Net of Ben & Jerry's restaurants

Ben & Jerry's restaurants history

How the restaurant BEN & JERRY'S was created

BEN & JERRY'S is another example of a successful business, created in partnership with friends. Two school friends decided to organize a joint business. In 1978, they opened the first restaurant for the production and sale of ice cream at the newly renovated petrol station. Before that, the founders of the business, Jerry Greenfield and Ben Cohen, graduated from correspondence courses in ice cream production in Pennsylvania.

The knowledge gained came in handy in their business, which soon became very successful. In fact, to create and increase the number of flavors of ice cream, to come up with various fillers and constantly improve your business – it captivates visitors with care and charges a great mood. Moreover, in the restaurants BEN & JERRY's constantly held holidays for children and promotions, which are not only children. Anyone who is not indifferent to ice cream, can find something to your taste in these restaurants. BEN & JERRY's has a huge number of flavors of fillers, the most popular of which are: salted caramel, strawberry cheesecake flavor, coconut and cherry flavors. British cuisine can also join this riot of flavors of ice cream. Come and enjoy extraordinary desserts from BEN & JERRY's all over the world!

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield grew up in Merrick on Long Island. They became friends at school. After graduating from high school, Ben entered several colleges at once, but in the end he was kicked out from everywhere.

Jerry graduated from college but was unable to enroll in any of the medical schools. Friends soon realized that what they were doing would get them nowhere.

Ice cream shop

And then they decided to start their own business. Neither knew how to start a business, but both loved to eat. They were especially partial to ice cream, and therefore the idea to open an ice cream shop suggested itself.

The friends paid $ 5 for a correspondence course in ice cream making at Pennsylvania State University and learned the skills they needed. Putting together their savings of $ 8,000 and taking out a bank loan of $ 4,000, they rented a former gas station in Burlington and opened their first store on May 5, 1978.

With the help of an old-fashioned freezer, they produced the types of ice cream they had always dreamed of - “tender and fluffy,” “cheerful,” “filled,” “with pieces of fruit, nuts, candy and biscuits.” Twelve varieties in total.

Ben and Jerry's success

Soon, a long line of customers stood in front of Ben and Jerry's store. Their ice cream was a real hit.

By 1980, Ben and Jerry were already supplying ice cream to numerous restaurants around Burlington. Ben was delivering goods to customers on an old bus and, passing by many small grocery stores and shops, he thought that they, too, could become points of sale for ice cream.

In 1980, the buddies rented a space in an old reel factory in Burlington and began filling ice cream in small cardboard boxes with their portraits. In 1981, Ben and Jerry hit the cover of Time magazine, which called their ice cream "the best in the world."

This is how the whole of America learned about them. The next year, they were already selling ice cream outside of Vermont. The first store opened in Portland, then the company began trading in the Boston area, delivering ice cream to stores.

As the business expanded, Ben and Jerry needed tighter financial controls. They hired the owner of one of the local nightclubs, Fred "Chico" Lager, who had accounting experience, and made him CEO.

Sales have soared that it has become clear to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield that their small business has surpassed all their wildest dreams.

Social mission

But their unexpected success did not make them very happy. “When Jerry and I realized that we were no longer ice cream makers, but businessmen, our first reaction was: we had to sell the business.”

And then they developed a mission statement in which they derived the corporate philosophy of the company. The statement said that Ben & Jerry's had an industrial, economic and social mission.

With the goal of making people's lives better, they began to produce ice cream such as

Chocolate Fudge Brownie, a chocolate chip cookie made by homeless and unemployed residents of Yonkers;
Wild Maine Blueberry, which was harvested by the Passamakvoddi Indians;
Rainforest Crunch, for which the Amazonian Indians were looking for Brazil nuts.

Sixty percent of the profits from the sale of this variety went to environmental organizations working to preserve the Amazon rainforest.

Faced with a downturn in the premium ice cream market, Cohen and Greenfield turned to professional managers. But in the end, in April 2000, Ben & Jerry's was sold to Unilever for $ 326 million.

Unilever, promising to maintain Ben and Jerry's commitment to traditional values and social issues, offered to sell their ice cream to millions of new customers. This is how Ben & Jerry's brand conquered new heights.