The co-founder of the ice cream brand says he is leaving since parent company Unilever no longer allows the brand to take political stands
Lisa Lake
After 47 years running the ice-cream powerhouse he co-founded with Ben Cohen, Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry's says he is quitting the brand because of restrictions placed on it by parent company Unilever. Specifically, Greenfield said, the company is no longer allowed to speak out on world events.
"Standing up for the values of justice, equity, and our shared humanity has never been more important — and yet Ben & Jerry’s has been silenced, sidelined for fear of upsetting those in power," he wrote in a letter to employees and customers of the brand. "It’s easy to stand up and speak out when there’s nothing at risk. The real test of values is when times are challenging and you have something to lose."
Ben & Jerry's has been a part of Unilever since 2000. When the deal was struck, however, Cohen and Greenfield included a clause that, Greenfield says, "enshrined our social mission and values in the company’s governance structure in perpetuity."
Today, he says, the parent company has rescinded that independence. (Unilever, in a statement to The Wall Street Journal, said it disagreed with Greenfield's comment and had worked with Ben & Jerry's to strengthen the brand's "powerful values-based position in the world.")
Unilever is in the process of spinning off the unit that oversees Ben & Jerry's, with a listing planned in Amsterdam. Cohen has said he was attempting to line up investors to buy the brand back from Unilever, but the company has shown no interest in selling it back to its founders.
Cohen and Greenfield founded the ice cream brand in 1978, when they started selling it from a gas station in Burlington, Vt. Their unusual flavor combinations and quirky names (such as Chunky Monkey, Chubby Hubby and The Vermonster) turned heads. And the company's activism turned more.
Greenfield said his departure from the company was "one of the hardest and most painful decisions I’ve ever made," but said the restrictions from speaking out against what he saw as issues of peace, justice and human rights were too much.
"From the very beginning, Ben and I believed that our values and the pursuit of justice were more important than the company itself," he wrote. "If the company couldn’t stand up for the things we believed, then it wasn’t worth being a company at all. It was always about more than just ice cream; it was a way to spread love and invite others into the fight for equity, justice and a better world."
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