Jerry Greenfield
Jerry Greenfield - ice-cream entrepreneur who changed the world
Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream gave his first speech outside the US at Destination Growth on Tuesday 6th November.
An energetic and personable Jerry held the delegates spellbound at Destination Growth ’07 as he told the story of one of the most unusual business successes and how he and partner Ben Cohen were one of the first modem trailblazers of showing how business can make a profit and make a positive contribution to the community.
The two seemingly dyed-in-the-wool hippies set up a community-based ice cream business that was to become a $160 million, publicly-owned global empire. At the start Jerry said business was an anathema to them. They fought the big boys — Haagen Daaz owned by Pilsbury - and won. Now Jerry says that business is the most powerful factor in society.
At first it was very difficult for them to reconcile the ideals of Che Chevura and the 60s with the capitalist money-making machine. And old friend told them: ‘if there is something you don’t like about business, change it’. So that is what they did — vowing to support the community, their employees and the environment. The business which was started on a $12,000 with the knowledge gained from $5 correspondence course on ice-cream making and business plan copied from a pizza parlour went from strength to strength.
However it was not an easy ride and where they were at the time meant they needed investment as they were using WWII equipment and in rented space that was not suitable for their purposes. Any other company would have normally gone to venture capitalists but these two reforming hippies decided to put their money where their mouths were made a public stock offering of the company’s chares, making the local community the owners of the company. Later when they needed more money they went on to a national public stock offer. Ben and Jerry set up a charity and 7 % of their profits go to it, compared to the normal 1-1% that corporates donate.
Jerry said that change is happening and that businesses are starting to measure success not just by the financial bottom-line but by how what they do affects the quality of life of the people who work for the company who live in the places where companies are based. Back in 1988 Ben and Jerry’s was the first company to include a social report along with the financial report.
But it was trial and error for Ben and Jerry to make their ideals work in practice. Jerry said his managers came to him in the beginning and said that the energy going into helping the community was affecting the bottom-line. It is key, Jerry said, to get rid of the mindset of the separation of the profit-making and charitable and social responsibility parts of the business. Jerry found they could marry business and community in a number of ways by using resources to do both. By having franchised outlets that were run in partnership with the voluntary sector they could ensure that opportunities could be offered to those in disadvantaged communities so, for example, youths at risk have reliable jobs and incomes as well as still making sure the till is ringing healthily. Now Ben and Jerry’s has 14 of these partnership ice-cream shops across the globe, two of which are in Northern Ireland.
And it is not just about helping communities, it is about ideas, innovation and growth as well - thinking about different ways of doing things can make companies think creatively. Somehow Jerry said, they came up with the idea of combining chocolate fudge brownies and ice cream. Jerry said that they specifically went out their way to find a bakery in a deprived part of New York that was making them thus supporting the community.
Jerry said that business is one of the powerful forces in the world today and CEOs and business people can help solve social problems and make a profit at the same time. Although Ben and Jerry’s was sold to Unilever 7 years ago, Jerry said that the company that he and Ben set up some thirty years ago has had massive resonance for encouraging socially responsible businesses and continues to do so.
