Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream and Correspondence Course

The founders of the country’s leading ice cream brand spent only a pint-sized sum learning how to make their product. 

Both growing up on Long Island, New York, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield became friends in seventh grade, back in 1963. Originally, they set their sights on being a doctor (Greenfield) and an artist (Cohen). 

But once they reached their 20s — a rejected medical school applicant and a potter who dropped out of college — they decided to enter the food industry instead. The duo came close to becoming bagel makers, but realized that producing ice cream was cheaper (bagel-making equipment can be pretty pricey).

Their dessert education arrived through a Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences correspondence course, which sent them a textbook in the mail and required only open-book tests. 

The course has since been replaced by a week-long series of workshops, the Penn State Ice Cream Short Course, which bills itself as the country’s “oldest, best-known, and largest educational program dealing with the science and technology of ice cream.” 

Established in 1925, the program has attracted representatives from Baskin-Robbins, Haagen-Dazs, and Blue Bell Creamery who want to improve their knowledge of research and development, quality control, sales strategies, and more.

To prepare to run Ben & Jerry’s, Cohen and Greenfield also purchased various brochures from the Small Business Administration, sold for 20 cents each at the post office. Next, they decided to open a shop in bucolic Burlington, Vermont, home to the University of Vermont’s campus (and thousands of hungry students). 

Their doors opened in 1978 in a former gas station with unsightly holes in the roof that Cohen attempted to patch up with tin sheets and tar. Cohen and Greenfield secured the location by combining a $4,000 bank loan with their pooled $8,000 (including $2,000 supplied by Cohen’s dad). 

All of the ice cream was made in a five-gallon machine, and the shop originally sold eight flavors: Oreo Mint, French Vanilla, Chocolate Fudge, Wild Blueberry, Mocha Walnut, Maple Walnut, Honey Coffee, and Honey Orange. 

However, as the flavors got wilder — think Chunky Monkey, Cherry Garcia, and Phish Food — many more outposts and a wholesale delivery business followed, as did an IPO. In 2000, Unilever — the parent company of Breyers and Klondike — paid $326 million to acquire Ben & Jerry’s.