Nov 20, 2017 · 56m · how-i-built-this
Ben & Jerry's: Ben Cohen And Jerry Greenfield
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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 episode of How I Built This, Guy Raz interviews Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, who trace their path from opening a modest Burlington ice cream scoop shop in a converted gas station to building an internationally beloved, mission-driven brand.
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 33.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 4.5 Guest teaching 2.9 Guest disagreement 1.5 Guy pushing back 1.5
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 9:13 Ben bluntly rejects the host's financial premise
When Guy suggests that twenty thousand dollars a year in the late 1970s was pretty good money, Ben cuts in forcefully with 'No, it was shitty money.'
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 43:47 Guy challenges the guests' melancholy over a multimillion-dollar exitGuy presses Ben and Jerry on why they felt so depressed over the sale to Unilever when most listeners and founders would view cashing out for millions as the ultimate success.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 11:51 Jerry deflates the over-intellectualized business narrativeJerry directly corrects Guy's elaborate framing of their methodical planning by emphasizing they were merely doing whatever reactive task landed right in front of them.
Guy holds their own ▶ 39:39 Guy showcases detailed knowledge of company policies and suppliersGuy drills into the precise operational mechanics of their progressive model, accurately listing the 5:1 executive salary cap, daycare subsidies, profit sharing, and the Greyston Bakery partnership.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| School Days and Post-Graduation Wandering | 4 | 2 | 2 | 3 | Guy Raz traces their youth and jokingly pushes back when Ben and Jerry label themselves total failures after dropping out and receiving med school rejections. The exchange is warm and humorous as the founders describe their aimless post-college years. | |
| Researching Ventures and the SBA Manuals | 4 | 4 | 3 | 1 | Ben bluntly rejects Guy's romanticized notion of meeting in cafes by noting it was before cafe culture, and sharply corrects Guy's comment about $20,000 being good money in the 1970s by stating it was shitty money. | |
| Choosing Burlington and Learning Ice Cream Making | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Jerry corrects Ben on Wendell Arbuckle's name and later reframes Guy's assertion that they had a sophisticated, methodical plan, clarifying they just took one reactive step at a time. | |
| Finding a Dilapidated Gas Station and Securing Loans | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Guy highlights their foot-traffic counting method as sophisticated, while the founders amusingly explain that they simply copied a pizza parlor business plan and fabricated their revenue projections to satisfy the bank. | |
| Crafting Signature Chunks and Anosmia Advantage | 5 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Guy demonstrates strong background knowledge regarding Ben's anosmia and how commercial machines couldn't process chunky ice cream, while Jerry explains his internal disagreements with Ben over chunk sizes. | |
| Winter Survival, Free Cone Day, and SCORE Mentorship | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | The founders detail their harsh first winter in Burlington and how SCORE mentor Manny saved them by recommending a bank loan moratorium, alongside the origin of Free Cone Day. | |
| Time Magazine Cover and Exploding Popularity | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Ben humorously recounts how they weaponized an out-of-context quote from Time Magazine calling them the best ice cream in the world by comparing it to selective Broadway blurbs. | |
| Retail Inefficiencies and Shifting to Packaged Pints | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | The founders candidly explain that their transition to pre-packaged pints was driven by an inability to control scoop portions in retail shops and restaurant staff eating all their tub inventory. | |
| Battling Pillsbury: "What's the Doughboy Afraid Of?" | 5 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Guy probes into the asymmetrical legal and public relations war against Pillsbury and Haagen-Dazs, with Jerry describing his one-man picket line and bus campaigns in Boston. | |
| Redefining Corporate Responsibility and Social Mission | 6 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Guy specifically references the 5-to-1 pay ratio and Greyston Bakery partnership, showing deep subject familiarity as Ben explains how an elder restaurateur dissuaded them from selling out in the 1980s. | |
| The Hostile Unilever Acquisition and Its Emotional Toll | 5 | 2 | 2 | 3 | Guy pushes on the emotional disconnect between walking away with millions and the profound depression both founders experienced when the board forced the sale to Unilever against their wishes. | |
| Enduring Legacy, Political Activism, and Lifelong Friendship | 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 | When Guy gets sentimental about their lifelong friendship, Ben playfully rejects the sentimental framing by pointing out that many people have childhood friends, while Jerry reflects on progressive branding. | |
| How You Built That: Bureo's Recycled Ocean Skateboards | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | In the 'How You Built That' segment, Guy narrates and interviews David Stover on how Bureo converts discarded Chilean ocean fishing nets into recycled skateboard decks. |
Statements from this episode (19)
Cohen and Greenfield initially planned to become cross-country truck drivers
“Let's do something for a couple of years, and then... After we do that, let's do something else. We talked about becoming cross-country truck drivers after we did this ice cream shop.”
Cohen and Greenfield learned business basics using 30 cheap SBA pamphlets
“We sent away for 30 SBA pamphlets that cost between 15 cents and three dollars per on all the different aspects of
Running a business.”
Ben & Jerry's initial financial goal was earning $20,000 each per year
“Our goal when we opened was to make 20,000 dollars a year a piece.”
Cohen and Greenfield split a $5 Penn State ice cream correspondence course
“Five dollars. We split one between the two of us.”
A Ben & Jerry's ice cream cone cost 52 cents at launch
“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.”
Jerry Greenfield: Startup business plan financial projections are completely made up
“And I think that's the way everybody does it. You just make it up. I mean, you have this idea that, that people come up with these projections and they're based on something and they're just made up.”
Cohen: Commercial ice cream lacked large chunks due to machinery limitations
“No commercial ice creams. We're 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. So all you would get would…”
Greenfield: Ice cream eaters prefer occasional large chunks over evenly distributed small ones
“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 …”
Ben & Jerry's created Free Cone Day because they expected to fail
“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 that we would still be in busi…”
SBA mentor advised Ben & Jerry's to ask for a loan moratorium
“He was an old guy named Manny, and, ah, he said, well, just tell him you can't pay your loan right now, that you can pay it, you know, when the weather turns. You know, they'll, they'll, they'll like, just let you pay interest. And we went to the bank, and we …”
Cohen: Ice cream faces unique retail portion control friction
“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 pivoted to 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 to cut off distributors who carried Ben & Jerry's
“Well, 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, ah, you know, told them that if those distributors continued to deliver Ben…”
Ben & Jerry's founders put the company up for sale in 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.”
Unilever's buyout offer was so high the board had to accept it
“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 that they thought was acceptable.”
Cohen and Greenfield refused to serve on Unilever's 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.”
Unilever must maintain Ben & Jerry's activism to preserve brand equity
“You know, if Unilever bought a brand and bought the goodwill that goes along with that brand and bought the reputation that goes along with that brand, they need to continue those activities in order to keep that brand strong.”