From Ben & Jerry's, a taste of corporate conscience

SMITHFIELD -- There's a small bakery in New York City that regularly hires people with problems in their pasts such as substance abuse, homelessness or run-ins with the law. It also happens to make

Friday, April 7th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

SMITHFIELD -- There's a small bakery in New York City that regularly hires people with problems in their pasts such as substance abuse, homelessness or run-ins with the law. It also happens to make delicious brownies.

For socially minded Ben & Jerry's Homemade, that's the perfect sort of business with which to form a partnership and implement a strategy of making money while addressing the problems of society.

The brownies are used in Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream, which is one of the ice cream chain's more popular flavors and which makes the company "a bunch of money," according to Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's.

At the same time, the $2 million worth of brownies Ben & Jerry's purchased from the bakery last year went a long way toward keeping those one-time troubled employees in the work force.

"Working on combining social issues with profit opportunities is the field in which we labor," Greenfield said Wednesday night. "It's a process that we keep trying to get better at."

Greenfield was at Bryant College to speak to more than 500 people about business and social responsibility, as part of the school's Trustee Speaker Series. With numerous aspiring student entrepreneurs and business managers in the crowd, Greenfield recalled how he and his lifelong friend Ben Cohen ("the two slowest, fattest kids in our class") started a company in an old gas station in Burlington, Vt., which eventually became a $160-million publicly held ice cream giant.

Dressed in sneakers, jeans and a purple Ben & Jerry's T-shirt, the laid-back, 47-year-old Greenfield opened the talk by saying he couldn't discuss one topic on many minds -- the reported pending sale of Ben & Jerry's to a private investment group.

The New York Times reported last week that the company was being sold, in a $260-million deal, to a group of investors that included Cohen, but not Greenfield. The Times said the acquiring group also included Meadowbrook Lane Capital, an investment firm that describes itself as socially responsible, and Unilever, the British-Dutch corportion that owns Breyer's ice cream and Good Humor bars.

The news report said the expected sale had caused a "rift" between Cohen and Greenfield, because Greenfield did not want Unilever involved. At Bryant, Greenfield said there was "no truth whatsoever" to any rift.
"I just spoke with him this afternoon down in New York and he sends his hello, as well as ice cream," Greenfield said of Cohen, noting that he brought about 2,000 boxes of free ice cream bars for the audience.

Since its founding in 1978, Ben & Jerry's has become almost as well known for its attempts to be a socially active business as it has for its eclectic array of flavors from Cherry Garcia and Chubby Hubby to Chunky Monkey.

Greenfield said the philosophy has its roots in his and Cohen's '60s upbringing. As their small ice cream company became increasingly successful, they felt their business was becoming "another cog in the economic machine."

To break from that track, they raised money through a stock sale to Vermonters only. A year later they went public nationally. At the same time, they set up the Ben & Jerry's Foundation, funded by 7.5 percent of the company's pre-tax profit, the highest percentage of any publicly held company in the country, according to Greenfield. The corporate average, he said, is about 2.5 percent. The point of the foundation is to provide money to nonprofit organizations working on worthy social issues.

"A business is a machine for making money," Greenfield told the crowd. "If we want to be as much benefit to the community as possible, we should give away as much money as we can."

Greenfield said that while religion was once the "most powerful force" in society, and which later was replaced by government, in his lifetime business has assumed that role. He said business has "incredible influence" through such means as campaign contributions, legislation and media ownership.

But while "at least part" of the purpose of religion and government was to look out for societal welfare, Greenfield said that most people believe "the purpose of business is to maximize profits." Ben & Jerry's, he said, believes there's a "spiritual aspect" to business.

"We are all interconnected," said Greenfield. "As you help others, you help yourself. Just because the idea that the good that you do comes back to you is written in the Bible and not in some business text book, doesn't mean that it's any less valid."

He said that approach to business, demonstrated by working with such partners as the small New York City bakery, is a way for business to do good while doing well.

"This is not your normal business rap," he conceded. "It's a shift. It's a switch from a win-lose scenerio, business vs. employees, business vs. the community; to a win-win scenerio of business working with its employees and the community to make the world a better place."