The tub thumper: ice cream? Stefan Chomka finds that the Jerry in Ben & Jerry's is far more interested in the US nuclear arsenal

Grocer, Sept 16, 2006 by Stefan Chomka

the green issue

I recognise Jerry Greenfield, better known as the Jerry half of Ben & Jerry's ice cream company, as soon as I meet him, although I can't recall ever seeing him before. Casually dressed in a polo shirt and combat trousers (already sporting a telltale ice cream stain even though it's only loam), with his grey heard, wicked smile and glasses he looks every bit the social campaigning, eco-warrior ice cream entrepreneur.

Then he reminds me that if I had bought his ice cream I would have seen a black and white picture of him and business partner Ben Cohen on the pack--albeit one that looks as if it were taken in the seventies. That picture is shrinking, he tells me, as the ice cream company becomes more about its ethical standpoint than about the whims of two school friends who put their names to it back in 1978.

The picture may be getting smaller, but Greenfield's profile is certainly not shrinking with it. This is a man whose name and face hold a lot of currency and he is happy to capitalise on his celebrity status. When I meet him he is busy promoting the company's, and Europe's, first Fairtrade ice cream and the day after he is due to speak on the importance of fair trade at the company's outdoor ice cream festival, Ben & Jerry's Sundae, in London before jetting back to the US for more environment talks.

This is typical of Greenfield these days. "The things I end up doing are getting involved with projects that I think help further the social and environmental issues of the company," he says. "So, when Ben & Jerry's has a programme to help address global warming, I get involved."

Greenfield's approach is no more evident than in the company's work in the US, where it has established links with a bakery that employs economically disadvantaged staff for the production of its chocolate fudge brownie ice cream. It also produces a Rainforest Crunch ice cream, which is designed to help the rainforest become as profitable when harvested sustainably as when it is burnt down and turned into cattle ranches.

The Fairtrade ice cream and the promise of forthcoming organic launches in the UK are just the latest indications of how far Greenfield's influence is spreading. Put all this social and environmental campaigning aside, however, and he appears cold about the ice cream side of the business that bears his name.

"Anything involved in selling ice cream I don't do--I have no interest," he says. "I have no idea what ice cream sales are at Ben & Jerry's, I really don't. Ben and I have no involvement in the management or the operations of the company, so if you like what's going on you don't get to thank me and if you don't like what's going on you don't get to blame me.

"The photos of us on the container are small and I'm actually not very visible unless there is a social or environmental campaign that comes along," he says.

This may not sound like a man that has dedicated nearly 30 years of his life to selling the stuff, but it reflects a change in priority for Greenfield since Unilever's takeover of Ben & Jerry's in 2000.

He has made no secret about how he didn't want the company to pass into the hands of a bigger player, which he describes as "a personally horrible experience", although he does admit that the deal did help with the increasing problem the company was having with distributing its product in the US.

"Selling to Unilever was nothing that we wanted to do and we tried very hard to find alternatives. If we hadn't been a public company and hadn't had shareholders, we wouldn't have sold. From a strategic point of view, you want to hook up with a company when things aren't going right, but from a marketing and consumer perspective things were going well. Ben & Jerry's would have been fine."

He is also pessimistic about what effect Ben & Jerry's has had on making its parent company a more ethical business.

"Unilever essentially wanted Ben & Jerry's because it fitted well into its ice cream portfolio. At the same time, it wanted the ethics that the company had and said there was an opportunity to help spread them. It was a wonderful thing to say--maybe it will happen, maybe it won't, but it's not something that I'm counting on.

"It is a multibillion-dollar company--you can talk about the tail wagging the dog, but it's not even the tail--it's like a couple of hairs on the end of the tail. To think that would be wagging the dog is a little unrealistic."

That said, under the stewardship of Unilever, Ben & Jerry's has enjoyed great success. And, after a quiet first few years as part of the Anglo-Dutch giant, the company has been allowed to restart its campaigning, something that Greenfield says would not have been permitted in the early days of the deal. It is at present addressing the US's federal spending priorities to maintain its nuclear weapons arsenal, an issue that is evidently close to Greenfield's heart.

"We are questioning the sanity of a country that has 10,000 nuclear bombs," he says, with a mischievous grin spreading across his face.