Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream Inc.: Keeping the Mission(s) Alive

Ben, Chico, and Chuck

Proud of being a Vermont company, the management team and work force was made up of people who lived in or were willing to move to a rural environment. The management group was young, with most of its members in their twenties and thirties. (Exhibit 13 describes the backgrounds of the management team.)

Ben was the clear leader of the company, approved products, directed marketing and promotion, and was the driving force behind the social mission. A 40-year-old, bearded man who was forced to borrow a waiter’s uniform for his 1988 White House award because he had no suits of his own, Ben personified the spirit of the company. Ben was not, however, interested in managing the details involved in building the organization. He was unequivocal about the values that he believed the company should represent, but the process of managing the company was unappealing to him.

As a result, in 1982 he brought Fred “Chico” Lager into the company as general manager. Armed with an MBA, a professional approach to his job, and a basic appreciation of the social mission of the company, Chico became the defector head of the “economic mission” and the builder of the organization. As time went on, Ben’s presence diminished. He even hired a marketing director in 1986—the job for which he had always taken personal responsibility. Chico was running the company.