One of America’s most famous ice cream moguls says he’s happy that a Carytown ice cream shop bested a neighboring shop bearing his name.
Ben Cohen, a co-founder of ice cream behemoth Ben & Jerry’s, told a Richmond crowd Monday night that he’s glad the local ice cream parlor Bev’s is still around in Carytown, while the Ben & Jerry’s franchise a few doors down went out of business.
“It’s a good thing,” said Cohen of the store’s closing this year. “We tried not to open stores in competition with homegrown ones.”
Cohen talked to a crowd of about 350 at the Holocaust Museum. The event was organized by The Frontier Project, a Shockoe Bottom-based consulting company that specializes in leadership and strategy, and the Virginia Interfaith Center.
Dressed in casual attire and pausing often to gather his thoughts, Cohen might be the most laid-back businessman who has taken a company public. He talked at length about running a socially-conscious business and discussed his views on politics and the federal budget, using Oreos to represent billions of dollars spent. (He’s for spending less on the military and more on social causes.)
Business has become the most powerful force in civilization, he said, supplanting politics and religion.
He advocated redefining success in business to look past the bottom line. Cohen said he made a lot of money in his business, especially when the company went public and then was bought by the conglomerate Unilever.
“We need to change how we measure success … to profitability and the impact on the community, whether that is positive or negative,” Cohen said.
The benefits of focusing a little less on profit and a little more on treating everyone better make good business sense, he said.
“You have a unique selling proposition. It motivates employees and builds a loyal customer base,” Cohen said.
Cohen and his childhood friend Jerry Greenfield started Ben & Jerry’s in the 1970s in Burlington, Vt., with about $8,000 each.
Cohen said each ice cream flavor they create was meant to solve some societal problem. For example, Chocolate Fudge Brownie is produced by spending millions of dollars on brownies from a job-training center in New York. And Rainforest Crunch was created to help slow the cutting down of the Amazonian rain forests, Cohen said.
Scott Wayne, founder of the Frontier Project, said he hopes to turn the speaking series into a regular event.
The Virginia Interfaith Center had a relationship with Cohen, Wayne said, and so the two organizations put the event together in eight weeks.
“We didn’t know what [Cohen] was going to talk about, but the idea of this was to start a series of ‘An evening with …’”
“We are essentially trying to start attracting speakers from off the circuit,” Wayne said, “the ones who are not usually paid $30,000.”
Ben & Jerry were fictionally portrayed in the movie City Slickers, although they had different names – Ira and Barry. You can watch it below for a good laugh:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pbVxyL-OeM[/youtube]
Aaron Kremer is the BizSense editor. He was once on a tour of the Ben & Jerry’s factory in Vermont when another person on the tour asked, “Is it true that Ben is no longer with us because of the diabetes?” True story.
One of America’s most famous ice cream moguls says he’s happy that a Carytown ice cream shop bested a neighboring shop bearing his name.
Ben Cohen, a co-founder of ice cream behemoth Ben & Jerry’s, told a Richmond crowd Monday night that he’s glad the local ice cream parlor Bev’s is still around in Carytown, while the Ben & Jerry’s franchise a few doors down went out of business.
“It’s a good thing,” said Cohen of the store’s closing this year. “We tried not to open stores in competition with homegrown ones.”
Cohen talked to a crowd of about 350 at the Holocaust Museum. The event was organized by The Frontier Project, a Shockoe Bottom-based consulting company that specializes in leadership and strategy, and the Virginia Interfaith Center.
Dressed in casual attire and pausing often to gather his thoughts, Cohen might be the most laid-back businessman who has taken a company public. He talked at length about running a socially-conscious business and discussed his views on politics and the federal budget, using Oreos to represent billions of dollars spent. (He’s for spending less on the military and more on social causes.)
Business has become the most powerful force in civilization, he said, supplanting politics and religion.
He advocated redefining success in business to look past the bottom line. Cohen said he made a lot of money in his business, especially when the company went public and then was bought by the conglomerate Unilever.
“We need to change how we measure success … to profitability and the impact on the community, whether that is positive or negative,” Cohen said.
The benefits of focusing a little less on profit and a little more on treating everyone better make good business sense, he said.
“You have a unique selling proposition. It motivates employees and builds a loyal customer base,” Cohen said.
Cohen and his childhood friend Jerry Greenfield started Ben & Jerry’s in the 1970s in Burlington, Vt., with about $8,000 each.
Cohen said each ice cream flavor they create was meant to solve some societal problem. For example, Chocolate Fudge Brownie is produced by spending millions of dollars on brownies from a job-training center in New York. And Rainforest Crunch was created to help slow the cutting down of the Amazonian rain forests, Cohen said.
Scott Wayne, founder of the Frontier Project, said he hopes to turn the speaking series into a regular event.
The Virginia Interfaith Center had a relationship with Cohen, Wayne said, and so the two organizations put the event together in eight weeks.
“We didn’t know what [Cohen] was going to talk about, but the idea of this was to start a series of ‘An evening with …’”
“We are essentially trying to start attracting speakers from off the circuit,” Wayne said, “the ones who are not usually paid $30,000.”
Ben & Jerry were fictionally portrayed in the movie City Slickers, although they had different names – Ira and Barry. You can watch it below for a good laugh:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pbVxyL-OeM[/youtube]
Aaron Kremer is the BizSense editor. He was once on a tour of the Ben & Jerry’s factory in Vermont when another person on the tour asked, “Is it true that Ben is no longer with us because of the diabetes?” True story.