There is an ice cream stand located in almost every town. Ice cream has become very popular in America and many companies have made a fortune out of making the tasty dessert. One of the most famous companies is Ben and Jerry's. Ben and Jerry's started off small and grew into an American fortune company, now they have done it again by taking their wacky ice cream to countries all over the world.
The founders of the company are Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. They met and become friends in middle school located in Long Island, New York. They moved to Vermont and completed a course in ice creaming from Penn State. For those who don't know where Penn State is it is located in Pennsylvania. Before they were even known, they had seen a lot of the eastern coast and that helped them come up with some of their early designs.
It was 1978 when they opened their first store. They invested only $12,000 and only borrowed four thousand dollars. This is relatively small amount for start up capital. Today, you wouldn't even pay your rent with $16,000, but Ben and Jerry made it happen. They opened their first store in Burlington, Vermont. Here they become well known for their parties. They would sell their ice cream and project movies on the side of a wall of a run-down gas station.
It only took them a year and they had already marked themselves in history. To mark their one year anniversary they had free cone day, which gave free scoops of their ice cream to anyone who came to the store that day. This tradition still goes for every anniversary in every Ben and Jerry's. In the 1980's, they felt that they should expand. Being open for several years and having success, they wanted to see what their ice cream would do in the grocery stores.
This is when they started to package their ice cream in pints to be sold and shared with thousands of people. They started off small again; Ben dropped the ice cream off at the stores using his own car. Ben and Jerry still didn't think that was enough and in 1981 they became an ice cream making chain. They were still located in Vermont, but closer to the highways for easy access.
Still trying to grab the world's attention, Ben and Jerry went for the record. They built the largest ice cream sundae in Albans, Vermont. The sundae weighed about 27,102 pounds. This made Ben and Jerry become statewide known and it started to put them on the map to huge success. After all the publicity in Vermont, they knew they had to expand and so they begin to market their ice up and down the eastern coast started with Maine.
Through the gain of investors and independent distributors, they got their ice cream in ever store through out the New England states. Soon the company would become a publicly traded stock and the company was huge. In the mid 1980's, the company was selling more than four million dollars worth of ice cream a year.
Today their top selling flavors are Cherry Garcia, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Chunky Monkey, Chocolate fudge Brownie, Half Baked, New York Super Fudge Chunk, Phish Food, Coffee Health Bar Crunch, Cherry Garcia frozen yogurt, and Peanut Butter Cup. They have played around with their ice cream combos and have become well known for giving each kind a unique name.
In fact, on the back of the containers you can read the story behind that flavor. Some of the flavors started as a joke and ended up being the best selling flavors of Ben and Jerry's ice cream.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/619924
