Ben explains why Jerry quit Ben & Jerry’s
By Jordan Valinsky, Vanessa Yurkevich, CNN
New York (CNN) — Hours after Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield resigned from the ice cream company he founded nearly five decades ago, his former business partner, Ben Cohen, revealed to CNN why Jerry felt he had to leave.
“Jerry has a really big heart, and this conflict with Unilever was really kind of tearing him apart. So he felt like he had no choice to resign,” Cohen told CNN’s Vanessa Yurkevich Wednesday. “Jerry’s kind of sad that it’s come to this, but part of him is feeling a sense of relief that he’s no longer in this intense conflict.”
Earlier Wednesday, Greenfield shared on social media that he was quitting the ice cream company, accusing parent company Unilever of curtailing Ben & Jerry’s ability to speak out on social and political causes, which is synonymous with the brand’s identity. The conflict between the co-founders and Unilever has erupted into public view over the past several years, resulting in lawsuits and publicly posted letters.
British-based Unilever bought Ben & Jerry’s ice cream for $326 million in 2000 but allowed the company to operate independently and continue its social mission without interference from its new parent company. Cohen and Greenfield remained at the company, which they founded in 1978, but not in operational roles. Instead, they focused on the company’s social missions.
But Cohen told CNN that as management at Unilever turned over, no one who signed the deal with Ben & Jerry’s remains, and the conglomerate started to disrespect the terms of its unique arrangement with the ice cream maker. Tensions boiled over in recent years as Ben & Jerry’s opted to pull its operations from Israel, a decision that was overruled by Unilever.
Since then, the company and its parent have feuded, mostly over politically focused social media posts that Cohen said Unilever opposed – and threatened to fire people over. Speaking out on political issues, ranging from President Donald Trump to Israel and the Gaza Strip, angered Unilever, which fired the company’s CEO earlier this year.
Ultimately, Greenfield had enough. But Cohen said he chose to stay to continue to fight for the company’s independence.
“I’m glad that we’re both standing up for the values of Ben and Jerry’s,” Cohen told CNN. “I think that I can be most helpful from the inside and and Jerry’s going try to be helpful from the outside.”
Despite Greenfield’s exit, Cohen said he is committed to the independent board that helps control the brand and will work to convince its parent company to sell the brand to a group of investors committed to Ben & Jerry’s social mission. Ben & Jerry’s is currently being spun off from Unilever into a new company called The Magnum Ice Cream Company, which expects to be publicly traded in November.
The Magnum Ice Cream Company in a statement said it disagrees with Greenfield’s and Cohen’s perspective, and said it has tried to work with the brand’s co-founders.
“We remain committed to Ben & Jerry’s unique three-part mission – product, economic and social – and remain focused on carrying forward the legacy of peace, love, and ice cream of this iconic, much-loved brand,” a Magnum spokesperson said in a statement.
Politics is profit
A major factor in Cohen’s remaining at the company is to keep intact Ben & Jerry’s three-part mission: a social mission to support justice and equality, along with a product and financial mission. He says all three are core to the brand – and claims its good for business.
“When we came up with that three part mission, we deliberately wrote it horizontally to make the statement that they are all equally as important,” he said. “As the company acts on its social values and as it produces great ice cream, it ends up making a good profit.”
Unilever, which doesn’t break out Ben & Jerry’s sales separately, said in its 2024 annual earnings report that its ice cream division rose 3.7% from the year before.
Cohen doesn’t regret maintaining its political and social stances, saying that Ben & Jerry’s products have a small portion of the market so “we don’t have to appeal to everybody.”
“The reality is that businesses are incredibly political,” he said. “The average business, (are) using their money to influence elections, and they’re using their money and their lobbyists to influence legislation.
He added: “The only difference is that Ben and Jerry’s political aspects are overt, where we let people know what we think, whereas other businesses are covert.”
Even with Greenfield leaving the company, the “spirit of Jerry will always be at Ben & Jerry’s,” Cohen said. And their friendship, which reaches back to junior high when they were the “two, slowest, fattest kids” in their class, will endure.
“I was a failure as a potter. Nobody would buy my pottery. Jerry was a med school reject, and we got together when we were 26 and said, ‘Let’s try starting a little business. Maybe that’ll work.’ We ended up starting this homemade ice cream shop in an old gas station in Burlington, Vermont, on an investment of $8,000 and we had no plans to be anything larger than that,” Cohen said.
“It’s been an amazing ride. It’s been an amazing adventure, an amazing odyssey. There’s been good times, there’s been bad times, there’s been challenging times, and we’ve been through them all together, Jerry and myself, and it’s just built a stronger bond between us.”
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