Ice Cream & Entrepreneurship

Tonight, Jerry (of Ben and Jerry's) came to campus to talk about social activism and small business development. Well, I think that is what it was about--a friend and I went because we heard there was free ice cream as a part of this shindig. Which there was! But it was actually really interesting, too, in non-food related ways.

As I imagined he would be, Jerry Greenfield was funny and insightful, and the type of person that you would probably want to hang out and have a few beers with. I have been to the Ben and Jerry's factory in Vermont, and I fully admit to loving everything about Vermont (I'd live there in a heartbeat, for real), including the fact that B & J stayed so true to their local roots for so long. They don't own the company any more, exactly--it was bought out about 10 years ago by a bigger company, I think Unilever. But it sounds like they did a lot of things right, by being accountable to their workers, making sure 7 1/2 percent of their profits went back to local businesses (I think he said the average at the time was 1 1/2 percent, which is ridiculous), and being conscious of where they were getting their ingredients from--for example, their brownies come from a bakery which employs people with prior personal or financial problems, and gave them job training. Jerry made a good point that there can (and should be) a spiritual motivation behind business too. Not necessarily spiritual in a religious sense, but in a sense that we are all connected, and should treat each other as well as we can. Very important.

As for the ice cream--they had single servings of chocolate chip cookie dough, chocolate fudge brownie, cherry garcia, and a newer flavor, peanut brittle. I was intrigued by the peanut brittle, but went with the cookie dough, while my friend went the brownie route. As we ate our ice cream, our hands freezing from the wind as we walked to our bus, we swapped stories of how Ben and Jerry's has been a major player in our lives. Hers factored into a break-up, while mine was from my first night of studying abroad in England. I was so hungry and homesick, with no phone or internet, and had just left my parents a voicemail from a pay phone that went something like, "hi! I'm in Norwich, and things are fine..well, not really fine...I don't know [incomprehensible crying]...um, the phone is beeping, I might need to put in more pounds but I don't have any more, love you, bye." So, in THAT great frame of mind, I went to the on-campus store, where there turned out to be Ben and Jerry's. I bought a pint--strawberry cheesecake, I think?--and went to my room and unpacked and ate most of it. It turned out to cost something ridiculous like $8, with conversion and all, but so worth it.

It sounds so Bridget Jones-like, to have such an emotional, visceral response to ice cream, but everyone I am friends with really does. I don't know if it is because we are 20-something year-old women, or if I just hang out with ice cream lovers, but there you have it. I distinctly remember my roommate and I in our sophomore year of college passing a pint of brownie batter B & J's back and forth between our desks during a particularly bad week. And I do come from an ice cream loving clan! My aunt always has multiple flavors on hand, and during one really memorable game of catchphrase, my uncle had to get her to say "ice cream" without saying the words, so he said, "you love this," and she said immediately, "ooh! ice cream!" [my cousins were mad she didn't say, "my children."] The only poem I distinctly remember writing (and illustrating!!) was about ice cream. I was seven. It was published in our hometown newspaper.

So if you have ice cream memories, you are not alone. Feel free to share them (and your favorite flavors!) here. To me, it suggests summer, friends, and general silliness. And to Ben and Jerry's--thank you for staying more true to yourselves than a lot of companies do. You've made this socialist ice cream lover very happy.