SPIRITUAL BUSINESS: Ice creamer Jerry Greenfield to RCA: Business is not evil

LAS VEGAS-When businesses invest in social and environmental responsibility, they reap benefits, according to Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Holdings Inc.-and the crowd at the Rural Cellular Association’s annual convention here reaped sweets in the form of chocolate-covered Cherry Garcia bars, complements of Ben & Jerry’s.
Greenfield recounted many of his trials and tribulations during the early days of Ben and Jerry’s, from starting the business with a mere $12,000 to renovating the company’s store by hand. He said Ben and Jerry’s struggled to sell ice cream during bitter Vermont winters, and painstakingly built local distribution by driving across the state to sell pints before they melted in the back of an old station wagon owned by co-founder Ben Cohen.
Greenfield also recounted how the company ran into problems with distributors who wanted to stop carrying the ice cream due to pressure from rival Haagen-Daaz and its owner, Pillsbury Co. Greenfield said he and Cohen tapped into their company’s customer base by setting up a hotline for customers to call to request a package of letters of protest to send to various companies and agencies. Ben and Jerry’s also started a “What’s the Doughboy afraid of?” campaign that included Greenfield’s stint as a one-man picket line outside Pillsbury’s headquarters in Minneapolis.
When it came time for a public offering to help the company raise enough money to bring itself to the next level, Ben & Jerry’s again tapped into its customer base as well as it conscience: The company owed its existence to the patronage and support of the residents of Vermont, Greefield and Cohen figured, so they put together a public offering that was only available to residents of Vermont. They put the minimum purchase price at $126 per share so that people of any means could own a piece of the company. They raised $750,000 and started the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, which would receive 7.5 percent of the company’s profits to put back into the community.
Even so, the self-described hippies had trouble reconciling their business activities with their desire to contribute to the community. Greenfield and Cohen sold Ben & Jerry’s to Unilever in 2000.
“Business has really become the most powerful force in our society,” Greenfield said, noting the religion and government used to hold that position.
“Business is not evil,” he continued. “Business is pretty much neutral. It’s without values, but it pretty much thinks just about itself without thinking about the larger society.” This is different, he noted, than the role of churches and government, which usually look out for society’s greater good.
But, he went on, businesses are usually led by good people-there’s just a breakdown in the good that individuals do versus the good that a business does.
In trying to settle such issues, Ben & Jerry’s set up retail stores that are run by non-profits. The company also works to promote local causes; Greenfield cited a popular Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor that comes from a bakery in Yonkers, N.Y. The bakery works with people “out of the economic mainstream,” such as the homeless and people with substance abuse problems, and Ben & Jerry’s buys millions of dollars per year of brownies from the bakery.
“There’s a spiritual piece to business, just as there is in the lives of individuals,” Greenfield said. “As you help others, you are helped in return.”