Scoop: Ben & Jerry's comes to Ottawa:
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Thursday 12 November 1998
Scoop: Ben & Jerry's comes to Ottawa
Julia Elliott
The Ottawa Citizen
Good news for ice cream addicts: Ben & Jerry's special blend will soon be waiting for you at a local supermarket cooler. Next week, about 20 Loblaws stores in the Ottawa area will be stocking seven flavours of Ben & Jerry's ice cream and two flavours of frozen
yogurt. Some Loeb and Your Independent Grocer stores will stock products the following week.
Twenty years ago, Ben & Jerry's ice cream was first sold in a renovated, unheated former gasoline station in Burlington,Vermont. Two childhood chums named Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield got the business going with $12,000, including a $4,000 loan. Probably they didn't predict last year's net sales of about $175 million U.S., a four % increase over 1996 sales.
Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc. sells ice cream, frozen yogurt and sorbet products in nine countries, including France, Israel, Ireland and Japan. Besides supplying 50 U.S. states,the company has 160 franchised scoop shops in 20 states.
In Canada, Delicious Alternative Desserts, a Canadian ice cream and frozen dessert manufacturer, acquired a licence this year to make and distribute Ben & Jerry's ice cream and frozen yogurt in various Canadian supermarkets and convenience stores. The dessert company, which makes ice cream at Stoney Creek Dairy near Hamilton -- with the same Vermont recipe -- has put Ben & Jerry's products in 200 stores in southern Ontario. By spring, the company expects products will be in all provinces and territories, with all products made at the Stoney Creek Dairy. (Montreal has had four Ben & Jerry's scoop shops for the past half dozen years or so.)
There's no question the country wants Ben & Jerry's ice cream, says John Szold of Delicious Alternative Desserts. Each day, about 10 people send the company thank-yous for making the product available, he says. "It's unbelievable. They're thanking us because they don't have to smuggle the ice cream over the border." So, what's so special about Ben & Jerry's ice cream? Consider the following: sweet ice cream, bing cheeries and dark chocolate chunks. Now, slather it on your tongue and you're tripping on Cherry Garcia ice cream, named for the late Grateful Dead rocker Jerry Garcia, of course. Picture Chunky Monkey ice cream -- a combination of walnuts, dark chocolate chunks and banana ice cream made from banana puree. Or simple vanilla ice cream made with pure vanilla extract.
The novelty of Ben & Jerry's products plus the company's philanthropic policy of giving away 7.5 per cent of its pre-tax earnings to social causes has helped buoy sales.For example,a Ben & Jerry foundation managed by a nine-member employee board considers proposals relating to children and families, disadvantaged groups and the environment.
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Cheers,
Don
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