Talking ice cream: Jerry Greenfield, center, co founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream talks with Melvin Ziegenbein, Jr. vice president of sales and marketing and Lacy Sodolak a food service specialist at Blue Bell Creameries, an ice cream company in Brenham, Texas

Greenfield brings “spiritual aspect”
of business to MHA

The co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream in Vermont gave visitors to this year’s Marine Hotel Association Conference in Hollywood, Florida a history of the company’s unorthodox ice cream empire and how he and his partner Ben Cohen first sought to create a corporate culture built no only on profit, but on social conscience as well.

During the hour-long session April 13 in Hollywood, Florida, Greenfield said business is the most powerful institution in U.S. society today. Its influence spreads to media and government and is “all done in one relatively narrow self-interest – to make money.”

After several years of struggling, fighting off strong-arm tactics by companies such as Pillsbury to limit their distribution of their products and dealing with rapid growth, Ben & Jerry’s succeeded in making its mark in the premium ice cream business. The company has created a foundation for charitable activities and continued to patronize local farmers and businesses. It has allowed non-profit organizations to open Ben and Jerry’s ice cream franchises shops to earn money for operations. Before being purchased by Unilever seven years ago, Ben & Jerry’s sold stock to residents of the small state of Vermont, giving hundreds shares in the company.

“There is a spiritual aspect to business as there is to the lives of people,” Greenfield told the group. Though Greenfield said the company has been criticized as cynically marketing its social conscience to sell more ice cream he said he felt the company engaged in “true marketing” designed to not only meet sell products, but to give customers a choice to choose a firm that is involved in environmental and social projects that “redefines the bottom line.”