Mar 23, 2020 · 56m · how-i-built-this
Ben & Jerry's: Ben Cohen And Jerry Greenfield (2017)
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this archival episode of How I Built This, host Guy Raz interviews Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield about how two childhood friends turned a renovated Vermont gas station into an iconic global ice cream brand and pioneered mission-driven corporate activism.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 34.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 4.1 Guest teaching 3.7 Guest disagreement 2.2 Guy pushing back 1.3
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 9:29 Ben bluntly rejects the host's financial framing
When Guy suggests $20,000 apiece in the late 1970s was pretty good money, Ben instantly cuts in with an unvarnished correction, calling it shitty money that took years to earn.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 11:35 Guy challenges the slapdash hippie stereotypeGuy interrupts the narrative to push back on the common cultural conception that the founders were just disorganized hippies, insisting their location scouting and research proved intentional method.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 12:07 Jerry deconstructs the host's strategic narrativeJerry directly tells Guy that his description attributes far more deliberate thought and long-term planning than actually existed, explaining they merely reacted to whatever immediate step appeared next.
Guy holds their own ▶ 20:48 Guy analyzes the strategic advantage of anosmiaGuy synthesizes Ben's medical condition into a coherent business insight, explaining how lack of smell forced an unexpected focus on texture and mouthfeel that differentiated the product from competitors.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Show Overview: The Movement Behind Ben & Jerry's | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 | Guy introduces the duo with rich biographical context and frames their ethos. Ben and Jerry playfully banter about their track record of dropping out and failing medical school admissions, rejecting Guy's polite attempt to reframe their early failures. | |
| Reconnecting and Pivoting Away From Bagels | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Ben and Jerry recount reconnecting in NYC and initially pricing out bagel machinery before being told by a used equipment dealer that it was beyond their budget. The exchange is humorous, lighthearted, and narrative-driven. | |
| Early Business Research and Modest Expectations | 4 | 5 | 4 | 2 | Ben sharply dismantles Guy's romanticized premise of late-night cafe strategy sessions, pointing out it was before cafe culture. When Guy suggests their $20,000 revenue goal was decent money, Ben bluntly corrects him that it was terrible money. | |
| Pragmatic Hard Work and the $5 Correspondence Course | 3 | 6 | 4 | 2 | Jerry explicitly pushes back against Guy's narrative that they had a sophisticated, methodical plan, explaining they merely took one step at a time. Ben describes the $5 Penn State correspondence course and their winter discount promotion. | |
| Finding the Gas Station on City Hall Park | 3 | 5 | 3 | 2 | Guy compliments their corner clicker customer counts as sophisticated market research, but Ben deflates the compliment by explaining it was simply copied out of a government manual. Jerry humorously pauses to give Ben credit. | |
| Financing and Modifying a Pizzeria Business Plan | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Jerry describes modifying a friend's pizza shop business plan by substituting ice cream for pizza and fabricating financial projections when the initial numbers showed insolvency, which Guy validates as standard startup practice. | |
| Opening Day, Funky Aesthetics, and Ben's Anosmia | 5 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Guy displays familiarity with Ben's anosmia and synthesizes how sensory limits forced a unique focus on mouthfeel. Ben explains industrial ice cream machines could not handle large inclusions, leading to their distinct chunky product. | |
| Winter Realities, Free Cone Day, and Division of Labor | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Jerry explains how winter slumps inspired Free Cone Day as a customer appreciation gesture. Ben details how a SCORE mentor helped negotiate a loan payment moratorium that saved the early venture. | |
| Time Magazine Acclaim and Strategic Excerpts | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 | The founders recall Time Magazine calling them the best ice cream in the world. Ben explains how they leveraged selective pull quotes for marketing similar to Broadway promotional tactics. | |
| Operational Struggles and Transition to Pint Packaging | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Jerry explains their chronic inability to manage portion control and staff discipline in scoop shops. Packaging pints and tubs was an operational workaround rather than a grand master plan. | |
| The David vs. Goliath Fight Against Pillsbury | 5 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Jerry narrates their grassroots campaign against Pillsbury's distributor lockout, detailing picketing, aerial banners, and transit ads. Ben vividly describes early entrepreneurship as falling down a cliff grabbing branches. | |
| Identity Crisis and Redefining Business Values | 4 | 4 | 3 | 1 | The founders describe an existential crisis about becoming corporate bosses and nearly selling the business in the 1980s until a mentor challenged them to reinvent business practices instead of abandoning them. | |
| Social Enterprise Initiatives and Greyston Bakery | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | Guy questions the tension between financial success and core progressive values. Ben explains the board-forced acquisition by Unilever in 2000 and why both founders refused board seats and felt depressed rather than celebratory. | |
| Ongoing Brand Activism Under Unilever Ownership | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Guy explores how the brand preserved activism post-acquisition. Jerry expresses pleasant surprise at Unilever backing controversial stances like BLM, and Ben jokes about lifelong friendship and anonymity. | |
| Hard Work, Good Fortune, and Parental Pride | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Guy asks about the balance of luck versus hard work in their success. Ben and Jerry acknowledge fortunate geographical placement in Vermont and discuss the origins of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and Cherry Garcia. | |
| How You Built That: Clay McCabe and Zipper Rescue | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Guy interviews Clay McCabe in the 'How You Built That' segment about taking over and modernizing his father's DIY zipper repair business, Zipper Rescue, moving it to Amazon and modern e-commerce. |
Statements from this episode (28)
Ben Cohen dropped out of multiple colleges and alternative programs
“And then I finally joined the University Without Walls, which was the most unstructured college program at the time. The idea was that the whole world was your campus, and you go out there and learn whatever you wanted to learn, and then you come back. To this…”
Jerry Greenfield was rejected from medical school twice
“I went to Oberlin College in Ohio. I did four years straight. I was pre-med and applied to and got rejected from lots of medical schools on two different occasions.”
Ben & Jerry's pivoted from bagels because equipment was unaffordable
“We thought about picking a food That was becoming popular in big cities, but had not yet been brought to a college town. And at that time, the foods we thought about were bagels and homemade ice cream. So we went to a used restaurant supply store to price out …”
Founders researched starting Ben & Jerry's using 30 SBA pamphlets
“We sent away for 30 SBA pamphlets that cost between 15 cents a And three dollars per on all the different aspects of running a business.”
Founders' initial goal was to make $20,000 a year each
“Our goal when we opened was to make 20,000 dollars a year apiece.”
Founders avoided warm college towns due to existing ice cream competition
“We figured we had a better chance of success if we opened up in a place where there wasn't much competition. And originally we were looking for warm, rural college towns, and all the warm ones already had ice cream. So, you know, as we went further and further…”
Founders split a single $5 ice cream-making correspondence course
“Five dollars. We split one between the two of us.”
Ben & Jerry's discounted winter cones based on freezing temperatures
“For every degree below zero Celsius which is 32 degrees Fahrenheit you got a penny off the price of your cone, which was significant at the time because a cone cost 52 cents.”
Founders copied a pizzeria business plan to secure bank financing
“Ben and I pretty much copied that business plan, except every place where it said slice of pizza, we crossed it out and we wrote an ice cream cone.”
Founders altered early business projections when numbers showed failure
“When we first wrote out and figured out our projections for how much ice cream we would sell and how much it would cost, the projections told us that We weren't going to sell enough ice cream to stay in business. So we just changed the projections.”
First unconventional flavors were Oreo Mint and Heath Bar Crunch
“You know, the first two flavors that we did that were not your normal ones were Oreo Mint and Heath Bar Crunch.”
Commercial machinery initially prevented ice cream brands from adding large chunks
“The difference is that no commercial ice creams were packaging ice cream like that, and as we discovered, the reason why they weren't doing it is because the machinery, the commercial ice cream machinery, was not designed to be able to handle large chunks.”
Ice cream eaters prefer big chunks over evenly distributed pieces
“So I was arguing for having a larger number of smaller chunks that were well distributed throughout the ice cream. And, you know, Ben was saying, no, what people want, and this is what Ben wanted, of course, but what people want is a really big chunk, and they…”
Free Cone Day was created because founders expected business to fail
“It was actually during that first winter when Ben and I came up with the idea of Free Cone Day, that if we were still in business after a year, we would celebrate and treat all our customers by giving out free ice cream, because we thought it was so unlikely t…”
Bank granted loan moratorium to save Ben & Jerry's first winter
“And we went to the bank, and we said that, and they said, sure, no problem. Just pay interest, and, you know, we'll extend the loan, and that got us through.”
Ben & Jerry's was featured in a 1981 Time magazine cover story
“Well, but not only that, so it was the cover story of Time Magazine.”
Scoop shop portion control uniquely alienates customers at the counter
“In every business except for ice cream, the portions are controlled in the back. Out of sight of the customer. And when you're scooping ice cream, you're supposed to control the portion inside of the customer, and if the scoop is too big, you're supposed to ta…”
Ben & Jerry's packaged pints to solve scoop shop portion control
“One of the reasons we started packaging our ice cream was because we weren't so good at running a shop, and one of the things we thought about was, well, maybe we can't control how much ice cream we're putting on a cone, but you certainly can control how much …”
Pillsbury threatened independent distributors who carried Ben & Jerry's
“Pillsbury had bought Haagen-Dazs, so they owned them, and they went to independent ice cream distributors, who were distributing all sorts of different brands of ice creams, and you know, told them that if those distributors continued to deliver Ben & Jerry's,…”
Founders put Ben & Jerry's up for sale in the 1980s
“Our reaction to that was to sell the business, and we actually put it up for sale. This was early on. This was in the eighties.”
Ben & Jerry's sourced from Greyston Bakery for its social mission
“That, that, that's our project with the Greyston Bakery and deliberately choosing to use this ingredient supplier because this particular ingredient supplier was driven by a social mission of providing employment opportunities for formerly unemployable people.”
Unilever's acquisition offer left the Ben & Jerry's board no alternative
“Well, it was a public company which meant that anybody could own shares, and Unilever ended up offering so much money that the board of the company couldn't find an alternative for the shareholders that they thought was acceptable.”
Founders declined seats on the post-acquisition social mission board
“There was going to continue to be an independent board in the new entity that oversaw the social mission, and I think Ben and I could have remained on that board, and we both chose not to.”
Ben & Jerry's supported the anti-corporate Occupy Wall Street movement
“The company came out in support of Occupy Wall Street a few years ago, which, you know, is amazing because that was essentially an anti-corporate movement.”
Ben & Jerry's issued a formal statement supporting Black Lives Matter
“Within the last year, the company came out with a statement in support of Black Lives Matter.”
Founders invented chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream
“But it wasn't always a classic flavor, because in fact, it was invented by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield in that tiny little shop in Burlington in the 19 eighties.”
The Cherry Garcia ice cream flavor was inspired by a fan's postcard
“We got a postcard that said, we're both deadheads, and we're also Ben and Jerry's fans, and we think you ought to come out with a flavor called Cherry Garcia, because it would be a real hoot for the fans, and dead paraphernalia always sells.”