Jerry Greenfield, one half of the most famous duo in ice cream, has walked away from Ben & Jerry’s. After nearly 50 years, the man behind Cherry Garcia says he can no longer, in good conscience, remain tied to a business “silenced” by its corporate parent, Unilever.
His letter, shared on social media by co-founder Ben Cohen, was heavy with both heartbreak and inevitability. What began as two friends selling socially conscious ice cream in Vermont had become a battleground in the collision of personal activism, politics and global consumerism.
This break has been brewing for years. Since 2021, when Ben & Jerry’s announced it would stop sales in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, its activism has clashed head-on with Unilever’s corporate caution. Now, with Unilever spinning off its ice cream division (The Magnum Ice Cream Company), Jerry has chosen himself over the brand.
And that’s the reputational tipping point worth pausing on.
For decades, Ben & Jerry’s built its identity on values as much as flavours – a brand as likely to campaign for climate action or LGBTQ+ rights as to sell you a pot of Phish Food. The activism was not just tolerated, but become (randomly) central to its story. So intertwined was it that it formed part of the deal when Unilever acquired the company in 2000: the social mission would be protected.
But when the personal beliefs of a founder start to jar with the corporation’s agenda, the question becomes: who is really being represented? The brand? The employees who rely on its stability? Or the individual whose name is still stamped on the lid?
(There’s an irony here too, that’s getting trickier to stomach (no pun intended). Ben & Jerry’s is still marketed as the ice cream with a conscience, yet remains one of, if not the, priciest tub on the supermarket shelf. The contrast between moral mission and consumer luxury has always sat uneasily in the mix, but under Unilever’s ownership, whose underlying operating profit was €11.2 billion, up 12.6% versus the prior year, that contradiction feels sharper than ever.)
Jerry’s decision shows the cost of misalignment, and where founders must put their brand first. Staying would risk eroding not just his own credibility, but also damaging the very brand he built (a sentiment we’ve seen shared by many a politican)! By leaving, not only does he preserves his personal integrity, but, paradoxically, may save Ben & Jerry’s from becoming a battleground defined by one man’s heartbreak.
Sometimes, the most reputationally protective act is to step aside.
And when your role is meant to represent the brand, but your conscience compels you to represent yourself, the two identities cannot co-exist for long. When the personal voice starts to overshadow the corporate one, departure becomes the only way to protect both.
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