Since the company's inception in 1978, Ben & Jerry's has become one of the most beloved ice cream brands the world over, forever changing the way customers enjoyed their supply of ice cream in the five decades that followed.
"We met in seventh grade gym class," the 74-year-old Cohen remembers of his initial introduction to company, Jerry Greenfield. "We were the two slowest, fattest kids in the class running around the track. Coach would say, 'If you can't run the mile in under seven minutes, you're going to have to run it until you do.' And we'd yell back, 'Coach, if we can't run it under seven minutes the first time, we're not going to run it in under seven minutes the second time.'"
"I dropped out of college and eventually started really getting into pottery and tried to become a potter. But nobody would buy my pottery," Cohen says with a laugh. "Jerry went through four years [of college] pre-med and couldn't get into med school. And so we found ourselves two failures."
Using a five-dollar course from Penn State University on the process behind making ice cream, Cohen and Greenfield wound up successfully kickstarting an ice cream shop in a converted gas station. As challenging as many of the obstacles in their way were, Ben & Jerry's quickly became a local hotspot for rich and creamy ice cream combinations, thanks in large part to its key industry characteristic: entire chunks of food mixed into the product.
Interestingly, Cohen cites the idea to use these novel ingredients based both on his own childhood love for textures like mashed-up cookies and candies in his ice cream as well as a pre-existing medical condition that resulted in a weak sense of smell and taste.
Fortunately, millions of would-be customers felt the same way as Ben, triggering Ben & Jerry's rapid climb to the forefront of grocery store's freezer aisles.
"From the very beginning, when we were opening up the homemade ice cream shop, Jerry and I said, 'We want to run this business the way that regular people on the street would like to see businesses run.' And I think for regular people on the street, they buy products from corporation in spite of the values of the corporations."
Through a combination of these two traits, Ben & Jerry's became one of the trendiest ice cream brands in the larger food industry, leading to nationwide interest from fans with an avid sweet tooth.
When Häagen-Dazs' parent company Pillsbury threatened to pull their product from any grocery suppliers' stores that stocked Ben & Jerry's, Cohen and Greenfield responded in grand fashion: namely, by spreading awareness of their rival's efforts through the "What's the Doughboy Afraid Of?" campaign.
Through such informative acts as flying aerial banners around sports stadiums, press conferences and satirical posters, Ben & Jerry's managed to fight on for another day, with Pillsbury eventually choosing to walk back their threats to grocery distributors.
"We had a flavor called Mocha Walnut that I thought was great," Cohen says of one favorite bygone flavor. "You know, it wasn't too sweet... it had some subtlety to it. But we ended up getting complaint letters on it. Half the people said that the mocha had too much chocolate; the other half said that it had too much coffee."
While Ben & Jerry's continues to enjoy unrivaled popularity among modern consumers, the company nevertheless is engaged in a fair number of logistical challenges. This includes their repeated clashes with brand owner Unilever, who acquired Ben & Jerry's in 2000.
Recounting Ben & Jerry's strained relationship with their parent company, Cohen points to various legal battles each company has been involved in with one another. Wearied by the frustration of being owned by a company they felt failed to represent the same values as the Ben & Jerry's brand, co-founder Jerry Greenfield chose to step away, leaving Cohen to lead the Free Ben & Jerry's campaign on his own.
True to his word, and just as he'd managed to do in his crusade against Pillsbury in the 1980s, Cohen is getting the word about Ben & Jerry's desire to break off from Unilever, allowing them to once again speak on activist issues without pushback from a corporate owner.
It's a hard road to venture down, as well as one made all the more difficult without his longtime partner Jerry by his side.
"My hope for Ben & Jerry's is that the Magnum Corporate will see the light and that they'll be willing to see it to this group of investors who believe in the social mission of the company, and that the company will thrive, the social mission will thrive [and] the company will continue to grow."
"I think that's become a very significant part of the brand," Cohen says of Ben & Jerry's activism and outreach efforts. "Which is really interesting. That wasn't the idea. We weren't trying to do that. But I think a significant percentage of Ben & Jerry's customers that are buying the product, it's even better because of the values and the social activism of company."
"I think just about the proudest moment of my business career was when Ben & Jerry's came out with this statement after the killing of George Floyd that, 'We must dismantle white supremacy,' and I had nothing do with it, Jerry had nothing to do with it and it was just beautiful to see that the company itself had embraced those values and came out with that, the most powerful statement," the Ben & Jerry's co-founder went on to say.
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