case study ben and jerry's ice cream

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How Ben & Jerry’s Got Bought Out Without Selling Out

January 15, 2016 • 14 min read.

Despite being bought out by Unilever in 2000, Ben & Jerry's has managed to keep intact the commitment to social justice that was baked into the firm by its founders.

When people hear the name “Ben and Jerry’s,” they think of three things: First, the high-quality ice cream, heavy on the mix-ins and the butterfat; second, the pun-riddled names of flavors such as Cherry Garcia, Karamel Sutra or Americone Dream; and third, the company’s longstanding social, environmental and corporate justice missions.

But when co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield agreed to sell the business in 2000 to Unilever, a multinational food giant, plenty of people expected that those missions wouldn’t survive. To a remarkable degree, they were mistaken.

In a recent interview with Katherine Klein, vice dean of the Wharton Social Impact Initiative, current Ben & Jerry’s CEO Jostein Solheim talked about how the ice cream company has managed to hold onto its original social missions, despite its absorption by Unilever.

An edited transcript of the conversation appears below.

Katherine Klein: We’re here to talk about the social mission of the company and how you have maintained it even as Ben & Jerry’s has become part of Unilever.

Jostein Solheim: Ben & Jerry’s is now 36 years old as a mission-led company. I think the key thing in the whole transition to one shareholder from multiple shareholders was a governance structure that was put in place. Unilever was very visionary in recognizing that it says “Ben & Jerry” on the packaging. If Ben and Jerry go out and say, “Well, this is all not really true anymore and [social justice is] not a mission of the company anymore,” that would really undermine the value of the acquisition.

Klein: So Unilever acquired Ben & Jerry’s in 2000, and this was a company where the social mission was baked into the brand.

Solheim: That is integral to how we do business.

Klein: And Unilever saw this and its investors saw this from the beginning, and saw value?

Solheim: Yes. That’s why they and the then-sitting board together agreed to set up an independent board of directors that acts basically like our benefit corporation director. They are responsible for the social mission, for the integrity of the Ben & Jerry’s brand, our policies. They even get involved in basic things like wage-setting in the factories, where we have a livable wage policy that is overseen by the board of directors. And the directors are self-selecting. Unilever appoints just two seats out of 11 board members.

Klein: Fascinating. And so unusual.

Solheim: Very.

Klein: You had a career in ice cream at Unilever before coming on five years ago as CEO of Ben & Jerry’s. How was the transition from the larger entity of Unilever to this interestingly different mission-driven company?

“It’s very hard to be angry and eat ice cream at the same time. It’s very tempting to stop and sign a petition, if there’s free ice cream.”

Solheim: I don’t know whether that transition was tougher for them or for me. But Unilever as a company is very aligned in its values. It actually has a lot of diversity in it in terms of management styles, personalities. It has a history of quite a lot of autonomy in its senior leaders, so it wasn’t a super stark contrast. You know, I worked in Italy, I worked in Sweden — the culture of Ben & Jerry’s is actually similar to typical Scandinavian companies. It’s a flat, un-hierarchical sort of approach to business. The biggest thing for me was I felt a big sense of responsibility.

Klein: Have Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield stayed involved?

Solheim: Yeah, they are involved, but they do more of their own things. They have the best jobs in the world. Their job is to be Ben and to be Jerry, and they basically just have to deliver on that. Day-to-day operations are really in the hands of the management team and the board of directors.

Klein: Ben & Jerry’s describes itself as a values-driven company. You celebrate your social, environmental governance values on the website. Can you tell us how that plays out in action? How do you move from words to deeds?

Solheim: Well, I think that’s the key point. A lot of companies would say they’re consumer-led, whether that’s in product development or in a mission. Similarly, when companies come to the world of corporate social responsibility, they ask themselves, ‘What do people really care about? And how can we be a part of that?’ At Ben & Jerry’s, we come at it the other way. We actually ask ourselves, ‘What do we truly believe in — us?’ And then we execute well, because we truly believe in it, and hence, convince others to join us. So that’s what we mean by that: It starts with our values, and then we apply and join in movements with other partners to make change.

Klein: So talk to us about some of those specific values and how they are enacted through your products, through your employment practices and partnerships.

Solheim: We can take one we just won. Let’s take same-sex marriage. That came on the agenda in the 1980s at Ben & Jerry’s. Ben & Jerry’s was one of the first companies to offer same-sex partners the same rights — health care, etc.

When that started to come into the public domain and become a debate, it was very clear for the company — we couldn’t just say, “You’re OK if you’re at Ben & Jerry’s, but if you’re not, you’re not.” So it was very natural for the employees to join in and campaign for same-sex marriage. Then, as we grew bigger, we scaled that campaign up. And now, we finished in the U.S. with the Supreme Court decision this year.

We also won in Ireland. We put it on the map in Australia, in France — in multiple countries where this comes up. It’s something that we believe in. We don’t do an assessment if this position is popular or unpopular. When we started a same-sex marriage campaign in Australia, not a single political party there supported same-sex marriage. Everybody came to us, saying “What are you doing? You shouldn’t do this.” Well, sorry, this is something we really believe in.

Klein: You’ve had individual employees involved in these campaigns. But Ben & Jerry’s as a company, is it active as a major donor, or leading campaigns?

Solheim: The amazing thing is that selling ice cream and running campaigns [use] the same set of skills. You want to get people’s attention, you need social media, you need events. And one great thing that we have, of course, is ice cream. It’s very hard to be angry and eat ice cream at the same time. It’s very tempting to stop and sign a petition, if there’s free ice cream. So ice cream plays a really important role in how we connect with our fans.

We treat those campaigns in exactly the same way as we would treat a new product launch.

Klein: And sometimes they actually appear on your products, right?

Solheim: “I Dough, I Dough” was our celebration of the same-sex marriage act.

We just launched a product, “Save Our Swirled,” which is in support of a binding climate agreement in Paris, where the U.N. [held talks]. We launched that with Tesla out on the West Coast. And then, we launched a European version in Bonn … inside the climate negotiations at the U.N. So we had the opportunity to feed all those people who are trying to work this out for us.

“We have a livable wage policy that is overseen by the board of directors.”

Klein: You actually use ice cream as a metaphor for global warming, right?

Solheim: Correct. We show what ice cream looks like if it’s just two degrees warmer. It’s a bit of a mess.

Klein: It’s a fabulous metaphor: This is what happens to your ice cream after two degrees [and] what happens to the world if it’s warmer by two degrees.

Are there instances where you as a CEO, or as a company, have said, “Yeah, we care about that issue, but we can’t go there. That’s too hot, that’s too controversial”?

Solheim: There are many issues where we’ve had to say we can’t go there, not necessarily because they’re too hot or too controversial, more because we don’t judge that we have a real ability to make an impact, or that we are prepared. You know, we believe you’ve got to walk the walk — not just talk. So we want to align our internal programs with the external campaigning.

There are issues that come up that are important — legitimate issues — but we haven’t built an internal program. So we’ll start that, and then join in. But controversy is not something that scares us. Maybe it should, but it doesn’t. We were the only corporation to support Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park, which was a surprise to them, as well. And you know, nothing bad really happened to our business as a result of that.

Klein: We’d like to hope in the social impact space that companies can actually achieve a positive financial return and a social return on investment, and on social impact strategies. What’s your sense of how this pays off or doesn’t pay off for Ben & Jerry’s? I mean, it sounds terribly crass, but is there money to be made through corporate social responsibility in this kind of values-driven company?

Solheim: There is. There is because people want to make a difference with … actions and activities that they can do. What you buy and how you buy it is a big part of your everyday life, and increasingly, consumers are saying, “I don’t want to waste my money on products that don’t try to make a difference.”

Now there’s a lot of “greenwashing” out there, so people are rightly skeptical and demand real evidence, and [validation from] some other authorities, so they’re not just relying on what a company says. But it’s the fastest-growing area of fast-moving consumer goods by far: Socially responsible companies are making up 60% of the growth in fast-moving consumer goods in developed markets. If you look at a Nielsen study that just came out, which was across 14 countries, what you’re seeing is the rate of change is really picking up. In 2013, 50% of respondents said that they would pay more for a socially responsible product. Today, that’s already at 66% and accelerating. And obviously, a big driver of that is our wonderful millennials.

Klein: Do you see this as something that any company can do? Ben & Jerry’s could be criticized on some level for the healthiness of its ice cream. I’m thinking of other products that we may look at and say, “That’s not a healthy product, that’s not a product that’s good for the environment.” And yet, can any company find ways to live this mission?

Solheim: Absolutely. Not every company will become an activist company or a campaigning company like Ben & Jerry’s. I wouldn’t think that’s appropriate for every company. But every company can make those decisions that optimize their social impact and their business impact in any industry, anywhere, that benefits their employees, their communities, the environment — whichever constituents that they address. I don’t think that this is something unique to specific companies.

On the healthy vs. non-healthy products, in good products and bad products — for us, it’s all about transparency. I always say when you’re tucking into a Ben & Jerry’s and you’re on a diet, you know there are no hidden calories here — they’re right there for you to enjoy. And the world needs all sorts of different things to function. But I think transparency is critical. People should understand what they’re trying to get into, and we shouldn’t try to fool people. We shouldn’t have hidden sugars or hidden fats.

“We were the only corporation to support Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park, which was a surprise to them, as well.”

It’s got to be transparent and open. It goes the same for all other industries. So again, I think it’s hard to say, “Oh, I’m in this business and this product, hence, I can’t have a social impact strategy.”

Klein: As you think about the social impact that Ben & Jerry’s has had and the places where you’ve tried to make a difference — I’m particularly interested in your own operations, whether this is your supply chain, your HR practices — can you talk to us about something that you’re particularly proud of — perhaps something relatively recent — and then, areas where you say, “We haven’t cracked this nut, we still have work to do in this area”?

Solheim: We did an assessment around what are the really big and important issues [to us] and … [after] a lot of internal discussion, it was very clear to us that there were two big topics that we needed to address over the next to five to 10 years and that’s climate and climate justice and inequality.

Racial and income … inequities that we’re seeing are creating such a tension in society, it’s hard even to operate businesses. … So we’ve embraced these two topics and what I’m the most proud of is just to see how our teams, our partners, embrace it and scale and throw themselves into making a difference. That’s probably what makes me the most proud.

What we haven’t cracked is, how do you reduce your carbon footprint by 80%? There’s a lot noise out there [about] a way [of doing business] that will be carbon neutral — well, the carbon footprint of a business goes end to end. It starts on a farm and finishes with the waste product. And you need to take responsibility for the whole thing — we need to reduce that by 80%. Fifty percent of our carbon footprint is in ingredients.

Klein: On the inequity/inequality front, maybe two questions. What is the connection you’re seeing between business success and inequality? What is that negative relationship you are seeing? And how might you take action in this space?

Solheim: That’s typically the first question you get when you’re getting involved in structural racism and some of these other deep-rooted social issues — and what’s in it for a business. If you actually look at the correlation of success, of economic success and inequality, it is highly correlated. We have an inherent value and belief that a society where everybody is treated justly and equally is just a better community to be in. It maps out very nicely, as well, in terms of economic opportunity and success.

It comes from our human values; it comes from the values we have in our company. But we also see those communities thriving and doing better and being better for our business. Climate justice is about climate change, but it’s also about the fact that poor people, disadvantaged people, get hurt first. The wealthy can move, they can shift around; the poor cannot. That has an equity component in it. But as we’re moving into the next phase, for us, we have to recognize that we’re a terribly white company. You know, we come from Vermont, and Vermont is 96% white.

We’ve had to do a lot of work in our company to really, really understand it. And we’ve partnered with a whole host of different, amazing partners, we’ve had a lot of NGOs and activists that have taken their time and invested in us to get a better understanding of this.

I think 2016 will be exciting. It’s an election year, it’s a great opportunity to rearrange the lighting [and] get a disproportionate impact on certain key issues like voter rights and minority participation in our democracy.

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• Ben & Jerry’s Is Turning 40. Here’s How They Captured a Trend That Changed American Ice Cream

Ben & Jerry’s Is Turning 40. Here’s How They Captured a Trend That Changed American Ice Cream

F orty years ago, when Ben & Jerry’s opened for their first day on May 5, 1978, the ice cream scene in the United States didn’t look quite like it does today.

In fact, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, who had grown up together on Long Island, N.Y., were at the forefront of a superpremium ice cream trend that was still small but gaining steam. And, though they seemed to have stumbled onto ice cream by accident, their timing was remarkable. In the years that followed, they and their fellows would change the taste of American ice cream.

The market for superpremium ice cream — which often uses natural ingredients, has less air churned in (making the ice cream more dense) and has higher butterfat content — was at the time led by Häagen-Dazs, which was already a leader in the field, having started in 1961 and opened their first scoop shop in 1976.

But leading the luxury ice creams wasn’t leading the whole market, as TIME wrote in a 1981 cover story about ice cream . In 1980, Häagen-Dazs produced 40 million pints (about 5 million gallons), which was just a small fraction of the total American production of more than 829 million gallons of ice cream. Stats from 1979 also gave some context: in a $1.6 billion industry, the single biggest market share went to Dart & Kraft (maker of Sealtest and Breyers) at 12.2%, followed by Borden’s 9.3%. Lever Bros. (Good Humor) was Number 7 with 2.3% of the market. Put together, the most expensive brands of ice creams only comprised a total 11% of the market.

But those better-tasting, more costly brands were gaining ground : though ice cream sales overall had increased only 1% in a year, the luxury sector had increased 17%.

Cohen and Greenfield initially weren’t planning to become major leaders in superpremium ice cream. But Cohen wasn’t having much luck selling his pottery and Greenfield had been rejected by medical schools, so they agreed to open some kind of store together. They incorporated their business in 1977, initially thinking of opening a bagel shop. When the machinery costs for bagels were too high, they instead invested in a $5 course in ice cream making at Penn State (famously attended by ice cream makers of all sizes). With $4,000 from each — including help from Cohen’s father, who paid half his share — and another $4,000 from a bank loan, they got to work converting a gas station in Burlington to suit their needs.

Both were 27 years old when they opened in May 1978, at the start of the summer season. But, because Vermont isn’t always weather-suited to frozen dessert shops, Ben also made crêpes , soups and other food while Jerry was in charge of the ice cream. In 1979 they dropped the other food—the ice cream was a success, the crêpes not so much.

From the start they were focused on intensely flavored, chunky and creative ice creams, because, as Cohen told the New York Times in 1994, “I’ve never had a very good sense of smell, and if you don’t have that, you don’t have a good sense of taste. When we began, the game was for Jerry to make a flavor I could taste with my eyes closed. To do that he had to make ice creams that were intensely flavored.” Not all of their early ice creams were successful, as Cohen told LIFE in 1987: “We tried and failed with our first batch of Rum Raisin in 1977. It was rubbery. You put a spoon in it and the spoon pulled back.” But they managed to fix that problem.

TIME opened that 1981 ice cream cover story like so: “What you must understand at the outset is that Ben & Jerry’s, in Burlington, Vt., makes the best ice cream in the world.” Ben & Jerry’s didn’t hesitate to push that marketing hit, though TIME went on to deliver equal superlatives to a handful of other ice cream scoopers. “Ice cream is our drug of choice, and butterfat—the word itself is dizzyingly lovely and globulous—is the occasion of our guiltiest and most delicious sin,” the story also declared.

Ben & Jerry’s also had an extra distinguishing factor. Where Häagen-Dazs’s faux-Scandinavian name added to their high-end image, as TIME noted in 1985 , Cohen and Greenfield “tried to create an image of simple-down home wholesomeness.” That image went right down to the picture on the cartons, showing “a picture of the two bespectacled, bushy-haired owners, who look like refugees from a ’60s commune.” And it was working, the story explained:

Only seven years ago, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield were struggling entrepreneurs who sold ice cream in a single-scoop shop that they had opened in a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vt. Now Cohen and Greenfield, both 34, distribute their unusual flavors, including mint with Oreo cookies and Heath Bar crunch, throughout the Northeast, from Maine to Maryland, and to selected stores in Indiana, Tennessee and Colorado. Sales in the first half of 1985 reached $3.6 million, twice the pace of last year. Ben & Jerry‘s is getting fat on America’s growing appetite for so-called super-premium ice cream, brands made with natural ingredients and plenty of butterfat. Häagen-Dazs, the ice cream that has the pseudo-Scandinavian name but is made in America by Pillsbury, pioneered the superpremium field and spawned such imitators as Frusen Glädjé from Dart & Kraft and Alpen Zauber, which is produced by a small Brooklyn company. Americans last year gobbled an estimated 66 million gal. of superpremium ice cream, up about 12% from 1983.

For years they kept the top salary at their company no more than five times larger than the lowest paid worker’s salary. (Their highest salary is now somewhere between 11 and 15 time the lowest full-time employee’s, according to a 2017 B-corp assessment.)

Expanding from their scoop shop to wholesale deliveries in 1979, the pair quickly brought their frosty wares to the northeast and soon enough across the U.S. By 1987 they had a $30 million empire, with Ben and Jerry’s ice cream in 35 states, and in 1994 — the year Cohen stepped down as CEO — they hit $150 million.

Today the market is changing again. Though rich, indulgent superpremium ice creams are still top sellers, consumers are also looking for “healthier” desserts. Last summer, low-calorie Halo Top beat both Ben & Jerry’s and Häagen-Dazs as top seller among grocery store pints of ice cream.

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Ben & Jerry’s Radical Ice Cream Dreams

By David Marchese July 27, 2020

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“There wasn’t any other business talking about dismantling white supremacy.”

Ben & Jerry's Radical Ice Cream Dreams

By David Marchese

It has now become trendy for corporations to take a stance on social-justice issues without fear of hurting the bottom line. In fact, it’s widely seen as a way to do the opposite, and that has a lot to do with groundwork laid by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the founders of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade ice cream. The two childhood friends started out making ice cream in 1978, opening their first shop in a remodeled gas station in Burlington, Vt., and turned their business into one known around the world — both for its distinct chunk-filled product as well as for its determination to be a force for good via community involvement, environmentally sustainable practices and the creation of a still-lucrative alternative to the simple pursuit of profit. Though Cohen and Greenfield, both 69, long ago ceded control of the company, they’re still involved in promoting its social-justice campaigns, and their spirit is still found in the company’s progressive practices. (Maybe you saw its corporate statement , released in response to George Floyd’s killing, about dismantling white supremacy.) ‘‘Using ice cream to talk about difficult issues creates an opening,’’ Cohen said. ‘‘You can talk in a way that’s tinged with lightness, which makes it much more palatable.’’ Which is something he and Greenfield know a little bit about.

If you look at the history of Ben & Jerry’s, you always had noble goals: You wanted to keep control of the company. You wanted the highest-paid employee to never make more than five times that of the lowest-paid employee. You didn’t want to keep growing for the sake of growth. And yet you had to sell the company, that pay ratio wasn’t maintained and the company just kept growing. What does that show us about how capitalism can subsume good intentions? Cohen: The end result of capitalism is not unlike a Monopoly game. One guy gets all the bucks, and everybody else loses. What we have in America is a democracy that’s run for the benefit of corporations. That’s a disaster. We’re looking at it, we’re living it and it continues to get worse. Does that answer your question?

It didn’t really, but I can’t tell if you went off on a tangent or were being evasive. Cohen: I’m not trying to evade. I was going off on a tangent. There’s no doubt that Ben & Jerry’s has influenced capitalism more than capitalism influenced Ben & Jerry’s. Ben & Jerry’s and a few others — The Body Shop, Patagonia — were pioneers in creating a model of business that saw making profits to be coequal with its purpose of improving society beyond just providing jobs. There’s a bunch of corporations genuinely starting to see the light. Granted, capitalism subsumed the concept of socially responsible business. Every major corporation now has a corporate social responsibility officer. The biggest problem in terms of Ben & Jerry’s being subsumed is that if you see the major problem in our society as being the continuing concentration of wealth into fewer hands, that we ended up getting owned by a huge multinational works against what I believe is needed to create a more equitable society. But with that exception, the company continues to do as much as it can to heal the wounds of capitalism.

Is there anything that makes you squeamish about Ben & Jerry’s making ice cream flavors called Pecan Resist, which is a reference to resisting certain Trump administration’s policies, or Justice ReMix’d, whose name alludes to the company’s work in criminal-justice reform? Coming up with politically driven flavor names was not something you did much of when you were running things. Isn’t there something glib about it? Greenfield : It doesn’t make me squeamish if the initiative is genuine. If you talk about Justice ReMix’d, the flavor is there to call attention to the issue of criminal-justice reform, and the activities the company has done — one of them was closing down the Workhouse jail in St. Louis. Cohen: We won! Greenfield: Right, and another was changing the budget in the school system in Miami and hiring counselors instead of police officers. Cohen: We half won! Greenfield: When those flavors are part of real action that the company is undertaking in partnership with nonprofits, I think it’s great to be tying ice cream into social action. Cohen: You know, the company once came out with a flavor called American Pie. The packaging showed the pie chart of the federal discretionary budget; it was advocating shifting money out of nuclear weapons into children’s services. Greenfield: A pie chart of the federal discretionary budget is a well-known marketing technique for selling ice cream.

I’m salivating just thinking about it. On the subject of flavors — Greenfield: I want to interrupt you for a second. Ben and I are always talking about the mission of the company, and people always want to talk about flavors. People are fascinated by flavors.

So am I. What would go in a Joe Biden flavor, and what would go in a Donald Trump flavor? Cohen: A Trump flavor, it’s not palatable. You can’t make Trump into ice cream. You could make him into coal.

What about Biden? Cohen: It’s an interesting question. [Sighs.] You know, it’d be better than nothing.

Ben, I know you’re a Bernie Sanders guy, but what would it take to get you excited about Biden? As a presidential candidate, not as a flavor of ice cream. Cohen: If he would essentially adopt Bernie’s platform. They talk about the Hillary wing of the party and the Bernie wing of the party. Biden epitomizes the Hillary wing, the wing in which he went to a group of big-money donors and said: “Elect me. I guarantee nothing will change for you.” We could go back to a pre -Trump country, and we would still need all the change represented by Bernie’s platform. Going back to a pre-Trump country will not address systemic problems that our country faces in terms of fairness, equality, and justice.

Now I have an ice cream etiquette question. You know how some people dig the chunks out of Ben & Jerry’s? Cohen: Marriages have split because of that.

What’s your position? I think it’s selfish. Cohen: If your partner also likes the chunks, it’s inconsiderate. But if it’s yourself who’s doing it, it’s fine. Greenfield: The term for this is “mining.” Mining for chunks. I’ve never been tempted to do it. I don’t see the point. Although recently Ben & Jerry’s started selling chocolate-chip-cookie-dough pellets separately from ice cream for those people who wanted to dig them out. Cohen: Who wanted to mainline. Greenfield: Mainline ? No, Ben.

And why did Ben & Jerry’s never sell gallons? Would they have been prohibitively expensive? Cohen: Yes, the expense. The other reason is that as ice cream hangs out in your modern self-defrosting freezer, it degrades. If it’s in a small package, you finish it quicker, and there’s less chance of it degrading in quality. Greenfield: There’s an opposing theory, though, Ben. It’s that the more ice cream people have in their freezer, the more they’ll actually eat. But that only matters if one were concerned about selling more ice cream, which Ben and I are not anymore. Now, there was a time when Ben and I were absolutely trying to sell ice cream. We were out there on the road hawking it. Cohen: It was like an adventure in the wilderness. Greenfield: We have incredible memories of going to restaurants that were going out of business, and some auction company was selling off their old stuff, and we were bidding on things and loading them up in a truck and driving them home. That’s what I remember more fondly than any business things.

Is it right that before you guys started in ice cream, you had some goofy idea for a business involving delivering bagels and lox and The New York Times to people? Greenfield: Come on, man. What’s so goofy about that? Cohen: We were calling that business U.B.S., United Bagel Service. But we wanted to locate our business in a rural college town, because that’s the kind of place where Jerry and I wanted to live. Eventually we realized that there weren’t that many people in rural college towns looking to have the Sunday New York Times and bagels, cream cheese and lox delivered to their door.

Maybe I’m too uptight about money, but it’s surprising to me that you’ve managed to stay such good friends after being in business together all these years. Money was never an issue? Greenfield: I don’t think we ever had a disagreement about money. The most famous disagreement was about the size of the chunks in the ice cream. Ben is well known for his inability to smell and therefore his inability to taste. So he was always focused on texture in ice cream. He liked big chunks of cookies and candies. But I was the one making the ice cream, and it’s hard to put big chunks in ice cream, which is why no other ice cream companies do it. I was advocating that a larger number of smaller chunks be well distributed throughout the ice cream. Ben was insisting on bigger chunks. Ben was right. Cohen: I was eating Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch last night and was tunneling around for the big chunks.

I believe the term is mining. Greenfield: Tunneling works also. Cohen: Tunneling works great. But, you know, it’s disappointing when you keep tunneling around and you never run into what you’re aiming for. I still think we ought to put a golden cone inside some pint — do the Willy Wonka golden-ticket thing. I can’t understand how we have yet to do that. Greenfield: Ben, in case you hadn’t figured this out, did all the marketing for the company.

Jerry, there has been a proliferation of other premium and ultra-premium ice cream brands. There’s Ample Hills. There’s Van Leeuwen. There’s Jeni’s Splendid. And a result is that it’s not uncommon to go into a grocery store and see a $9 pint of ice cream. What’s your perspective on that change in the market? Greenfield: It’s kind of crazy for me to say this, but it seems like a lot of money to pay for a pint of ice cream. Ben and I remember when Ben & Jerry’s pints of ice cream first started going over $2 a pint. We were terrified that nobody was going to buy it. Cohen: There’s a bunch of artisanal guys now, and one of the great things about the ice cream business, which is one of the reasons we got into it, is that there’s a very low barrier to entry. The equipment to make very high quality ice cream on a small scale is not very expensive.

Do either of you have non-Ben & Jerry’s ice creams in your freezers? Cohen: No. Greenfield: No. But if any of those other ice cream companies wanted to give me some ice cream, I would be all for it.

To get back to a couple of bigger ideas — Greenfield: The other thing I want to mention is that Ben and I are sometimes asked, “Why has Ben & Jerry’s been successful?” We usually say it’s because of three things: really high quality ice cream, great ingredients, very unusual flavors – and also the activist social mission of the company. Some other company could start making ice cream with big chunks the same way Ben & Jerry’s does, but Ben & Jerry’s having this activist, outspoken social mission — other companies can’t copy that. It’s not something you can just say. It has to be who the people are.

How close of a connection do you feel to Ben & Jerry’s today? Greenfield: You may know that Ben and I both still work at the company. But as we always tell people, we’re not involved in management or operations. I’m proud of the mission of the company and how it’s being actualized. Sometimes people ask me, “How do you feel seeing your name on ice cream containers in stores everywhere?” I don’t feel anything from that. Cohen: It’s like the company is a child who has moved out of the house and is now on their own. You hope that your child will have the values that you tried to instill. I’m amazed to see that the values are there. The regret I have is that the overwhelming problem in the world is the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer entities, and having Ben & Jerry’s owned by one of those is, to me, unfortunate. When the company was sold, something I resisted, there were people trying to comfort me by saying, “Now Ben & Jerry’s can influence Unilever.” I thought that was a bunch of [expletive]. But I think that it has had a positive influence on Unilever. I certainly wouldn’t say Unilever is values-led, but it is starting to integrate more social benefits into how it does business. That’s good.

If you two are not in operations and not in management, what exactly do you do? Are you mascots? Cohen: We have no responsibilities and no authority, but no, I don’t regard myself as a mascot. I regard myself as a person who is focused on justice. When Ben & Jerry’s does something that aligns with my belief in justice, I do everything I can to support that. Greenfield: When the company introduced Justice ReMix’d, Ben and I were involved in that. Last year, the company introduced a flavor at a United Nations forum in Geneva that was called Cone Together that was related to refugee rights. Ben and I were involved in that, too. We also go to the franchise meeting every year and hang out with the shop owners and talk about our hopes for the company. Even though we don’t really influence things, people like to hear what we’re thinking. So, David, can I ask you a question?

Of course. Greenfield: You’ve done a lot of reading about Ben & Jerry’s. Is this what you were expecting? Where have we let you down?

You haven’t let me down. But I wonder if there’s more you could be saying about what Ben & Jerry’s being bought by Unilever ultimately meant for the values you originally tried to instill in the company. Greenfield: Well, so, Ben & Jerry’s has been part of Unilever for about 20 years. For the first number of years, I think Unilever did not appreciate the mission of Ben & Jerry’s, and its energy went into integrating Ben & Jerry’s into the Unilever system. During that time, the social mission of the company suffered. The company as a brand also suffered. About ten years ago, Unilever named a new chief executive for Ben & Jerry’s, Jostein Solheim, who told us that his assignment was to re-radicalize Ben & Jerry’s. And during that time, Ben & Jerry’s rediscovered its soul. Ben & Jerry’s publicly supported Occupy Wall Street. Ben & Jerry’s publicly supported Black Lives Matter before most other companies. Now within Unilever, there’s an incredible amount of respect for what Ben & Jerry’s has done. I mean, this last statement by Ben & Jerry’s after the George Floyd killing: There wasn’t any other business talking about dismantling white supremacy.

How skeptical, though, should we be of the intentions behind statements like that? So many socially progressive statements that companies are making these days obviously also double as marketing. Cohen: The deal about Ben & Jerry’s is that when your company is acting on its values and those values resonate with your consumers’ values, it’s an incredibly deep connection based on justice, fairness, equality — the stuff that we thought the country is supposed to be about when they taught us in elementary school. The other thing is that businesses are the most powerful force in our society, and things have gotten to such a state with Trumpism that businesses — which had always said, “We’re not going to take political stands” — have to make their voice heard because there’s no other powerful actor doing it. Money talks.

Do you ever meet people who are surprised that Ben and Jerry are real guys? And that you’re them? And that you’re still alive? Cohen: Maybe two years after we started, when the business was this little homemade ice cream parlor in an old gas station in Burlington, Jerry and I were hanging around outside the store, and a boy and his father were walking in. The little boy said, “Daddy, is there really a Ben and a Jerry?” And the father said, “Maybe many, many years ago.” Greenfield: I’ve had people ask me, “Are you the original Jerry?” I say: “There used to be another Jerry. I got hired to be the next one.” My wife gets a kick out of that.

After all this time in and around the ice cream business, what have you learned about what ice cream means to Americans? Cohen: It’s about happiness. Ice cream is present at most any celebration, birthday, wedding, bar mitzvah. And Americans stock ice cream in their freezers as a staple. That is very unusual compared with other countries. Around the world, a huge amount of ice cream is sold in single-unit servings.

Do you guys ever get sick of ice cream? I worked in an ice cream shop one summer when I was a teenager, and it put me off ice cream for a solid year. Greenfield: You were in the industry! You’ve been holding back on us! But no, I never had that. I tended to eat ice cream more recreationally than Ben. Ben was in charge of quality control, which meant eating a lot of ice cream. Once we started packaging ice cream into pints, Ben felt that he had to eat all the way to the bottom. Any ice cream flavor tastes good for the first couple of spoonfuls. The real test is how it tastes when you get down to the bottom. Cohen: Yeah, I was sick of it. But now that I’m no longer eating it because my job requires me to, I don’t get sick of it. I eat a reasonable amount. Every once in a while I go overboard. Greenfield: We both still eat a lot of ice cream.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from three conversations.

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Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream, Inc.: Keeping the Mission(s) Alive

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Ben & Jerry's is an anti-establishment, values-driven company that has become a successful venture. The dominant founder, Ben Cohen, is not an effective manager, but he brings creative marketing and…

• Length: 22 page(s)
• Publication Date: Oct 17, 1991
• Discipline: General Management
• Product #: 392025-PDF-ENG

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Ben & Jerry's is an anti-establishment, values-driven company that has become a successful venture. The dominant founder, Ben Cohen, is not an effective manager, but he brings creative marketing and product skills that have been important to the company's success. He also is controlling shareholder and the force behind the company's socially-minded culture. One of the many policies that have reflected Ben's values but which has created difficulty in managing the organization is the 5 to 1 compensation differential between the top and the bottom of the organization. Up to mid 1990, the company was operating in an explosive growth business with relatively weak competitors; this has changed by the time of the case in September 1990. The case opens as Chuck Lacy is taking over as president. He needs to decide what to do about the 5 to 1 rule and the related issues of Ben's role, and the value of the company's counterculture style. Students must consider the difficulty and importance of the general manager's responsibility in reconciling company values with commercial imperatives and to consider the effect of compensation policy on morale and organizational effectiveness.

Oct 17, 1991 (Revised: Dec 15, 1993)

Discipline:

General Management

Geographies:

Industries:

Food industry

Harvard Business School

392025-PDF-ENG

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Ben & Jerrys Homemade Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Home >> Finance Case Studies Analysis >> Ben & Jerrys Homemade

Case Summary History

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield were eagerly looking to start their own business and they were actively looking for a suitable opportunity. Moreover, they not only wanted a business with profit motive but they also had a passion to do it and they were passionate about eating, therefore, they decided to start a restaurant business and the next move was to select a suitable product for their business and they found ice cream as a potential product, which was becoming popular so they decided to open an ice cream parlor.

However, since ice cream could easily be sold in areas warm temperature so they tried to find a location with warm weather and more college kids in order to assure the successful launch of their ice cream parlor, but all the suitable markets had already been reached by other ice cream parlors and they could not find a suitable market where they could launch their ice cream parlor so finally they ended up in opening their ice cream parlor in Burlington, Vermont in 1978.

Current Situation

Since then Ben & Jerry's Homemade (Ben & Jerry's) began to launch new flavors and new outlets in order to grow their ice cream business and its profitability has continuously been improving with net revenues of $209 million as per the results of year ended 1998 and during the 22 years of performance, they had expanded into international market with 170 stores and became major producer of ice cream products and its portfolio of ice cream flavors included more than 15 ice cream flavors.

Cohen and Greenfield have been emphasizing on the importance of corporate social responsibilities in order to gain market share and they have initiated many community programs as part of their social responsibility. Moreover, active participation of Ben & Jerry's Homemade in social activities and improved financial performance have brought it to a leading market position not only in ice cream industry but it also commanded social causes in the society. For now, Ben & Jerry's Homemade is charging premium prices to its consumers based on its public image and quality of its ice cream flavors.

Mission Statement

Ben & Jerry's had established their objectives that led to the integration with mission statement. Ben & Jerry's mission statement was based on three categories including the provision of high quality and innovative ice cream products, economic objectives that include value addition for shareholders through profitability and economic well being of its employees and social objectives provide social benefit services at local and international level. Ben & Jerry's had maintained a balance among three objectives in order to serve all the objectives equally. However, Ben & Jerry's had successfully achieved the product element of its mission by selling high quality ice cream made of natural ingredients and made it available in different flavors, meanwhile, the economy element of its mission statement was also achieved through enhanced profitability and increased shareholders value by growing ROE in past and employees were awarded financial rewards. Moreover, social mission was remarkably achieved by offering wide variety of programs and initiative in the interest of local and international society.

Social Consideration

Ben & Jerry's has been very active in social activities and their active role in initiation of social causes have led him in a commanding role for socially driven activities in the ice cream industry. Meanwhile, its aggressive approach towards improvement of society has built its brand image into the general public as a socially responsible company, who will always prefer the society over their profit motives. Ben & Jerry's has been involved in number of social activities from helping local communities by donations to waste management through encouraging local pig farmers and helping them to grow their pig farm. In addition to this, Ben & Jerry's has launched ice cream flavors that had been made through rainforest products in order to support the sustainability.

Acquisition Offers

During the year 2000, Ben & Jerry's has received acquisition offers from Unilever, Dreyer’s Grand, Meadowbrook Lane Capital and Chartwell Investments, however, their offers had different pros and cons but a very suitable offer was received from Unilever, who offered cash consideration of $36 per share of Ben & Jerry's that implied a premium of $15 and this offer also provided that selected current management will continue to work at Ben & Jerry's after acquisition.

Financial Performance and Ratios Analysis

Overall financial performance has improved during the year 1998 where revenues have grown by more than 20% in the year 1998. In addition to this, gross, operating and net profit margins have also grown by 1.5%, 16.2% and 36.4% respectively. Moreover, the shareholders value has been enhanced through higher return on equity generated during the year 1998 that has grown by more than 50% in comparison to last ..............................

This is just a sample partial case solution. Please place the order on the website to order your own originally done case solution.

This case examines issues of asset management for the home, Ben and Jerry's Inc, in the light absorption offers outstanding Chartwell Investments, Grand Dreyer, Unilever, and Meadowbrook Lane Capital in January 2000. The case provides a unique opportunity to discuss the main goals and objectives and the consequences of gay corporate, it considers the development of a strong social consciousness of Ben & Jerry and absorption-defense mechanisms that support the management of the assets management company. Students in the role of the external members of the Board of Directors, it is proposed to review the effectiveness of management, evaluating the economic costs of its social agenda, and to assess the implications of defense acquisition strategy. Ultimately, they have to take a position on, Ben & Jerry have to continue to carry out its own social program, or take one of the attractive offers of absorption and to shift toward greater profit orientation. Case requires relatively little prior knowledge of finance, and is to a large extent provide the enabling implementation of the principles of traditional corporate training program funding. This Darden study. "Hide by Michael J. Schill Source: Darden School of Business 16 pages. Publication Date: September 13, 2002. Prod. #: UV0273-PDF-ENG

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Ben & Jerry`s Homemade - Case Study - Analysis of the Ice Producer

Seminar paper, 2000, 16 pages, grade: 69% (2+), christian scheffler (author), 2 executive summary, 3 introduction.

4 Situation Analysis 4.1 Market Analysis 4.2 Company analysis 4.3 Strengths 4.4 Weaknesses 4.5 Summary: Where the company is right now 4.6 Opportunities 4.7 Threats 4.8 Summary: Where the company could go

5 Proposed Strategy

6 Strategy implementation 6.1 Reshaping the internal structure of the company 6.2 Restructuring of distribution; channels, distributors 6.3 Concentrating on key markets 6.4 International expansion

7 Future Outlook

8 recommendations to the investor.

9 Appendix 9.1 S.W.O.T. Analysis 9.2 P.E.S.T.-L.I.C.E. Analysis 9.3 Five Forces Analysis 9.4 Gearing Ratio Calculation 9.5 Sensitivity Analysis 9.6 Gantt chart

10 List of Reference

Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc. (B&J) is one of the two major players in the superpremium ice-cream market in the United States of America. B&J had been very successful throughout the 1980s; controlled by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. It currently holds 42% of its market. It benefits from its high product quality, social image and marketing strategy, high employee satisfaction, and overall good financial situation while it suffers from high costs of sale, poor policies towards distributors and suppliers, and lack of international focus. While the company made a net loss of $1.9 million in 1994, this was due to an asset write-down of $6.8 million and the introduction of a new line of ice-cream which both can be regarded as nonrecurring events. Debt ratio and liquidity indicate that this financial crisis is temporary. Even with a slowing American economy and with it reduced ice-cream sales, B&J, with its highly differentiated product with luxury character is not as affected by the downturn.

However, the company faces the risk of falling behind strong competition. In order to strengthen its competitive position it will have to drive down the cost of sales, expand internationally, and expand domestically.

The purpose of this strategic plan is to identify and suggest the optimal solution for B&J to gain a strong competitive position in terms of market share and profitability in its business area. The study team believes that B&J should adopt ways to (1) defend its current market position, 2) expand total domestic as well as international market demand, and (3) at the same time drive down production costs.

This report begins with our proposed strategy analysis for B&J followed by an analysis of the internal and external environment. Next, the reasons for selecting this strategy are presented. The implementation plan incorporates information about key resources requirements as well as the likely outcomes, both financial and non-financial, of this proposal. In section 7, projected outcomes of those strategies are presented. Finally, the study group will give some recommendations to the investor on pre- and post-investment strategies.

4 Situation Analysis

4.1 market analysis.

- Health conscious consumers: As health awareness continues to rise throughout the population, it has the potential to slow down sales of the high-fat super premium flavours. - Seasonal demand: Ice cream has always seen as a summer treat. In the summer, ice-cream sales are up to 30% higher than in the winter 1 . - Declining demand: The overall weakening economy in the United States has already had an impact on sales in the super premium ice-cream market. - Price competition: Price competition has become more intense 2 .

4.2 Company analysis

B&J is operating in the super premium ice-cream manufacturing business. The US super premium ice-cream business is dominated by the two main competitors. The market therefore has the characteristics of a duopoly.

A variety of factors define the company's current competitive position in the marketplace. Firstly, B&J finds itself in a highly competitive, low growth market. Haagen-Dazs - the company's biggest competitor - and B&J have been constantly fighting towards leadership in the super premium ice-cream market. Chart 4.2-1 below shows the latest position of B&J.

Market Shares in the Superpremium Ice-Cream Market (1995)

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Chart 4.2-1

Chart 4.2-2 shows the increase in sales vs. the increase in cost of sales. While the increase in sales in 1994 was mainly due to the success of the newly introduced "Smooth, No Chunks" line and a 3.7% price increase of pints, the increase in cost of sales was also caused by the fact that the company has about 40% of its manufacturing supplied by Edy's Grand Ice-Cream. The "out-of-house" production means a significant loss of control over the production process, especially over cost management. Hopefully this situation will improve with the start of production at the new St. Albans production plant.

Increases in net sales vs. costs of sales

Chart 4.2-2

The company finds itself in a complex system of strengths and weaknesses and external factors, which results in a variety of opportunities and threats for the company (for detailed information, see appendix 10.1).

4.3 Strengths

4.3.1 reputation for quality.

The high quality of the product is certainly a crucial factor for the success of the proposed strategy. The stress on the genuine origin of the ingredients and the company's name "Homemade" creates and nourishes this impression in the eyes of the customer. The company's strong R&D department constantly develops new innovative flavours. Even though the barrier to imitation is extremely low 3 , this helps to create the cutting edge to stay ahead of the competition.

4.3.2 Social Marketing

The founders beliefs in social responsibility has not only earned them the brand loyalty of the socially aware ‘baby-boomer’ generation, it also has saved the company a lot of money by providing free marketing through media coverage of social events 4 .

4.3.3 Employee satisfaction

The company’s devotion to employee satisfaction 5 is one of the causes for the company’s low employee turnover rate of 12%. The low turnover rate has impact on learning effects, training costs, and employee commitment. Longer employed workers are more likely to understand the production process and suggest improvements. The lower turnover rate also results in a better reputation of the company in terms of working environment. This gives the company the opportunity to choose from a wider range of applicants.

4.3.4 Low Gearing ratio

The low ratio of debts over total assets of 27% in 1994 gives B&J credibility, which is a good foundation for further investments and expansion (see appendix 10.4).

4.4 Weaknesses

4.4.1 high cost structure.

The high cost structure at B&J is mainly due to labour intensive production, above average wages 6 and their supplier policy. How far the costs can be associated with labour or high administration costs is not apparent from the data provided but worth investigating.

In addition, the company relies on one exclusive distributor 7 . This not only makes it very vulnerable in case of loss of this distributor, the company also loses control over its distribution channels. As the main competitors put more pressure on prices, the importance of cost control will rise.

4.4.2 Low shareholder value

This is caused by the lack of dividends. As 48% of the stocks are held collectively by the "Principal Stockholders" 8 this might not be a major concern but without the potential for a decent return on investment, potential investors will be reluctant to do so. The lack of investment into the company might prove as a disadvantage, especially in regard to the main competitor, whose resources are larger.

4.4.3 Lack of international experience

Although efforts have been made to expand business activity into the United Kingdom, Israel, and Russia, the company does not make use of its full international potential 9 . The attempt to market the range of B&J ice cream through restaurants is one step in that direction.

4.5 Summary: The current position of the company.

Even though the company made its first yearly loss in 1994, it can still be considered healthy 10 . The loss in 1994 is in the opinion of the study group mainly due to a few "one-off" factors. A large portion of the debt can be accounted for by the asset write-down of $6.8 million. This write-down was a result of a necessary redevelopment of a malfunctioning software system and incorrect assumption about the value at the St. Albans plant. The introduction of the "Smooth, No Chunks" line in the same year also resulted in some extra advertising and introduction costs 11 . The low debt-over-assets ratio and high liquidity ($20 million 12 ) proves the company's ability for further investment and/or international expansion. The performance record compared to the industry average also proves this point 13 .

Based on the analysis of the data given, the study group believes that B&J still has a strong position in the market and the ability to secure long-term future profit.

4.6 Opportunities

The non-fat (Sorbet) ice-cream market in the U.S. and the superpremium ice-cream market in Europe are still in very early stages of the lifecycle. Haagen-Dazs has gained a first-move advantage in Europe. However, the markets in Europe and Asia are still underdeveloped in terms of presence of superpremium ice cream. As well as new markets, new distribution channels could be opened 14 . The increase in production capacity will give B&J the opportunity to get production back into their own hands and increase productivity at their production facilities. If B&J is sufficiently present at U.S. supermarket outlets is not clear from the given data. If not, further growth is possible in that segment.

The new CEO Holland has experience in improving companies’ performance 15 . This could prove useful for the company in the future.

4.7 Threats

The overall weakening economy in the United States has already had an impact on the sales in the superpremium ice-cream market 16 . The main competitor has already expanded its operations into Europe and Asia. If B&J does not react to this development, it faces the risk of being stuck in the stagnating American market and no foothold in the growing European market.

Health awareness is rising in the population. This has the potential to slow down sales in the high-fat segment of the ice-cream market.

Dreyer, the company's exclusive distributor and an ice-cream manufacturer itself, is backed up by the strong, internationally operating Nestle group. If Dreyer's should decide to enter the superpremium ice-cream market, this poses a potential threat to B&J, especially since B&J is depended on this one sole distributor.

4.8 Summary: Suitable options.

A vast variety of options are open to the company. Those options can be divided into home market and international operations. Internationally, it can either expand in order to profit from the growth of the market, or it can focus on the home market to avoid the risks and additional expenses of international expansion. Other decisions regarding the internal running of the company will have to be made. There is still potential to cut down the cost of sales to improve the competitive position. There is no indication about the composition of the cost of sales in the information provided, especially no information about the structure of the administration costs. However, a few words about the labour costs can be said. Since the leadership of the company believes in a labour intensive production, labour costs are a main part of the overall cost structure. To reduce those costs, the company could

- Reduce the wages - Not increase the wages until they reach industry average - Reduce the work force volume and implement more labour efficient production means. - Shift work force to the new St. Albans production plant. - Reduce the financial and non-financial employee benefits. - Reduce working hours as long as production capacity exceeds market demand.

On the sales side of the production, more emphasis could be made on:

- Non-fat Sorbet flavours - Increasing demand for superpremium high-fat flavours - Expansion or withdrawal from speciality flavours (Peace Pops)

5 Proposed Strategy - Where the Company should go

On the basis of the analysis the study group suggests for Ben & Jerry to adopt ways to expand total market demand, and at the same time protect its current market share through good defensive and offensive actions. As B&J suffers from a high cost structure, this situation can be improved through strategic internal and external changes.

Part of B&J’s long-term strategy should be to become a market leader, using its competencies in R&D, new production plant and strong brand image.

While trying to expand total market share, B&J should increase their marketing expenditure, maintain product quality and innovate flavours. B&J has to continuously defend its current business against rival attacks.

The following is a list of feasible strategic options, in line with the company’s social mission.

- Reshaping internal structure - Restructuring of distribution; channels, distributors - Concentration on key markets - International expansion

6 Strategy implementation

The proposed strategies can be divided into short-term and long-term goals. Some strategies can be implemented immediately; others take more time to succeed. The study group proposes to divide the strategy implementation into four distinctive stages 17 .

6.1 Reshaping the internal structure of the company

The study team is aware of the sensitivity of this topic, taken the social responsibility and beliefs of the company leadership into account. However, the study team believes that making minor changes to the procedures and internal environment has the potential to increase the competitive advantage of the company without losing its image in the view of the consumer. Even though this would mean some disadvantages for the employees in the short term it will ensure their workplace and profit them in the longer term.

B&J should introduce product teams to include all members of staff from the different departments. This would integrate the activities involved in developing a new product. Cross-functional teamwork could speed up the production process and enable B&J to introduce new products faster.

The chart below shows how the future structure inside the company could look like:

Chart 6.1-1

6.1.1 R&D

The shifts in customer demand puts further stress on the importance of the R&D department. B&J has always maintained a full-time R&D department dedicated to the development of unconventional, cutting-edge flavours. It puts B&J at the forefront of the super premium ice-cream market. B&J should maintain this advantage. Since Ben Cohen is personally very interested in creating new flavours, it should not be a problem for B&J to create innovative flavours for its non- and low-fat products. Because its low-fat product has proved to be very successful during the last few years, B&J should concentrate on this line of production to match the changing consumer tastes.

6.1.2 Marketing & Sales

B&J should keep its social mission, but needs to introduce a new sales & marketing specialist, to centralise their marketing activities.

The main customers of B&J are reaching forty and are becoming more and more health conscious. To target this group of people, the focus of the advertising strategy should be promoting its low and non-fact products. B&J needs to redesign its advertising strategy such as adjusting the design of its packaging to match its current consumers’ tastes. Since the competition in the super-premium ice-cream industry becomes more intense in terms of price. B&J could offer coupons and discounts to attract more consumers.

B&J can expand the market through discovering and promoting new uses for the product; for example, they could promote ice cream eating on any occasion and any season. The seasonal demand for ice cream is caused by cultural characteristics. Through careful advertising, consumer behaviour can be changed. B&J should give up weaker territories, such as ‘Peace pops’, and reassigning resources to stronger territories, ‘Frozen Yoghurt’, ‘Low fat/Fat free’ products. Through this strategy, B&J would consolidate competitive strength in the market and concentrate mass at strategic positions.

6.1.3 Purchases

B&J has a very strict selection procedure for its suppliers and because of its social mission, it buys ingredients from small farms, which makes it cost inefficient. The company should buy products from suppliers that offer better prices even though these suppliers may not necessarily have the social values that B&J agrees with. Since this is against the mission B&J set, it is not a feasible option for the company.

6.1.4 Human Resources

B&J should maintain their social mission and keep manual labour, but in the long term move gradually towards less labour intensive production. It should keep the benefits but not increase the wages until they reach industry average. As B&J is growing larger, communication between management and employees might suffer. It is a key point to keep employees informed about changes in the organisation and company strategy.

6.1.5 Finance

From the sensitivity analysis (see appendix 10.5), it shows that the net profit/loss is very sensitive to the cost of sales and total administration costs. By reducing cost of sales by 1%, the loss would be reduced by 29.2%; by reducing the administration costs by 2%, the loss would be reduced by 19%. If in 1995 the company had managed to keep the administration cost within the budget and had not made bad investments, then the profit would have increased even with total sales remaining the same. The plant in St. Albans is a long-term investment and though the initial cost affected one year’s profit, it will eventually benefit the company, as new equipment will increase efficiency. Without the asset write-down, the profit would have increased by 24%.

6.2 Restructuring of distribution; channels, distributors

6.2.1 expansion of distribution channels.

Even though B&J has made some attempts to open up new distribution channels, those efforts are not sufficient enough. Making the product available to the customer at new locations is essential. Those locations could be:

- Restaurants - Internet - Take-out/to-go ice-cream stands in street malls

The availability of the product in restaurants could be achieved by co-operation both with large restaurant chains 18 as well as licensing with smaller restaurants.

Due to the fragile nature of the product, Internet sales will never become a major part of overall ice-cream sales. However, it supports the novelty image of the company. In addition, the company's website can become a marketing tool, offering a range of B&J related products 19 .

Even though, B&J is present at the market with B&J Café-like shops, this only targets mainly the eat-in customers. The spontaneous "Scoop-on-the-go" customer is not appreciated enough. Small franchised ice-cream stands located in busy High Street Malls could fill that niche.

6.2.2 Independence from distributors

Dreyer's Ice Cream, B&J's exclusive distributor, which accounts for over 50% of the company's sales, causes the company to lose too much control over its distribution channels. We propose restructuring the contract with Dreyer's to allow spreading the distribution among various distributors. That way, the company does not depend so much on a single distributor and the single distributor has less power, which puts B&J in a stronger position.

6.3 Concentrating on key markets

B&J target group focuses on 25-40 year old consumers in the upper-middle class sector without children. This customer group has more spare money to spend it on luxury goods like B&J. The single serving pint size is directed towards single households. Ben & Jerry should keep its target market, but attract buyers who are unaware of the product or who are resisting because of certain features. Along with this strategy, more emphasis should be put on commercial advertising. The company will have to reshape its social activities to optimise the advertising impact.

6.4 International expansion

As the U.S. superpremium ice-cream market reaches its maturity stage with slow-downs in market growth and sales 20 , international expansion becomes more and more important - especially considering the production capacity increase by 166% due to the new St. Albans production plant. The gearing ratio (Debts/Assets) was 27% in 1994 and 17% in 1993, in other words B&J has the financial resources to expand internationally. At the moment, international markets in Europe and Asia are underdeveloped regarding superpremium ice cream, even though Haagen-Dazs has already gained entry to the markets and substantial market share. However, these approaches towards international markets have to be very carefully considered: entering the unstable Russian market is more risky than for example the European market. The customer's attitude towards the product in Europe differs from the United States. Product and marketing strategy will have to be adapted to the specific market.

If the company should decide to follow the proposed strategic options, the following developments are likely to occur in the future:

- International expansion: Increase in sales volume is vital to the company. It will enable it to profit from economies of scale and higher profitability at the new production facilities, which are currently not operating to capacity. - Product competitiveness: Constant product innovation will secure sales by adapting to the changing consumer environment. - Product locations: By opening new channels of distribution overall consumption and therefore sales volume will increase. - Cost structure: Driving down production costs will increase profitability, shareholder value, and competitive position. - Employee satisfaction: The employee turnover rate will remain low due to good working environment and other benefits enabling the company to ride down the learning curve and profit from employee experience.

As stated in section 3, the company is still very healthy and has good prospects for future success. The study group believes that a long-term investment into the company will be profitable. However, if the investor should decide to increase its stake in the company, the study group advises to support some strategies vital to the company's competitive advantage and future profitability. These key points are:

1. International expansion: The U.S. market is reaching maturity. The entry into international markets at earlier stages of the lifecycle will secure future growth. 2. Reduction of cost of sales: A lower cost structure increases profitability, shareholder equity, and ability to stay competitive. 3. Reshaping of the internal structure: People are the biggest asset! By restructuring, work efficiency, employee satisfaction and overall company performance can be increased.

9 Conclusion

The study team believes that there are no companies who manage to stay on the road of success and profitability without any challenges to face. When major investments are made, minor temporary losses have to be expected. B&J are still at the top of the superpremium ice-cream industry. The study group believes that the investor should have confidence in investing further into the company.

10 Appendix

10.1 s.w.o.t. analysis, 10.2 p.e.s.t.-l.i.c.e. analysis, 10.3 five forces analysis.

(1) Risk of new entry by potential competitors

⇓: High entry barriers (image, customer loyalty) for new companies, possibility of ice-cream manufacturers to enter superpremium market.

(2) Degree of rivalry among established companies within an industry

⇑: Haagen-Dazs (vast resources)

(3) Bargaining power of buyers

⇑: Strong competition by Haagen-Dazs, but innovation advantage

Dreyer: 54 (52) % of net sales in 1993 (1994)

(4) Bargaining power of suppliers

⇓: Dependent on B&J, small, large in number

(5) Threat of substitute products

⇑: Premium ice creams

The 5 Forces

Chart 10.3-1

10.4 Gearing Ratio Calculation

Table 10.4-1

10.5 Sensitivity Analysis

10.5.1 …towards cost of sales, 10.5.2 …towards administration costs with the asset write-down.

Table 10.5-2

10.5.3 …towards administration costs without the asset write-down

Table 10.5-3

10.6 Gantt chart

Chart 10.6-1

11 References

- Case Study: Hill, J and Jones, G (1998) Strategic Management - An integrated Approach , Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA - Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc. Website: http://www.benjerry.com

1 Source: Case Study

2 Using sales promotion (Source: Case Study)

3 Competing ice-cream manufacturers are now able to imitate successful flavours within 60 days.

4 Source: Case Study

5 “Joy committees”

6 Source: Case Study: 26% above average

7 Dreyer Grand Ice-Cream

8 Ben Cohen, Jerry Greenfield, Fred Lager, and Jeffrey Furman

9 Source: Case Study

10 Without the asset write-down, B&J made a gross profit of $3.018 million in 1994.

11 Source: Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc. Website

12 Source: Case Study

13 The net profit margin of B&J is 5.1%, compared to the industry average of 3.4% (Case Study)

14 Presence in restaurants, at sport events, small stands in high street malls.

15 Source: Case Study

16 1.5% decrease in pint volume

17 A timetable for the implementation of these strategies is included in appendix Chart 10.6-1.

18 The study group suggests Pizza Hut, Applebee's, Chili's, etc.

19 Baseball-hats, coffee-mugs, fridge-magnets, mouse-pads, etc.

20 Source: Case Study

MBA-Student. Die Arbeit hat mir sehr gut gefallen und deswegen möchete ich das gleiche Thema für meine Hausarbeit/Präsentation (für das Fach Corporate Strategy an der Fachhochschule für Wirtschaft Berlin) nehmen. Ich würde gerne Kontakt mit dem Autor aufnehmen, so dass ich Zugang zu dem Case Study erlangen könnte, um meine eigene Hausarbeit/Präsentation vorbereiten zu können. Falls der Autor den Case Study als Datei nicht hat, und mir per E-Mail nicht schicken kann, werde ich selbstverständlich die Postkosten übernehmen. Edir Machado Leberstr. 66 10829 Berlin Tel.: 030 7871-8176 Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Edir Machado

Ben & Jerry. Hi Christian ! Deine Ausarbeitung ist sehr gut, kompliment! Ich mache gerade in England mein Auslandssemester und wir haben die Aufgabe ueber dasselbe Thema zu schreiben. Meine Frage daher an Dich: Hast du irgendwelche detaillierteren Angaben ueber Deine Resourcen? Falls ja, waere ich Dir dankbar, wenn du sie mir mal rueberschicken koenntest. Besten Dank im voraus, zerhusen

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How Ben & Jerry’s Uses Ice Cream to Shape Cultural Conversations

June 19, 2017

One of the challenges companies face when weaving purpose into marketing and branding is that socially conscious initiatives can feel disconnected from brand culture. A company that does an excellent job mixing consciousness into communications strategy is Ben & Jerry’s. Since its inception in the late 1970’s, the ice cream makers have dedicated their business to, not only making money and delicious treats, but also to building a better world.

Ice cream itself isn’t explicitly linked to social or environmental causes, but through a deep commitment to making an impact, coupled with innovative creative, Ben & Jerry’s intertwines purpose into its brand identity.

It goes without saying that the nuances of each individual business – and respective products and services — require tailored, purpose-driven plans, but the methods used by Ben & Jerry’s offer valuable lessons for companies looking to integrate purpose and utilize business as a force for good.

Here are a few ways to use products and services to join cultural movements:

1. Temporarily limit options:  Research shows that taking something away can be as much — or more — of a motivational factor than rewards. Therefore, limiting a product or service is a powerful way to catch stakeholder attention and bring pertinent cultural issues to light. What’s more, it is an effective means of positioning your brand as a storyteller in relevant social discussions.

In a recent effort to protest laws restricting same-sex marriage in Australia, Ben & Jerry’s  temporarily stopped serving patrons two scoops of the same flavor . While not being able to get two scoops of your favorite ice cream can be frustrating, “this doesn’t even begin to compare to how furious you would be if you were told you were not allowed to marry the person you love,” the brand said in a statement. “So we are banning two scoops of the same flavor and encouraging our fans to contact their MPs to tell them that the time has come – make marriage equality legal!”  By restricting ice cream lovers’ right to enjoy the flavors they desire, Ben & Jerry’s shed light on larger culture conversations about gay rights.

The key lesson here is that restraining customer options for a short time is an effective way of using your brand to touch upon larger social movements, especially those involving inequality, scarcity, or overconsumption.

2. Make branded media about social issues: Making public statements about social movements is one way to let consumers and the media know that your brand is invested in promoting good causes; however, incorporating your product or service into messaging about cultural issues is an even more compelling way to connect with social movements and scale the organic reach of your communications strategies.

Ben & Jerry’s did an amazing job of discussing climate change and promoting its brand with the  Save Our World video campaign . In the one-minute spot, the sweets-maker featured ice cream melting in a world hotter by 2 degrees Celsius , the tipping point beyond which experts predict irreversibly catastrophic climate impacts. Halfway through the video, the ice cream starts rehardening and viewers are prompted to encourage both public and private sector leaders to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, suggesting that only together we can reverse the impacts of climate change.

Ben & Jerry’s was, again, able to connect ice cream with global movements by creatively depicting the impacts of a warming planet on frozen desserts.

The key takeaway here is that utilizing your products or services in content that is focused on social issues is an excellent way to create relevant branded content that speaks to matters far greater than your brand or industry and inspires people to share it.

3. Create special edition offerings: Just as taking something away is a powerful means to generate awareness about an issue, so is producing a new special product or service related to a good cause. Moreover, special edition merchandise is a great way to connect your brand with culturales conversations by not only increasing awareness about the issue, but also donating a percentage of proceeds to a nonprofit working for the cause.

Vermont’s most famous ice cream company is notorious for its quirky flavors and names. The brand recently made a special treat to support a more just political system. During the 2016 presidential election, Ben & Jerry’s donated a percentage of proceeds from their special edition flavor,  Empowermint ,  to the NAACP, who work to increase voter registration, especially in underrepresented communities. Demonstrating that special edition products or services that support a social cause are excellent ways to inspire contributory consumption and associate your brand with larger cultural movements.

Brands that position their products and services inside larger cultural conversations are able to seamlessly weave social commentary into their marketing and branding strategy. Ben & Jerry’s purposeful initiatives are amazing case studies for effective ways to connect with social movements.  These purpose-driven actions not only strengthen  consumer goodwill, loyalty, and trust , but they can also inspire stakeholders to be advocates for your brand, generate earned media, and help to build a better world.

Connect with We First! Twitter:  @WeFirstBranding Facebook:  WeFirst LinkedIn:  WeFirst Youtube:  WeFirstTV Join our  mailing list  and invite Simon to  speak  at your next event or meeting.

Title image via Flickr  courtesy of user  Steam Pipe Trunk Distribution Venue at  https://flic.kr/p/eKNTkg . 

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Ben & Jerry Corporate Social Responsibility Case Study

Case summary, ben & jerry advocacy for sustainable consumption, business involvement in advocating causes like marriage equality, the other cause by ben & jerry.

Ben & Jerry is a company that is involved in the manufacture of ice cream and it is a distributor in the UK, the US, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, as well as other nations. It is a company that has been committed to ensuring customer satisfaction. It has been involved in a number of activities that it carries out to deliver customer rights, despite the fact that the company was taken over by Unilever in the year 2000.

Ben & Jerry has continued to grow under the ownership of Unilever. It has continued to execute its corporate social responsibility activities. Among the activities it has continued to advocate for include the supply of healthy foods to the citizens. For instance, the company has been against the Obama administration’s idea of introducing genetically engineered foods.

It feels that genetically modified food is not healthy food for the citizens, thus it has collaborated with other groups with a similar opinion to advocate for the same. In addition, the company has been an advocate of a green environment. Global warming is an issue that has become a serious issue. Many organizations, as well as government and social leaders have been advocating for a green environment.

Ben & Jerry is one of such organizations that have been supportive of the use of clean energy that produces less or no greenhouse gas. For instance, its truck fleet uses renewable energy from Native Energy, an energy provider located in Vermont. Its social responsibility has been among the factors that have helped in building the corporate image of Ben & Jerry, thereby giving it a competitive advantage.

Ben & Jerry is a company that has been highly supportive of sustainable consumption and has used a number of approaches to achieve this. The company believes in sustainable consumption and has continued living by this philosophy, despite being taken over by Unilever.

For instance, the founders of Ben & Jerry went to study how ice cream is produced before the company started producing ice cream to ensure they would produce good ice cream for consumption. They did not use scientific tests to test the ice cream flavors. Instead, they tested original flavors by giving people to taste and then rating the ice cream.

Another way through which the company has continued to support sustainable consumption is by opposing the Obama administration in its bid to introduce genetically engineered food. It did this by creating a ‘Something’s Fishy’ flavor. It is a flavor that the company used to express its opposition to the US Food and Drug Administration’s decision to allow genetically engineered salmon into the US food supply.

In addition, the company joined hands with the public outside the White House to press the Obama administration to block the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the genetically engineered food.

According to its website, Ben & Jerry is committed to speaking out against unhealthy food, as well as other policies that may be against sustainable consumption. Its support for a green environment is also supportive of sustainable consumption. The company supports a green environment by advocating for energy that does not produce a lot of greenhouse gas.

Business organizations are formed with the major objective of making profits. Therefore, all business activities should be focused on maximizing revenue and minimizing expenses as much as possible. Other activities that do not generate income are viewed as not being important for business organizations. Many economists and sociologists air their views on businesses being socially responsible.

These are activities that do not generate income to the business, yet they are expenses. Advocating for causes like marriage equality can be viewed or classified as a social responsibility for the businesses. It shows the businesses’ concern for humanity.

While businesses do not make any direct income from such causes, cause-related marketing may help in creating a brand image, which gives the business a competitive advantage. Therefore, I am supportive of cause-related marketing and I feel that business organizations should embrace it, as it will be beneficial in creating a brand image.

The other cause that the company has been involved in is animal cloning by advocating against animal cloning. This happened in the year 2008 when the FDA approved that the sale of milk from cloned animals is safe. In opposition to this, Ben & Jerry started a campaign that was aimed at creating awareness to the public regarding cloned animals.

The company started enlightening the citizens who were ignorant about the legal issues associated with cloning animals. In doing so, it launched a company to support the cause. The company that was known as Cyclone Dairy conducted street sampling in a bid to help the people realize the cloning facts and to ask the Congress to establish a DNA-based tracking system in a bid to stop the sale of milk from cloned animals.

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IvyPanda. (2022, April 25). Ben & Jerry Corporate Social Responsibility. https://ivypanda.com/essays/ben-jerry/

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Ben & Jerry’s and why it’s hard for activist brands to stay true to themselves after corporate buyouts

Dean and Professor of Marketing at School for Business and Society, University of York

Associate Professor of Marketing, University of York

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Professor of Sustainable Management, University of York

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Bob Doherty, Karolos A Papadas, and Victoria Wells do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Since its founding in 1978, Ben & Jerry’s has been known for its advocacy on a wide range of social causes, including homelessness, fair trade and GMO-free products. When it was sold to Unilever in 2000, the news sent “shudders and shivers through the socially responsible business community”. The company had been successful, at least in part, by being perceived as an authentic brand, meaning its marketing and messaging aligned with the reality of its products, values and actions.

An authentic brand is transparent, consistent and genuine in its communication and behaviour, which helps build trust and loyalty. The association with Unilever almost certainly damaged Ben & Jerry’s standing with some customers. All the same, the company retained its independent board and was able to continue its social advocacy as part of the deal, so there was still some hope that its core values wouldn’t change.

After a rocky start , in which it arguably lost its identity within Unilever to a fair extent, Ben & Jerry’s did a decent job of retaining its independence within the corporate structure and still selling lots of ice-cream. In 2012 it was certified as a benefit-corporation or B Corps, meaning it was seen as being one of the most sustainable, socially conscious and transparent companies in the world.

But in recent years, there have been mounting tensions with Unilever. In 2022, Ben & Jerry’s sued its parent for selling the ice-cream business in Israel to a local licensee. Ben & Jerry’s argued that this violated Unilever’s pledge to end sales of its products in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2021 as a show of support for the Palestinian cause.

Unilever announced later that year that the dispute had been resolved, though Ben & Jerry’s has continued to make life difficult for its owner in Israel, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza in recent months.

Now their unusual 24-year arrangement is coming to an end after Unilever announced it will be selling its ice-cream business, also including big brands like Magnum and Wall’s. The business as a whole has been struggling with flat sales and falling margins as a result of the recent inflation surge. The group is also cutting 7,500 jobs across the organisation to make “a simpler, more focused and higher performing Unilever”.

Social purpose and big business

Ben and Jerry’s is not the only company that has been taken over by a large corporation which challenged its brand authenticity. The Body Shop, perhaps the world’s most famous social purpose company, has been bought and sold multiple times, and became what has been fairly described as a “respectable and normal commercial player”. Seventeen years after it was originally sold by founder Anita Roddick, the retailer is currently being dismembered .

Numerous craft breweries have also struggled with their authenticity after buyouts, the most famous being London-based Beavertown. It sold a minority stake to Heineken in 2018, before being fully taken over in 2022. Various leading supporters of independent brewing expressed disappointment, with one retailer saying , “Heineken does not have the health of the UK independent beer scene at heart,” and refusing to stock Beavertown products.

Beavertown’s sales actually rose 10% during 2022 as a whole, though time will tell if it can continue to thrive as part of a big corporation. A company’s brand authenticity can often be eroded from this kind of arrangement. It can lead to sales becoming lacklustre and brands ultimately being sold on.

In the case of Ben & Jerry’s, there’s no suggestion that the divestment is especially related to activism, though it does come fairly soon after the arrival of a new chief executive, Hein Schumacher. He said he would tone down Unilever’s overall emphasis on social purpose after pressure from shareholders (while pointing to Ben & Jerry’s as an exception).

The clash between profit and values was recently highlighted as one leading investor, Terry Smith of investment firm Fundsmith, was quoted in the FT as saying: “The group had become obsessed with publicly displaying sustainability credentials at the expense of focusing on the fundamentals of the business … The Ben & Jerry’s row was the most obvious manifestation of this.”

Lessons to learn

Acquiring a brand with strong environmental and social values clearly comes with challenges. Integrating a culture of genuine brand activism requires a full alignment of values between the parent company and the acquired brand. Multinationals often struggle with this and brand authenticity is the ultimate casualty.

In such situations, it’s sometimes incumbent on the social purpose brand to fight back. Howies, a clothing company in Wales, sold to The Timberland Company in 2006. It described itself as being “a tiny part of a US$2 billion company and that was not easy”. When Timberland was in turn sold to US clothing group VF, Howies was able to take back to control, completing a management buyout in 2012 that allowed it to become “focused on sustainability issues again”.

The effect of this journey on Howies’ brand authenticity is hard to say. However, it is still going and its mission is “to improve how clothing is manufactured by pushing for more sustainable practices in an industry renowned for damaging the environment”.

We’ll have to wait and see whether Ben & Jerry’s will be able to concentrate on being “Berry Revolutionary”, like one of its ice-cream flavours. It will only be a small part of a bigger business, which is either likely to be listed on the stock exchange or sold to a private equity firm, so it could prove challenging.

This article originally said that Ben & Jerry’s became a B Corp in 1988. This should in fact have said 2012 and has now been corrected.

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Is America’s love of ice cream melting away? Unilever’s break-up with Ben & Jerry’s isn’t the only sign.

U nilever is breaking up with ice cream. But it’s not only the international conglomerate that is cooling on the sweet treat — it turns out that Americans have been slowly drifting away from ice cream over the past few decades. 

The owner of many household brands, Unilever announced Tuesday that it’s breaking off its ice cream business, which includes the supermarket staple Ben & Jerry’s, and will shed 7,500 jobs . The company said separating the ice cream line will allow Unilever to become “a simpler, more focused company.”

Also read: Unilever to cut 7,500 jobs and split off arm that makes Ben & Jerry’s

But analysts also said part of the reason was that Unilever’s ice cream products have not been selling well over the past year or so. Ben & Jerry’s did not do well last fiscal year, nor did Unilever’s two other ice cream brands, Magnum and Wall’s. That could be because consumers were facing higher prices. Prices in Unilever’s ice cream division were up 8.8% in the last fiscal year, while the volume of sales dipped by 6%, the company said in its latest earnings call in February. Unilever said it raised prices after input costs went up. 

Unilever Chief Financial Officer Fernando Fernandez said that “it has been a very disappointing year for ice cream” when it comes to how consumers responded to the price hikes compared to other household items. Consumers have been opting instead for store brands following the price increase, he said. Researchers have pointed out in the past that ice cream is a product that people will buy less of when its price goes up.

Unilever did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has owned Ben & Jerry’s for 24 years, and the separation could represent a “significant change,”  but Ben & Jerry’s is “well-positioned to grow” its global company, a Ben & Jerry’s spokesperson said in an email to MarketWatch.

It’s also true that Americans have been eating less ice cream in the past few decades. 

On a per capita basis, Americans ate 22 pounds of ice cream — including low-fat versions — in 2022, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture . That’s down by about five pounds from 2000, when it was 27.5 pounds, and down by seven pounds from 1994, when it was 29.4 pounds — the highest personal intake since the ice cream consumption data became available in 1975. 

One type of ice cream in particular seems to be losing its appeal: what the USDA calls “regular” ice cream, or the traditional kind made with full-fat milk. This is the type of ice cream that has been sold in your neighborhood ice cream parlor since your grandmother’s time — it is sweet, creamy and contains full fat. 

In 2022, Americans ate an average of 12.7 pounds of “regular”  ice cream per capita, down from 18.2 pounds in 1975. 

Why are Americans moving away from ice cream? Despite its recent price increases, Unilever itself has a theory — the summer is getting too hot; so hot that people are not buying ice cream, its former CFO Graeme Pitkethly told journalists in July 2023, when heat waves were making their way across Europe. “There’s a sweet spot for temperature, ” said Pitkethly. “When it gets too hot, people move away from ice cream and buy a cold drink instead.”

While global summer temperatures broke records in the past few years, people may also be moving away from ice cream because they are gradually moving away from fat and dairy as a whole. A 2022 McKinsey report showed that many U.S. consumers said they were buying more premium ice cream brands for health-related reasons, because those brands often contain low-carb or low-fat ingredients. 

Consumers, especially millennials, have also become increasingly interested in buying products that they feel align with their values, and for some, that means going dairy-free, McKinsey found.  “Environmental, health, and animal-welfare concerns come together in shoppers’ growing interest in dairy-free and plant-based yogurt and ice cream,” the McKinsey researchers wrote. 

However, Americans’ consumption of low-fat and nonfat ice cream is relatively flat. Since 1975, consumption of alternatives has been hovering around 6.5 pounds a year per person, according to the USDA. 

It could also be that people are eating less sugar, a 2023 analysis by USDA’s Economic Research Service found. People have eaten fewer frozen dairy products over the past 20 years, which is in line with the downward trend of people eating less caloric sweeteners such as corn syrup, honey and sugar, ERS said. The consumption of those sweeteners went down from 150.9 pounds per capita in 2000 to 127.4 pounds in 2021, according to the USDA data. 

But it may not entirely be the case that people have fallen out of love with ice cream, said Marion Nestle, a nutritionist and public health advocate as well as a professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University. 

The U.S. is still up there among the countries that consume the most ice cream, according to McKinsey, and the market is growing roughly in line with the speed at which the economy grows — about 2% each year.  

“Yes, consumption is down, but consumption of practically everything is down,” Nestle told MarketWatch in an email. People feel stressed about the economy, and more people are taking Ozempic to lose weight , she added.

The company behind Ozempic, Novo Nordisk told MarketWatch in an email that Ozempic is not approved for weight management, and pointed to another Novo Nordisk drug, Wegovy, which it said is “indicated to reduce excess body weight and maintain weight reduction long term.”

People’s belief that dairy products are not good for them could also potentially play a part in the decline of ice cream consumption, but it could also be related to something positive from a public health standpoint, Nestle said. 

“Maybe the eat-less message has gotten out, finally,” Nestle said. “If so, I hope whatever is getting substituted is healthier, at least.”

We want to hear from readers who have stories to share about the effects of increasing costs and a changing economy. If you’d like to share your experience, write to  [email protected] . Please include your name and the best way to reach you. A reporter may be in touch.

Ice Cream Pints

Ben & Jerry’s ice cream pints are recognizable all over the world. Ben had the genius idea to pack their iconic ice cream flavors into pint-sized packages to sell in grocery stores. The rest is history! Today, we still pack our ice cream pints full of the euphoric chunks and swirls we're known for.

Impretzively Fudged™ New!

Marshmallow Sky New!

PB S'more New!

Classic ice cream.

Americone Dream®

Caramel Chocolate Cheesecake

Change is Brewing

Cherry Garcia®

Chewy Gooey Cookie​

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

Chocolate Fudge Brownie

Chocolate Peanut Butter Split

Chocolate Therapy®

Chocolatey Love A-fair

Chubby Hubby®

Chunky Monkey®

Churray for Churros!™

Coffee Coffee BuzzBuzzBuzz!®

Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch

Dublin Mudslide

Everything But The...®

Gimme S’more!™

Glampfire Trail Mix™

Half Baked®

Ice Cream Sammie

Lights! Caramel! Action!™

Milk & Cookies

Mint Chocolate Chance™

Mint Chocolate Cookie

Minter Wonderland™

Netflix & Chilll'd™

New York Super Fudge Chunk®

Oat of This Swirled™

Peanut Butter Cup

Peanut Butter Half Baked®

Peanut Butter World®

Phish Food®

Pistachio Pistachio

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Salted Caramel Almond

Strawberry Cheesecake

The Tonight Dough®

Vanilla Caramel Fudge

Boom Chocolatta™ Cookie Core

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Core

Brownie Batter Core

Cookies & Cream Cheesecake Core

Karamel Sutra® Core

Peanut Butter Fudge Core

Salted Caramel Core

Bossin' Cream Pie™

Chocolate Caramel Cookie Dough

Chocolate Milk & Cookies

PB Over the Top

Raspberry Cheesecake

Salted Caramel Brownie

Strawberry Topped Tart

Whiskey Biz™

Top stories, 5 reasons we stand with providers on abortion provider appreciation day — and every day, 4 steps for making flawless ice cream pies, 10 unconventional ice cream toppings that will blow your mind, introducing into the mix , our new podcast dedicated to art, activism, and social change, the s’more cone is now at scoop shops, see the top flavors.

• Elektrostal, Moscow Oblast /
• Rostic's, Lenina Avenue, 010

You will appreciate delicious coffee at this restaurant. Visitors don't like chicken and ice cream at Rostic's . Most guests state that employees are well-trained. The average rating of this place on Google is 4.1.

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For the first time Rosatom Fuel Division supplied fresh nuclear fuel to the world’s only floating nuclear cogeneration plant in the Arctic

The fuel was supplied to the northernmost town of Russia along the Northern Sea Route.

The first in the history of the power plant refueling, that is, the replacement of spent nuclear fuel with fresh one, is planned to begin before 2024. The manufacturer of nuclear fuel for all Russian nuclear icebreakers, as well as the Akademik Lomonosov FNPP, is Machinery Manufacturing Plant, Joint-Stock Company (MSZ JSC), a company of Rosatom Fuel Company TVEL that is based in Elektrostal, Moscow Region.

The FNPP includes two KLT-40S reactors of the icebreaking type. Unlike convenient ground-based large reactors (that require partial replacement of fuel rods once every 12-18 months), in the case of these reactors, the refueling takes place once every few years and includes unloading of the entire reactor core and loading of fresh fuel into the reactor.

The cores of KLT-40 reactors of the Akademik Lomonosov floating power unit have a number of advantages compared to the reference ones: a cassette core was used for the first time in the history of the unit, which made it possible to increase the fuel energy resource to 3-3.5 years between refuelings, and also reduce the fuel component of the electricity cost by one and a half times. The FNPP operating experience formed the basis for the designs of reactors for nuclear icebreakers of the newest series 22220. Three such icebreakers have been launched by now.

For the first time the power units of the Akademik Lomonosov floating nuclear power plant were connected to the grid in December 2019, and put into commercial operation in May 2020. The supply of nuclear fuel from Elektrostal to Pevek and its loading into the second reactor is planned for 2024. The total power of the Akademik Lomonosov FNPP, supplied to the coastal grid of Pevek without thermal energy consumption on shore, is about 76 MW, being about 44 MW in the maximum thermal power supply mode. The FNPP generated 194 million kWh according to the results of 2023. The population of Pevek is just a little more than 4 thousand, while the FNPP has a potential for supplying electricity to a city with a population of up to 100 thousand people. After the FNPP commissioning two goals were achieved. These include first of all the replacement of the retiring capacities of the Bilibino NPP, which has been operating since 1974, as well as the Chaunskaya TPP, which has already been operating for more than 70 years. Secondly, energy is supplied to the main mining companies in western Chukotka in the Chaun-Bilibino energy hub a large ore and metal cluster, including gold mining companies and projects related to the development of the Baimsk ore zone. In September 2023, a 110 kilovolt power transmission line with a length of 490 kilometers was put into operation, connecting the towns of Pevek and Bilibino. The line increased the reliability of energy supply from the FNPP to both Bilibino consumers and mining companies, the largest of which is the Baimsky GOK. The comprehensive development of the Russian Arctic is a national strategic priority. To increase the NSR traffic is of paramount importance for accomplishment of the tasks set in the field of cargo shipping. This logistics corridor is being developed due regular freight voyages, construction of new nuclear-powered icebreakers and modernization of the relevant infrastructure. Rosatom companies are actively involved in this work. Rosatom Fuel Company TVEL (Rosatom Fuel Division) includes companies fabricating nuclear fuel, converting and enriching uranium, manufacturing gas centrifuges, conducting researches and producing designs. As the only nuclear fuel supplier to Russian NPPs, TVEL supplies fuel for a total of 75 power reactors in 15 countries, for research reactors in nine countries, as well as for propulsion reactors of the Russian nuclear fleet. Every sixth power reactor in the world runs on TVEL fuel. Rosatom Fuel Division is the world’s largest producer of enriched uranium and the leader on the global stable isotope market. The Fuel Division is actively developing new businesses in chemistry, metallurgy, energy storage technologies, 3D printing, digital products, and decommissioning of nuclear facilities. TVEL also includes Rosatom integrators for additive technologies and electricity storage systems. Rosenergoatom, Joint-Stock Company is part of Rosatom Electric Power Division and one of the largest companies in the industry acting as an operator of nuclear power plants. It includes, as its branches, 11 operating NPPs, including the FNPP, the Scientific and Technical Center for Emergency Operations at NPPs, Design and Engineering as well as Technological companies. In total, 37 power units with a total installed capacity of over 29.5 GW are in operation at 11 nuclear power plants in Russia. Machinery Manufacturing Plant, Joint-Stock Company (MSZ JSC, Elektrostal) is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of fuel for nuclear power plants. The company produces fuel assemblies for VVER-440, VVER-1000, RBMK-1000, BN-600,800, VK-50, EGP-6; powders and fuel pellets intended for supply to foreign customers. It also produces nuclear fuel for research reactors. The plant belongs to the TVEL Fuel Company of Rosatom.

Rosatom obtained a license for the first land-based SMR in Russia

On April 21, Rosenergoatom obtained a license issued by Rostekhnadzor to construct the Yakutsk land-based SMR in the Ust-Yansky District of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).

ROSATOM and FEDC agree to cooperate in the construction of Russia's first onshore SNPP

ROSATOM and FEDC have signed a cooperation agreement to build Russia's first onshore SNPP in Yakutia.

Rosatom develops nuclear fuel for modernized floating power units

Rosatom has completed the development of nuclear fuel for the RITM-200S small modular reactor designed for the upgraded floating power units.