Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Food processing |
| Founded |
Burlington, Vermont, U.S. (May 5, 1978) |
| Founders |
Ben Cohen Jerry Greenfield |
| Headquarters | South Burlington, Vermont, U.S. |
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Key people
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Jostein Solheim CEO Ben Cohen co-founder Jerry Greenfield co-founder |
| Products | Ice cream |
| Parent | Unilever (2000–present) |
| Website | www |
Ben & Jerry's Homemade Holdings Inc, trading and commonly known as Ben & Jerry's, is an American company that manufactures ice cream, frozen yogurt, and sorbet. It was founded in 1978 in Burlington, Vermont, and sold in 2000 to Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Unilever. Today it operates globally as a fully owned subsidiary of Unilever. Its present-day headquarters is in South Burlington, Vermont, with its main factory in Waterbury, Vermont.
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield were childhood friends from New York. While Greenfield finished college, he found himself unable to make his way into medical school. Cohen dropped out of school. In 1977, Cohen and Greenfield completed a correspondence course on ice cream making from Pennsylvania State University's creamery. Cohen has severe anosmia, a lack of a sense of smell or taste, and so relied on "mouth feel" and texture to provide variety in his diet. This led to the company's trademark chunks being mixed in with their ice cream. On May 5, 1978, with a $12,000 investment, the two business partners opened an ice cream parlor in a renovated gas station in downtown Burlington, Vermont. In 1979, they marked their anniversary by holding the first-ever free cone day, now an international annual celebration at every Ben & Jerry's store.
In 1980, they rented space in an old spool and bobbin mill on South Champlain Street in Burlington and started packing their ice cream in pints. In 1981, the first Ben & Jerry's franchise opened on Route 7 in Shelburne, Vermont. In 1983, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream was used to build “the world’s largest ice cream sundae” in St. Albans, Vermont; the sundae weighed 27,102 pounds (12,293 kg). That same year, the cows on their cartons were redesigned by local artist Woody Jackson.
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Wikipedia