🍦 “Banana Split” — Interview with Ben & Jerry’s Co-Founder Ben Cohen

0:00It developed a very, very loyal, small loyal following. But the interesting thing about it is that people would say, oh, I love this flavor. They couldn't tell you what flavor it was. I got to pause the pod for a sec because this almost sounds like a setup to a joke. The Ben & Jerry's co-founder, the CEO of Greenpeace, an ethnobotanist, come up with a flavor of ice cream inspired by a Woodstock guy who dresses as a clown molding together a bunch of nuts. I like the way you think, Nick. It is. Grab your spoon, loosen your drawstrings, and meet us in the freezer aisle. Because today's guest turned dessert into dissent.

0:40That's right. We're interviewing Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry's. The Ben in Ben & Jerry's. This hippie launched the most successful ice cream brand in history from a dilapidated gas station in Burlington, Vermont. And best of all, he did it all with his best friend from seventh grade. But Ben & Jerry got famous for giving out one ingredient that every brand avoids. Politics. Politics. It's not a Ben & Jerry's flavor unless it's got two scoops of activist double entendre, Jack. I scream, you scream, but nobody screams like this ice cream. In 1984, they went from Main Street to Wall Street with the most unique IPO of all time.

1:17Then in the year 2000, they sold to Unilever for$326 million in the most unique exit of all time. And now they're doing over a billion bucks in half-baked revenue from Burlington to Bushwick to Bangkok, baby. But today, Ben says that the corporate suits are muzzling the brand that still has his name on it. They're drowning his fish food jack. So Ben is trying to buy back Ben & Jerry's right now, and we will ask him all about it. We'll also ask whether a brand getting political is profitable or painful. As in an ice cream high or an ice cream headache. But first, we'll get into the Ben & Jerry's origin story that helped inspire us to launch our business.

1:52Besties, he's the Duke of Full Fat Dairy, the Sultan of Democratic Socialism. And yet he's also the king of the capitalist cone. If Ben and Jerry's made a flavor about Ben Cohen right now, we already know the name, don't we, Jack? Rum Raisin Rebel with a coconut cause. Or maybe, depending on how this interview goes, hostile takeover hot fudge. How does that sound? Besties, Ben Cohen is the co-founder of Ben and Jerry's. And this interview with Ben is absolutely the best one yet. Wow, you guys knocked it out of the park, man. Oh, we're so happy to have you here. Thanks so much, Ben. So Ben, as I shared with you earlier, Nick and I have already done a full 45-minute episode on Ben & Jerry's fish food in our other show, The Best Idea Yet.

2:34We consider that the most viral ice cream flavor of all time. That's why we went deep on it. And Ben, a couple days before I was going to do that recording with Nick, I mentioned to my mom that I was doing an episode all about Ben & Jerry's. And I said, mom, did you know that Ben & Jerry's had an IPO that was only available to Vermont residents. Wild. And she's like, yeah, Jack, of course I know that. I was like, what do you mean? Ben, she told me that she and my dad participated in the Vermonters only IPO of 1984 and the$4 ,000 investment 6X'd over the years. And when they sold that stock, it became the down payment on my house in Brattleboro that I grew up in.

3:14That's right. And my parents had never told me that until I was We're about to do a full podcast episode on Ben and Jerry's. We've got to bring that stock certificate. Maybe my first question, Ben, why did you and Jerry decide to limit the IPO to just Vermonters? Nick and I cover business and finance all the time. We've never heard of an IPO like that. We've never heard of a regional IPO. Well, we were trying to make the community the owners of our business. you know we were at the stage in a business's life when it needs a cash infusion to grow to the next level and we felt like the way we want to do it is to sell shares to our neighbors but the problem was that there was a maximum on a private placement offering and of 30 investors and they had to be so-called qualified they had to have a lot of money and we wanted to sell it to regular old people that didn't have much money.

4:11And I went in, you know, it is Vermont. So I drove to Montpelier and went into the office of the commissioner of banking and insurance, uh, who is this great guy. And I told him what we were trying to do. And he said, well, then it's never been done before, but there is this fine print in, in the law. And he showed me the book. He brought it out that would allow you to you and Jerry to register as stockbrokers and sell shares and Ben and Jerry's to Vermonters. And as long as you don't go over state lines, then the SEC doesn't get involved and you can do it. And, you know, the accountants and the lawyers were all telling us you're crazy.

5:01Don't do it. It's never going to work. And we said, screw it. If we can't do it this way, then we don't really want to grow the business. How did the lawyers feel about giving out cookie dough as dividends? Was that ever on the table? Did they consider that? Ben, with a typical IPO, there's a roadshow. And the investment bankers go to Fidelity. They go to Vanguard. They go to BlackRock. And they pitch the stock. How did you guys pitch the stock within the state boundaries of Vermont? We went to the Holiday Inn in Bennington. And we went to the hotel in Brattleboro. and we went to, you know, there was a hotel in Middlebury.

5:39That's where Jack and I met actually, was in Middlebury, Vermont. I still think this is wild. People talk about now people buying, you know, houses with NVIDIA AI money. Jack's family bought a house with ice cream money, with a bunch of fish food. Yeah. Now a quick word from our sponsor. Bureau Premium Non-Alcoholic Beer. All right, yeah, he's a little behind the scenes here. Before our New York City live show back in April, Jack and I went sober for two weeks. True story. Couldn't risk getting sick. I didn't want to be groggy. I couldn't afford a hangover. It was New York, baby. Okay, but Jack, celebrating the wins is what we do.

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8:21The other thing, Ben, Jack and I have studied so much about you, and we're going to get into all this, but there is an inspiring detail of your life before we get into the business side. that you turned your greatest weakness into a strength as a person because you suffered from anosmia. You have difficulty tasting and smelling certain things. And yet you became the creative force behind the food brand, Ben & Jerry's. So how did your weakness and taste buds translate to strength in ice cream flavor at the beginning of Ben & Jerry's? It is kind of strange. I mean, you wouldn't think of it. But the way Jerry and I worked it out is that he was the guy making the ice cream and I was the taster.

9:01You know, you know, you can't have the same guy who's making it, tasting it, you know, it's a conflict of interest. You know, he would come to me with a flavor and give it to me. And I'd say, Jerry, it's a great flavor, but I can't tell what flavor it is. So he, he put more flavoring in and, you know, brought it to me again. And I'd say, yeah, still tastes really good, but I couldn't tell you what flavor it is. And so we kept on putting in more flavoring. And finally, when we were putting in two or three times as much as the manufacturer recommended, I could vaguely get an idea as to what it was.

9:40You know, the other side of it is that, you know, for a guy who doesn't really have much of a sense of taste or smell, food is texture. I mean, that's what it is to me. I couldn't tell you what stuff tastes like, but I can tell you what it feels like. And so I have a highly developed sense of mouth feel to make up for my other sense. So that's why the ice cream has all these big crunchy chunks in it, because that's what I like is the, you know, the contrast between the smooth, creamy ice cream and the big crunchy chunks. Yeah, we've always respected the cookie dough density, Jack and I should point out.

10:18But yeah, it's interesting. Your, what would many consider a physical weakness turned into the competitive advantage of your business. But there's also one business story that gets often overlooked that Jack and I found to be inspiring for our very own business. And Jack, you want to share this detail? We love this quote. Ben, I don't know if it was you or Jerry, but one of you told Guy Raz and How I Built This, maybe 15, 20 years ago, that when you were applying for a bank loan to launch your ice cream business, the bankers, they weren't totally satisfied with the financial forecast that you two were projecting.

10:47So to quote you or Jerry, you guys just made them up and you put better numbers on paper and you got the loan approved. And as you pointed out, that's like basically how business works. A lot of it, you just make up as you go along, right? Well, I mean, this idea of projections, what's going to happen in the future? Well, to be quite frank, I don't know what's going to happen in the future, but they require projections. And so many of these businesses, you know, they base their projections off what happened last year and it didn't happen the following year. So yeah, I mean, it's essentially making it up, guesstimates.

11:26We did the numbers, the numbers showed that we wouldn't make any ice cream, that we wouldn't make any money. And so we pumped up the numbers. The numbers that we pumped up were right. It's self-fulfilling prophecy. Exactly. You were kind of, you were early manifestors is what you were saying. So Ben, we did a whole episode on our other show about fish food, which is a wonderful story. You had years of courtship, actually, with the Vermont-based band Fish before they finally agreed to make an ice cream flavor with you. We have a whole episode about that. What flavor besides fish food has the craziest backstory?

12:03Ah, crazy. Well, one thing I want to tell you about fish food is that that was the last flavor that I was personally involved in. I was the guy who was bringing test batches to the fish corporate offices. But in terms of the backstory, I think Wavy Gravy is the flavor that had the craziest backstory. Of course, it's named after a pretty crazy guy. He was the guy at Woodstock who got up on the stage and said, what we have in mind is breakfast in bed for$400 ,000. Wavy Gravy, that's what he's known for. He calls himself the hippie icon. He just had his 90th birthday. He was actually a major anti-war activist.

12:52He found that if he dressed up as a clown, The cops didn't beat him as much. So he stuck with that. And when that flavor was being developed, first we had come out with Cherry Garcia. And we decided to come out with another iconic flavor. And that was around the time when they discovered that the rainforest was being destroyed and that was the lungs of the world. I was at a Grateful Dead concert with the head of Greenpeace and this guy who was an ethnobotanist. This ethnobotanist, Jason Clay, had discovered that the rainforest could be as profitable if you harvest it sustainably as when it's cut down and turned into cattle ranches.

13:45Because there's all this stuff that grows there. There's the medicinal herbs. There's dyes. there's fruits and there's nuts. And what he needed was markets for the stuff that is sustainably harvested in the rainforest. So we decided to make a Brazil nut based ice cream for wavy gravy and we made it into a butter. We made it into Brazil nut butter, added it to the ice cream and it didn't really taste that good. Even your numb taste buds can tell you that. That's where the fudge swirl comes in, I'm starting to anticipate. So I said to Jason, what else you got in the rainforest? And he said, well, in some of the areas where they've deforested, they've replanted cashew nut trees.

14:34So if you buy those, that'll help as well. So we added cashew nut butter to the Brazil nut butter. And that's the base. It's a cashew Brazil nut butter base with a chocolate hazelnut swirl and chopped up hazelnuts in it as well. And it developed a very, very loyal, small loyal following. But the interesting thing about it is that people would say, oh, I love this flavor. They couldn't tell you what flavor it was. I got to pause the pod for a sec because this almost sounds like a setup to a joke. the Ben and Jerry's co-founder, the CEO of Greenpeace, an ethnobotanist, come up with a three-rub ice cream inspired by a Woodstock guy who dresses as a clown and molding together a bunch of nuts.

15:27I like the way you think, Nick. Oh, well, what a creative process. And that's what we find fascinating. It's these tension points. You're able to pull together things that otherwise don't go together. And that tension is what leads to creativity and really a business success. So Ben, in the background of your video feed right now, We see your iconic cow who's grazing in the dairy fields of Vermont. But you were actually going to open up initially in Saratoga Springs, New York. You ended up in Vermont almost by accident, which happens to kind of be the worst place to open an ice cream shop, given how cold our winters are.

15:57But can you tell us how you ended up in Burlington, Vermont, instead of Saratoga Springs, New York? Yeah, there's kind of another tension there. You know, location, location, location, and you choose the worst location. Well, yeah, when Jerry and I decided that we were going to do an ice cream shop, we wanted to live in a rural college town. And we thought that if it was going to be ice cream, it should be a warm rural college town. You know, this was before the age of personal computers. So we sat down at a table and Jerry had the guide to American colleges in front of him. And I had the U.S.

16:33almanac in front of me. So he would call out the names of college towns, and I would see what the temperature was in those 10. Charles did. And so we combined the list. We came up with the short list of warm, rural college towns and discovered that they all already had ice cream shops. So then we ended up in Saratoga Springs. We decided to open in Saratoga Springs. and while we were preparing to open another ice cream shop called afternoon delight opened up and uh we didn't want to compete with them and i had known about i had been to burlington quite a bit because i i used to work in the adirondacks across the lake from uh burlington and uh we went there on our days off and and there was virtually no ice cream in uh burlington vermont vermont is the only state in the union that didn't have a baskin robbins and um the only ice cream you could get was either from the uvm dairy bar way up on the hill or there was the seward's gas uh bus station, which was a little sketchy.

17:57So, yeah, we opened up in a very cold place. As you were launching, you know, the mayor of Burlington was about to be Bernie Sanders. Was he involved at all in the beginnings of Ben and Jerry's? He was just a mayor then. He was not involved. He won his election for mayor just a little after we opened. And I remember being down in the basement of Memorial Auditorium at his victory party scooping ice cream. And it was a wonderful, wonderful time. It was a beautiful time. Well, Jack, we've kind of buried a little bit of the insight, the takeaway at the bottom of the pint here, because what we just described as reasons not to open up in Burlington because it's too cold, there also was a really interesting, beautiful business solution that came out of this, right?

18:50Oh, the 30 off per Celsius degree below zero winter extravaganza. It rolled right off your tongue and exactly what we were thinking about. What is that and what was the insight you got there? This was Jerry's idea that we were – it was January. It was really cold. Nobody was coming in for ice cream. And right across the street from us was this time and temperature sign at the bank, at the Burleson Savings Bank. So he came up with this idea that we would announce that we would take a penny off the cost of an ice cream cone per Celsius degree below zero. And, you know, it did get pretty cold and people did get a significant discount.

19:37I mean, when we opened up, the price of a cone was 52 cents. They hadn't retired the penny yet. So, you know, a penny meant something. So I'm crunching some numbers here. zero degrees Fahrenheit is give or take negative 16 Celsius. So on a zero degree day, you were selling an ice cream for not 52 cents, but for about 36 cents. Does that sound about right? Are you covering your costs on that? We got the math whiz here. What, did you do that all out in your head or did you use AI? No, that's not Jack GPT. That's just Jack right there. So as Nick and I were researching the Ben and Jerry story, a really wild part is what you did with the packaging to really take off.

20:18Initially, I think you were selling gallon-sized ice cream containers, but you really innovated with that packaging with, first of all, selling in the size of a pint. I think Ben & Jerry's was one of the first ice cream brands to sell pint-sized containers. Which stopped you from handing out too many scoops at the ice cream shop, probably, Ben. I bet you were pretty generous with those samples. Yeah, we did have a big problem with over-scooping. And then also you had this great development where the bottom of the pint would be the same, But the top would be the variability. That's where you'd get the different colors, the different description of the flavors.

20:50Can you tell us a bit about the Unlock when you started selling in pints? Well, actually, there were a bunch of ice creams that were being sold in pints at the time. There was Lady Borden's. There was Haagen-Dazs. I mean, a lot of the pints were not round. A lot of them were square. So putting it in a pint was not really an innovation. but uh you know the the graphic artist we were working with who was an amazing graphic artist lynn severance still practicing in vermont you know we told her we were planning on coming out in pints and she said you guys got to put your pictures on the top we need a photo of you two guys on the top of the pint and we said oh god and then we decided that you know it'd be good for the business but bad for our personal lives and we had you know essentially devoted our lives to the business anyhow.

21:43So we did it. And, and there was this photographer in town that Lynn found Marion Etlinger, who, who did, uh, photos, you know, for Rolling Stone magazine. She, she was a very famous photographer of rock stars. And so why shouldn't she be a photographer of ice cream stars? And so we got into her, uh, studio and, uh, she says, uh, would you like some wine or some pot? I said, both. And I took the photo. And then Nick, I just want to point this out. There was this wonderful message that Ben and Jerry also put on the side of their pint. It was a message from Ben and Jerry. This carton contains some of the finest ice cream available anywhere.

22:33We know because we're the guys who make it. We start with lots of fresh Vermont cream and the finest flavorings available. We never use any fillers or artificial ingredients of any kind. With our specially modified equipment, we stir less air into the ice cream, creating a denser, richer, creamier product of uncompromisingly high quality. It costs more and it's worth it. Yeah. Ben, that's how you got your premium brand, I think. That was step number one of Ben & Jerry's being considered a premium ice cream brand. You could price higher with that. You could price higher with that because YouTube put your name, your face, and your word right there on the pint and said, this is better ice cream.

23:09Also being a little buzzed in that photo probably helped too, Jeff. Didn't hurt. Didn't hurt. So Ben, let's, let's scoop forward just a few years after your founding to 1982. You're starting to have some success, but you almost shut down the business. From our research, you were worried that your success was going to start to eat away at the core values of the company. But you spoke in 1982 to a guy named Maurice, a customer who was buying a bunch of ice cream. And you were complaining a little bit lamenting to him that, you know what happens to big businesses? They start to become harmful to the environment.

23:40They start to, you know, cut corners with their employees. They start cutting costs wherever they can. And it just makes the world not a better place, but a worse place. But then Maurice responded to you and said, Ben, if there's something you don't like about business, why don't you do it differently? Which led to the three-part mission that you and Jerry agreed to. First was the product mission. So like to make fantastic ice cream. The second was the economic mission. To make money so that the company can keep growing and making that ice cream. And the third, this is key, was the social mission.

24:09To make the world a better place. So, Ben, we saw an interview with you just a couple weeks ago where you said, giving the company a social mission, that third part, also gave it a soul, a spirit, and a heart. And that is why Ben & Jerry's is so valuable. When it comes to creating that value, what are some specific examples where you've seen this to be true? Where creating that mission and that spirit helped the business. What ended up happening is that because of that social mission, because we were trying to use our business to improve the quality of life for the community as opposed to the normal business, which is trying to extract as much as it can out of the community and maximize profits.

24:55We were trying to, I mean, that was the deal talking to Maurice. It was the question of, is it possible that business is actually a neutral tool like a hammer and you can use it to destroy things or you can use it to build things? So we started using it to build things. We started using it to support the community. You know, in the early days when we were just a little homemade ice cream parlor, we were producing these free community festivals, you know, that had stilt walking contests. And we had a frog jumping contest. Jerry's wife went out and caught all the frogs. You know, and as the business got larger, we started taking stands and positions on important issues.

25:43A full-page letter in the New York Times calling on the president and Congress not to go to war in Iraq. That was the first Iraq war. Mostly, people are buying products from businesses in spite of what the business stands for. and at Ben and Jerry's, you know, because we stood up for things like racial justice, you know, one of the proudest moments of my life was after Jerry and I were no longer actively involved in the company and after the tragedy of the murder of George Floyd, the company came out with this incredibly powerful statement that we must dismantle white supremacy and I had no idea that was happening I had no idea that was going to happen I saw it the same time everybody else did and I was just so proud that it signified that Jerry and I were successful at what we were trying to do which was to imbue the values in the company we didn't want it to be just dependent on Jerry and myself.

26:56So, you know, the company takes these stands, some of which are, well, a lot of them are controversial. Not everybody agrees with them. You know, I've always said, you know, there's no sense taking a stand if somebody already agrees with whatever you're standing for. And what ends up happening is that you form this relationship with your customers that's based on shared values. And that's really the deepest, strongest relationship that you can form with anybody. I mean, can an inanimate object like a business have a heart, a soul, and a spirit? I think that Injury's does. And it was because of the social mission.

27:42It's taking stands on stuff based on justice, a belief in justice. Now, a quick word from our sponsor. Top hats, baseball hats, Von Dutch hats. We wear so many hats on this podcast. Honestly, we're not great at all of them. No, we've been avoiding hiring someone to wear those hats instead of us, especially the Von Dutch one, because hiring and training can take forever. Well, I'm proud to say that we are hiring right now at T-Boy, and this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Because Sponsored Jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95 % more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. So besties spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes, less stress, less time, more results.

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29:36And NetSuite Next has a chatbot that you can converse with in natural language. It will never spill coffee on you either. Now, Vezzius, if we needed this product, this is what we would use. For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to netsuite.ai. slash tboy. Built for every industry, ready for every boardroom. netsuite.ai slash tboy. Before we get to the present day and this how you're navigating all this right now and trying to get Ben and Jerry's back, you know, Jack and I have a bigger question here, which is about businesses speaking out on politics and social issues.

30:14Like we have a lot of entrepreneurs listening right now, some of whom agree with you, some of whom don't. It's almost besides the point. The bigger question here is whether or not they should be leaning into politics or leaning out, whether they should share their founders' thoughts on a topic or not. It's a big question that a lot of ambitious millennials in the workplace, but also the Yetis and besties of our audience who are starting companies want to know more about. So Ben, what advice would you give to people who are feeling torn about whether, you know, not as much on a private capacity.

30:45I think people understand whether they should speak up or not about the issues they're passionate about. But on like a work capacity, what do you think about free speech and political outspokenness when it comes to the brand that you're leading or the company that you're working at? Should an entrepreneur, should an employee take a side on something publicly? I think so. I think businesses are members of the community and they need to be responsible members of the community, responsible to the community, responsible for values other than maximizing their short-term profits and whatever fallout falls out.

31:30The reality is that business is incredibly political. Business controls our elections through campaign contributions. Business controls our legislation through lobbying. They control our media through ownership. They control the lives of everyday lives as employees and customers. So the norm is for businesses to take their stands covertly. They don't want people to know that they are the people that are funding these politicians to do their bidding. They don't want people to know that weapons manufacturers have two lobbyists for every congressperson. I mean, the place is crawling with lobbyists that are paid for by business, that are trying to influence the laws of our country in their own favor.

32:27So if you say, well, business shouldn't be taking political stands. I mean, they're taking political stands every day of the year. But the difference is they're covert about it. They don't want to be open. They want to hide it. And because they're taking all those stands just only in their narrow self-interest. So Ben and Jerry's takes their stands overtly in the interest of the community in general. And, you know, I think there's also this issue of being tarred and feathered with the same brush. You know, the spokespeople for business is the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, all these business packs, whatever.

33:12And if you don't stand up and say, no, I don't agree with that stuff. As you said before, I think he who is silent consents. You know, if you don't make your views known, then you're just accepting what's going on. And what do you think then, Ben, though, of the customer challenge? Like if you're a brand that does get political and speaks out openly, like you're saying, what do you say to your fans who love your product, but may be upset or offended by a side that you're taking on something and have to live with that challenge? Well, you just say, this is honest. This is what I believe in. They're based on a set of values.

33:55And for a lot of people, I mean, most people are buying products from companies in spite of the values. You know, customers certainly have a choice. I mean, a lot of times, you know, people don't really care that much. Have you ever encountered a customer that says, man, I freaking love white supremacy, but I also love half-baked and I don't know what to do. You know, the interesting thing is that customers that love white supremacy, they usually don't come up to me. Well, Ben, maybe to back up a little bit, to understand the current predicament that the brand you built finds itself in. Because Jack and I were talking about this.

34:39This is the crux of the interview question. And what leads us to this wild moment for you today, which is like, is it more profitable for a brand to be partisan or to stay out? And Jack and I were discussing this for our own business too. And we were talking about how, you know, it may be industry dependent to some degree, like in ice cream. There is no gelato that has a political opinion out there, right? Like you guys have a political opinion and that is a differentiator. It stands out. It's a competitive advantage. We're in the media industry. And so for our podcast, if we were focused on our political opinions, we'd kind of be like every other show out there.

35:15And maybe more of the differentiator for us is actually focusing on entertainment and the business insights and not getting into the commoditized, what's your thought on this controversial issue? So is there an angle here where it also is industry dependent if you're trying to make this decision? Well, I've never really thought about that, but I personally don't think it is industry dependent. I mean, I know, you know, I've talked to a bunch of musicians who say, you know, I don't want to take a stand on that issue because it might offend some of my fans. Take a look at Bruce Springsteen. I mean, he's like the only guy in the country who's standing up to Trump.

35:56And as near as I can tell, his shows are pretty sold out. Jack, on that note, I think you could sprinkle on some context to take us to the business beef. So Ben, to understand the current predicament that your brand finds itself in, which we're about to get to, you need to start with the acquisition that happened in the year 2000. You and Jerry sold Ben and Jerry's to Unilever for$326 million. I guess, you know, the quick and short question is, why did you sell? We did not sell. The business got sold. It was a publicly held corporation. It was listed on NASDAQ. When it went public nationally, you know, we were aware that there could be situations where, you know, that we're forced to sell it.

36:43And, you know, so you contact your lawyers and you ask them to put in some poison pills, as they call them. And so we had this structure that was called super shares. You know, the insiders got 10 votes for every share that they held versus everybody else just had one vote per share. And that essentially kept control of the company amongst this group of original investors who were bought into the mission. But then what happened was that we hired the wrong CEO and he saw a way for himself to make a bunch of money by selling the business. He made some overtures to Unilever. They ended up putting in an offer for the business.

37:33You have to make that public if you're a publicly held company. And then what happens is that the business is considered to be, as they say, in play. And so other entities can make offers for the business and other entities did. And, you know, Unilever really wanted it because their arch competitor in the global ice cream business was Nestle. And Nestle had just bought Haagen-Dazs. Unilever needed a super premium ice cream to compete. And Jerry and I didn't want to sell. So we were very resistant. And Unilever started to understand that the reason we didn't want to sell was because we wanted to maintain the social mission.

38:24And we didn't believe that if the company was sold to a company that didn't share that mission, that it would survive. And so we're negotiating and, you know, we're trying to write the social mission into an acquisition agreement. And we kind of realized that the social mission needs to evolve as the times evolve, as what's going on in the country and society changes. And so the way we found to deal with it was to establish this independent board of directors for Ben and Jerry's that has legal authority over the social mission of the company, also over the quality of the ice cream. And that's how the company was run.

39:14And I felt like at the time. I mean, this was kind of the worst time in my life. You know, I was severely depressed for, I don't know, at least a year. And, you know, I felt like it was all over that, you know, yeah, we negotiated this thing. Yeah, it's on paper, but, you know, it's probably not going to happen. And incredibly enough, Unilever did abide by their word and by this written legal document and the social mission thrived. I mean, this is, that is wild. You pulled off something that Jack and I think was unprecedented in the history of capitalism. Jack and I call this the double dip, by the way, Ben.

39:55Thank you. Right? Because like most founders have to choose between being rich or being king. They give up control to get rich or they give up money to keep controlling. You kind of got both. You sold the company for a huge payout, but the company that bought Ben & Jerry's did not acquire control of Ben & Jerry's. We've never seen anything like it before. So an independent board becomes the decision maker of Ben & Jerry's, even though somebody else, Unilever, owns Ben & Jerry's. Totally unprecedented. And the lawyers must have told you as much. Totally unprecedented. And the people from Unilever who negotiated the thing, you know, they eventually left the company, you know, they moved on and, you know, whoever replaced them, I mean, lots of them have never read the agreement and they're trying to run it like they run all their other brands.

40:47And, you know, that's creating some problems. And, you know, eventually there was, you know, some kind of legal settlement where they were required in writing to make sure that every one of their executives read the acquisition agreement. And I mean, these executives there at Unilever are saying whoever's came up with this was crazy. I mean, this is horrible. This is the worst thing we've ever seen in our lives. Was it to the detail, Ben, where it was like, they would say like, hey, we got to go with these cheap cashews. And you guys could say, no, no, no, no. We're going to do fair trade cashews from Brazil.

41:24They cost three times as much, but we're doing it. But amazingly enough, through all that, it still amazes me every time I say it. Ben & Jerry's has become the biggest selling ice cream in the country. It's the number one ice cream by sales in the US. And for a while, the relationship worked, right? Like Paul Pullman, when I was at business school, I studied him. He was a sustainability guy, right? Within big corporations. You guys influenced Unilever too. You know, I guess so. You know, some people said, you know, like to kind of cheer me up when I was so down that it got sold. They said, well, maybe you'll influence Unilever.

42:02And I said, yeah, right. We know we're a pimple on Unilever's butt. But I think it did have an effect. So this unusual relationship worked for a while. You lived under the same roof and everyone was happy because Ben & Jerry's became the top selling brand in the United States. But this all came to a head in 2024 and 2025. Yeah, today we're facing the big business beef. What is it, Jack? Unilever allegedly suppresses Ben & Jerry's brand from speaking out on the issues that it's always spoken out on. Unilever fires the Ben & Jerry CEO, allegedly because of political speech taken by the brand. And your co-founder, Jerry, quits Ben & Jerry, sadly, last year.

42:45Your best friend says he can, in good conscience, remain an employee now that the brand is no longer having independence. So you're now fighting like hell, as you've put it, to free Ben and Jerry's. So essentially, Unilever, well, now Magnum, because Unilever spun off the ice cream division into a separate company, has suppressed the free speech rights that you fought for when you sold Ben and Jerry's to Unilever. Now, on the other hand, Unilever is thinking the world has changed. Politics are more divisive than ever. And the cultural conversation has moved on. And they're seeing a business risk here.

43:17That's their kind of case. The business risk they're seeing is that Ben & Jerry's outspoken activism is putting the rest of this gigantic corporation at risk. So, Ben, what would you say? Is that a fair characterization of the situation and where we are right now? I think that Magnum is mostly concerned that actions that Ben & Jerry's takes, political stands that it takes, will harm the whole Magnum business. They own about 100 brands all over the world. So you would argue, Ben, that first of all, the contract that was agreed to in the year 2000 is being violated, right? Is there court action being taken on that side of things?

43:59Yes, there is. The independent board has sued Unilever and Unilever tried to dismiss it. Unilever tried to say, well, the independent board doesn't have any standing to sue Unilever, that the only one who can sue Unilever is Unilever. That didn't hold up. The judge threw that out and the case is proceeding. But on the other hand, Ben, you would also argue that not letting Ben and Jerry's speak up like it always has is going to begin to erode the brand that people love and start to hurt the business, right? Yeah, I think that's exactly right. The very values-led business structure that enabled Ben & Jerry's to become what it is today, so profitable and sell so much ice cream, is exactly the thing that Magnum is eroding, is trying to kill.

44:53So let's talk now about the hashtag that you launched last year, free Ben & Jerry's. Your plan is to free Ben & Jerry's for Magnum, its new corporate owner. Yeah. And you flew to Amsterdam to petition the board to, come on, guys, let me buy this back. I love this brand. I think I can do a better job than you guys can. And let's be honest, it's become a headache for you, right? Let me take this off your hands. I'll compensate you for it. Ben, forget the SpaceX IPO. Jack and I think this could be the most exciting M &A deal of the year right here. Can you walk us through the specific plan? Have you made an offer to Magnum?

45:32What does that offer look like? So about two years ago, Unilever announced that they're going to spin off their entire ice cream business. And at first they were looking to sell it to PE or other conglomerates. And at that time, Jerry and I went to them and we said, hey, as long as you're getting rid of the whole business, why don't you just split off Ben and Jerry's so that we can get it sold to some socially conscious investors and resolve this problem. And Unilever refused to do that. But we were very public about calling for socially conscious investors to come and invest in Ben and Jerry's, and some of them showed up.

46:13And some of them made an offer or attempted to make an offer to Unilever, but they refused to engage. You can't really come up with an actual price that you're offering unless you see the books, unless you see the numbers. Unilever refused to let them see it. And so they could only say, yeah, we're interested, but they couldn't make an actual offer. So now some of those investors are still around. They're still interested in buying the company when Magnum finally sees the light and agrees to sell it. Let's put the numbers aside for a second, Ben. Can you share us more about what Ben & Jerry's 2.0 would look like if you owned it?

47:07How would it be different? How would it be similar? Well, I think it would be a lot like Ben & Jerry's 1.0. it would it would have the same values it would be you know right now it would be speaking out against uh the policies of of the trump administration what's going on now in the country is the biggest attack on the values of ben and jerry since the company was founded and And Magnum has prevented the company from speaking out on those issues, has prevented the company from speaking out in support of the values that the company is based on. And I also think that Ben and Jerry's 2.0, as you call it, that would be the proper term.

48:01I agree with that. But maybe we would get involved in, maybe we'd get into other products besides ice cream. Then on that note, you know, I guess this brings up the other question, which is, remember that episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry David starts a Spite store? It's a Spite coffee shop. Latte Larry's, which is right next to Mocha Joe's. Yeah. Its whole purpose is just to steal business from his enemy. Why not start again? Why not start a new business? You mean if Magnum refuses to sell? Yeah. You could just start? start something fresh. Start Jerry and Ben and compete head on. This is kind of like Taylor Swift launching Taylor's version of all her songs.

48:39Yeah. And with your new company, you could launch protein infused adaptogen enhanced smoothie, ice cream powder, you know, like do stuff they would never want to do. You know, it's, it's interesting. I mean, people have suggested that and I've said, you know, look, when we started Ben and Jerry's, uh, Jerry and I were 26 and, and we had, we had a whole lot of energy. And, you know, as a percentage of energy available, I'm working as hard as I was back when I was 26. And, you know, as I've gone through this now for close to a year in the fall, it'll be a year that the Free Ben and Jerry's campaign has been going on.

49:17And yeah, this has been a 24-7 thing for me. This has taken over my life. And I guess if I realized at the time that I started that, that, well, I could start another ice cream business instead, maybe I would have done it. Because, I mean, I just didn't, I didn't, I didn't realize, you know, Jerry says sometimes I don't really think ahead that far. And I didn't realize, you know, how much energy and effort and freeing Ben and Jerry's was going to take. I mean, it doesn't help. it's become the biggest selling ice cream. Ben, that's what great entrepreneurs do though. Also, it kind of goes back to your founding story.

49:58If you'd known what it would be like and the pain and the challenges along the way, you never would have started it in the first place. It's true. So Ben, you just referenced Jerry. It sounds like he knows you better than anybody. You started a business with your best friend, something everyone warns you not to do because friendship can get in the way of business. Nick and I did the same thing. Nick was my freshman year college roommate. Right. After freshman year, we sublet a place from UVM Kids right on College Street in Burlington. When I studied abroad in Berlin, Nick visited me. When Nick transferred to Brown, I still visited him on the Brown campus.

50:32Why do you think launching a business with your best friend was the right move? Why was it such a great move? Well, because Jerry is Jerry. You know, I mean, we have very, very similar values. We have very, very similar outlooks on life. We were both fat as kids. And we had a couple of rules when we started our business. One was that if we have a disagreement, all that needs to happen is that one person needs to say, I feel really strongly about this. And then the other guy says, okay, you get your way. And the other thing was that we each had a veto power. And I don't think we ever used it. That's amazing.

51:15Yeah. I mean, the biggest argument we had was about the size of the chunks. Did you go bigger? We hope you heard on bigger. Right. I was the guy who wanted them really big. Jerry, you know, Jerry was the guy making the ice cream and it's hard to make ice cream with really big chunks. And, you know, and he also I also felt like, you know, if the chunks are bigger, there weren't going to be as many of them. And sometimes people would get a spoonful of ice cream that didn't have a chunk at all, and they'd be pissed off. It's frustrating. I felt like they would be okay with it as long as the next spoonful had a really big one.

51:52As we're getting to the end here, really to kind of crystallize a core point and the core crux in question a lot of our listeners are curious about. You know, Jack and I have noticed some companies put pros before coasts. They put profits before customers. Well, you put customers before profits. You've done the opposite of what most companies would do. So we're curious if that's more profitable in the long term. Or as Jack and I were saying to put it, does this create an ice cream sundae effect or an ice cream headache? I think profits is what you get when you've done a good job of meeting your customers' needs.

52:24I think businesses that are profit-purst are, I think a lot of them fail. It needs to be about satisfying a need. The need is not for your business to make a lot of money. The need is to solve somebody's problem. Well, Ben, thank you so much for your time. It's an inspiring story. But before we go, we'd love to hit you with some rapid fire questions. If you got two more minutes, we got a few rapid fires for you. Hit me, baby. Here we go. Ben, what is the best Ben & Jerry's flavor? Chubby Hubby. What is the best ice cream that Ben & Jerry's does not sell? Jamocha Almond Fudge. What is the best brand in America that isn't Ben & Jerry's?

53:06Toscanini. What's the best business book you've ever read? Net Positive by Paul Pullman. Best business leader who you admire? Jeez, would I have to say Paul Pullman again? We'll take it. What's the best restaurant in Vermont? You know, I was just at Fancy's the other night for the first time in the Old North End. It is incredible. And then there's Poco. I just heard about Fancies this weekend. Yeah. And Ben, if you, Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's Worry Stock, what would be your three or four-letter stock ticker symbol? If you were a publicly traded stock, what are the three letters that you would list on the stock exchange for?

53:45When you take Ben & Jerry's 2.0 public one day. Eat. Oh, that's good. I was going to say L-I-C-K, Lick. I was going to say L-I-C-K, too, but that's four. And finally, like we end every episode, Jack and I always whip up a takeaway on the pop biz story. So Jack, you've got the honors. So Ben, what is the takeaway on Ben & Jerry's and the company's brand? Save Ben & Jerry's. Go to freebenandjerrys.com and you'll have great ice cream with best values forever. But Ben, there's one question I'm still dying to ask that we didn't totally answer, which was, you teased that there would be other things beyond ice cream you would launch.

54:21What would be maybe one of those things that's in your head? Well, you know, I think there's some – I think you could do something with some candy bars. I think there's a void in the marketplace. And when I grew up, candy bars were a nickel. Now you can make some real money on candy bars. Yeah, you can. And Jack, I think because your mom's the OG shareholder, I think she may deserve a couple candy bars just as a nice little gift. Yeah, Ben, can I get your verbal commitment that when you're prototyping that candy bar, I can have one of the samples to taste? You got it. Ben Cohen, fantastic to have you with us.

55:00Thank you so much for your time. Appreciate you guys. Thank you.

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