the middle tends to vary from cookie to cookie. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure they can understand how in my demonstration each
Speaker 1: cookie equaling ten billion dollars, it was off by just
Speaker 1: a little and I never heard from them again. You
Speaker 1: can't take on the Pentagon using Hi cookie. That's that's
Speaker 1: not gonna work. So did you learn a profound lesson
Speaker 1: from your dealings with Nibisco and you went on to
Speaker 1: do other flavor Cherry Garcia? Obviously when you did other
Speaker 1: signature brands like that, did you get into more or
Speaker 1: do you get letters from a dear Mr Cohen, the
Speaker 1: estate of Mr Garcia would like to make it known
Speaker 1: to you in regard arts 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. I don't remember you.
Speaker 1: Was he alive when it happened. He was. Did he
Speaker 1: acknowledge what you did? Well? His lawyer did you know?
Speaker 1: It 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 we we gave him a
Speaker 1: little piece of the and and now his estate occasionally
Speaker 1: argues over who gave us the little piece of the action.
Speaker 1: But you've been politically engaged your entire life, not so much,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's uh, it's more after I
Speaker 1: moved to Vermont. What happened when you moved to Vermont.
Speaker 1: Part of it was having gone to college. I went
Speaker 1: to college during the late sixties and early seventies. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of social movements going on at the time,
Speaker 1: and soon thereafter I came to Vermont, which, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just a wonderfully community oriented state. You can go
Speaker 1: talk to your legislators in Mont Peelier. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's very down home and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: grassroots activism here. And so I've become very supportive of
Speaker 1: the Progressive Party in Vermont. There's a it's a third
Speaker 1: party here in Vermont. Uh. And you know, plus there's
Speaker 1: Bernie and there there is there is nobody like Bernie.
Speaker 1: Ben and I were surrogates for Bernie in in the
Speaker 1: last presidential primary. Uh. And you know, what's among the
Speaker 1: amazing things about Bernie, besides what he's been fighting for
Speaker 1: for his whole political career, is that he is not
Speaker 1: for sale. And you do do not find people in
Speaker 1: the political world with that level of integrity. But what
Speaker 1: about a year junior high in high school, I wanted
Speaker 1: to go uh down South with the Freedom Writers, and
Speaker 1: my parents wouldn't let me so. Again during that same
Speaker 1: period of time, I grew up on Long Island. My
Speaker 1: parents would every once in a while drive into New
Speaker 1: York City and we would drive over the Triboro Bridge
Speaker 1: and you get let off, and on one side of
Speaker 1: the street there's dilapidated housing and people living in poverty,
Speaker 1: and on the other side there's people living in wealth.
Speaker 1: And it didn't seem right to me, and that affected
Speaker 1: me quite a bit. I think it was Desmond Tutu
Speaker 1: who said that, Uh, in situations of injustice, you cannot
Speaker 1: be neutral. If an elephant is standing on the tail
Speaker 1: of a mouse, you can say you're neutral, but the
Speaker 1: mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. When being confronted with injustice,
Speaker 1: you have you know, you have three choices. You can
Speaker 1: either ignore it, you can complain about it, or you
Speaker 1: can do something about it. Did you guys set up
Speaker 1: a charitable foundation for the company or do you guys
Speaker 1: have your own foundation that you funnel money into from
Speaker 1: individually or from the company. What's the mission? What do
Speaker 1: you target? You're mostly income disparity, the arts. What are
Speaker 1: you doing well so for for the Ben and Jerry's foundation, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's social justice and grassroots organizing for that. And and
Speaker 1: the interesting thing about the foundation at the company is
Speaker 1: that the final decisions about where the money goes is
Speaker 1: done by employees who volunteer their time to make those decisions,
Speaker 1: and they are remarkable. They do an incredible job. But
Speaker 1: I think what's important to understand is that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the major effect that ben injuries has and the major
Speaker 1: contribution that ben injuries has to society is not about
Speaker 1: the foundations. It's not about donating money. It's about integrating
Speaker 1: those social concerns into our day to day business activities
Speaker 1: and using the businesses voice. So going back to the
Speaker 1: public sale Invermonts certainly that and and I'm also talking
Speaker 1: about uh speaking out on social and political issues, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna get to campaign finance reform and protest about
Speaker 1: you know, all kinds of things that are worrisome in
Speaker 1: this country that people have been led to believe it's ineffective,
Speaker 1: and it is not ineffective. If you see something wrong
Speaker 1: in this country, you need to scream as loud as
Speaker 1: you possibly ca You've got the protest, you've got to demonstrate,
Speaker 1: you've got to get active. It's the patriotic thing to do.
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 looking at like
Speaker 1: you know, you're on the clock, buddy, campaign finance reform,
Speaker 1: and it's the lynch pen at every problem OFFESSI how
Speaker 1: did you get involved with that issue? I was working
Speaker 1: for a long time on shifting a bunch of priorities
Speaker 1: from the Pentagon to social needs and didn't get anywhere.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of that reason was because of
Speaker 1: so 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 started to get garbled, and I felt like it
Speaker 1: was important to folk is and the the common denominator
Speaker 1: between health care and issues of the environment and energy
Speaker 1: independence and law street banks, the common denominator was money
Speaker 1: in politics. That uh, you know, all these corporations and
Speaker 1: high high wealth individuals are paying Congress not to pass
Speaker 1: laws that protect people, but to pass 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 GOP 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 caause I want to see
Speaker 1: through Trump's tax returns. You know, they announced are going
Speaker 1: to get it through their hands and his tax returns,
Speaker 1: and uh, that would be thrilling, that would be okay, okay, um.
Speaker 1: But uh, we have some I mean, we just have
Speaker 1: some mind blowing questions from the audience. They're really just
Speaker 1: great questions. 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 questions backstage to see which ones they have
Speaker 1: not been asked, you know, fifty billion times before. But
Speaker 1: I love this one, which is what's and you hold
Speaker 1: your answer? You actually you go first, You go first,
Speaker 1: because I know your answer. What's the longest you've ever
Speaker 1: gone without eating ice cream? I have gone months without
Speaker 1: eating ice cream. Really, I would probably say two or
Speaker 1: three months. You've got two or three months. And then
Speaker 1: what happens? And they find you in a pile and
Speaker 1: I'm a feaster famine kind of. I have a freezer
Speaker 1: at home that's got a couple of hundred points in there,
Speaker 1: several gallons. So yeah, because you never know when someone's
Speaker 1: gonna drop by, and you didn't have any ice cream there.
Speaker 1: I 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 very,
Speaker 1: very self disclosing backstage about our ice cream. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, what's the worst sound in the world, that
Speaker 1: spoon scrape in the bottom. I didn't even prep him
Speaker 1: on this. At the height of my ice cream addiction,
Speaker 1: I'd be sitting I was divorced, I'm living by myself.
Speaker 1: I'm miserable, and what's better medicine than a pint of
Speaker 1: ice cream? And I'd be sitting there watching CNN and
Speaker 1: I'll be like, I know, nine o'clock, it's almost ten o'clock.
Speaker 1: I mean, also, I hear that scrape, he said, I
Speaker 1: like that. Wait an neat that whole thing myself. That's
Speaker 1: not possible. What's the longest you ever went without ice cream?
Speaker 1: A couple of weeks, maybe one week speaking of speaking
Speaker 1: of getting screwed, and we really probably should come up
Speaker 1: with a question that's not unkind to Republicans. Applaud in
Speaker 1: this house of your republican, if you applaud, if you're Republican.
Speaker 1: We have four Republicans in this build. I love this town.
Speaker 1: I love this town. There's four Republicancies. What do we
Speaker 1: do if the Democrats don't take control? What are we
Speaker 1: gonna do? You know, I have a new life philosophy.
Speaker 1: Lower your expectations, but assume the best. It's a fun line,
Speaker 1: and I'm assuming the best. I think we've already lowered
Speaker 1: their expectations as no there's they can buzzibly go the Okay,
Speaker 1: how do you learn to stick your lips out like Broke?
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, Lawrence, my dear friends,
Speaker 1: you want to play Trump? I said, are you? Why
Speaker 1: do you mind? I don't want to play Trump? I said,
Speaker 1: who the hell wants to do that? And I was
Speaker 1: gonna go do a movie. Then the movie fell apart,
Speaker 1: and I called up when I go, all right, I'll
Speaker 1: come to Trump. He's like, and literally the jokes. He goes,
Speaker 1: it's three shows. We're to do three shows before the election,
Speaker 1: and then he's gone and it's gonna be fine. It's
Speaker 1: a big red. So I'm like, all right, what the
Speaker 1: hell I do for three shows? And then they and
Speaker 1: then um, and I it to myself for the cold opening.
Speaker 1: It's fast, it's brassy, we're firing the cannon. 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 too dimensional as the man himself is. And so
Speaker 1: I said to myself, you have to raise your left
Speaker 1: eyebrow like this, and then sometimes try to stick your
Speaker 1: mouth at as far as you can, like you're trying
Speaker 1: to suck the windshield out of the 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?
Speaker 1: Bernie is he drives? Are loyal? You're to 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 Hermon? You know? I think before Ben and Jerry's,
Speaker 1: Vermont was pretty much known for 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, Vermont
Speaker 1: has seen as progressive and And one of the remarkable
Speaker 1: things about Ben and Jerry's UH is that even after
Speaker 1: it was sold to this giant multinational, and even after
Speaker 1: Ben and I have nothing to do with the company,
Speaker 1: the company continues to be incredibly outspoken about really serious
Speaker 1: issues like it's publicly supported Black Lives Matter, it's publicly
Speaker 1: supported gay marriage, UH, it's publicly supported Occupy Wall Street,
Speaker 1: which is essentially an anti corporate thing. And what's so
Speaker 1: wonderful about it is Ben, and I have nothing to
Speaker 1: do 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 involved,
Speaker 1: and the people at the company are incredible. Um. That's
Speaker 1: been um. The last question I have then a comment
Speaker 1: is that your wife is like yeah, and then did
Speaker 1: did that play an important role in your success? I
Speaker 1: just had this image of like, you in bed with
Speaker 1: your wife, you're in the kitchen table, like, and you
Speaker 1: call Jerry You're sorry. I called Ben this morning just
Speaker 1: to say hello, and then he called me this afternoon
Speaker 1: to ask what are you wearing tonight? And I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna be wearing a button down shirt
Speaker 1: and uh some jeans and he said, oh, I was
Speaker 1: going to wear a jacket and I said no, we
Speaker 1: can just be ourselves. I mean, you know, And then
Speaker 1: I proceeded to get dressed up in my button down
Speaker 1: 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 jury up and
Speaker 1: say no, well, let me just say that, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's amazing to sit with the two of you,
Speaker 1: who a are synonymous with a with a product that
Speaker 1: people really enjoy and love. I mean, who doesn't love
Speaker 1: ice cream? And be your incredible friendship. I mean learning
Speaker 1: about you with some more detail about what a great
Speaker 1: friendship you've had, but also what great citizens the two
Speaker 1: of you are and what you've done with this Company's
Speaker 1: kind of credible. Not there but Ben and Jerry Ben
Speaker 1: Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. They invented cookie dough, ice cream,
Speaker 1: heath bar crunch, and many many more. But one flavor
Speaker 1: they didn't invent is s'mores. That one comes to us
Speaker 1: from the fevered imagination of a man who might sound
Speaker 1: familiar to here's the thing, listeners, our engineer Zack McNeice
Speaker 1: and his mother, Sandra. They submitted the idea of s'more's
Speaker 1: ice cream to Ben and Jerry's. Now every year hundreds
Speaker 1: of coupons for free pints arrive in the mail from Vermont.
Speaker 1: Nobody asks, they just come. Ben and Jerry are men
Speaker 1: of their word in commerce as in friendship. I'm Alec Baldwin,
Speaker 1: and you were listening to here's the Thing. Technical production
Speaker 1: by Zack s'more's McNeese, thanks to Vermont Public Radio