Ben & Jerry Homemade

Ben & Jerry’s Analysis

By:

Maurice Young

Chelsie Beard

Jason Tinnin

The case presented on Ben & Jerry’s Homemade ice-cream is complex and produces a considerable amount of deliberation. In the following pages we hope to give you a synopsis of Ben Cohen & Jerry Greenfield, as well as the company they created, while attempting to carefully construct answers to the questions posed on specific issues raised by Mr. Brasel in the power point slides he provided to the class.

The history of Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield can be dated back to when the men first met in the seventh grade. Both Cohen and Greenfield grew up in Merrick, Long Island and quickly became friends during Junior high school. After high school, Jerry finished college. His goal was to attend medical school to become a doctor, but he could not get in. (benjerry.com). On the other hand, Ben applied and was accepted to several colleges, but always dropped out of them. The beginnings for the development of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade were launched in 1977 from the front porch of Jerry’s parent’s house.

Neither Ben nor Jerry knew anything about running or opening a business, but both men knew about food and shared the great passion of eating. They pondered on what type of business they would start. The men came across an AD in the local newspaper for an ice-cream-making course offered through a local college. There was a $5 fee associated with the course. Due to the extreme poverty in which Cohen and Greenfield were brought up in, they decided to split the fee and took the course on ice-cream-making from Penn State University.

The two men combined their life savings of $8,000 and took out a loan for &4,000 from a bank. With this money, Ben & Jerry leased and renovated an old gas station in a town where they did not think they would be as successful as they eventually became. Ben &...