The Gulf Was So Wide

For more than three decades, Ben & Jerry's has been committed to an insanely ambitious three-part mission: not just making the world's best ice cream but also supporting progressive causes and sharing its success with all stakeholders – employees, suppliers, distributors, customers, cows, everybody. Living up to these beliefs is fun when you're doing it right, and it creates amazingly loyal customers, but it isn't easy.This is the first book to tell the full, inside story of the inspiring rise, tragic mistakes, devastating fall, determined recovery, and ongoing renewal of one of the most iconic mission-driven companies in the world. No previous book has focused so intently on the challenges presented by staying true to the mission as the business grew. No other book has explained how the company came to be sold to Unilever, one of the world's biggest corporations. And none has described the unprecedented contract Ben & Jerry's negotiated with Unilever to preserve the three-part mission or the complex working relationship that has allowed the company to pursue that mission on a much larger stage.Brad Edmondson tells the story with a journalist's eye for details, dramatic moments, and memorable characters. Among the dozens of key figures Edmondson interviewed, his most important source was Jeff Furman, who helped Ben and Jerry write their first business plan in 1978 and has stayed involved ever since, serving as chairman of the board since 2010. It's a funny, sad, surprising, and ultimately hopeful story.

When Perry Odak became the CEO of Ben & Jerry's, the media crowed that the peaceniks had hired a leader from a company that made guns. They also said that Perry was a down-to-earth guy from a Hudson Valley farm who had worked his way through Cornell by milking cows. They got the facts right, but they buried the lead.Perry was a turnaround specialist. He was the man Fred Miller had suggested in the days following Bob Holland's resignation, and he did what he was hired to do. Starting in January 1997, he executed a plan that worked brilliantly for shareholders. The company's financial condition began improving shortly after he arrived. He brought focus and skillful planning to every aspect of the operation, and he gave the social mission the resources it needed to keep moving ahead. But that isn't all he did.Perry's career had followed a pattern. He had spun off companies for sale when he worked at Atari in the 1980s. In the 1990s, as a management consultant, he helped a holding company cut its debt by selling fifteen companies in just nine months. He even merged two dairy companies just two years before he arrived at Ben & Jerry's. 'The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior,' said Pierre Ferrari, who joined the board of Ben & Jerry's in 1997. 'Perry took on organizations that had run into some kind of trouble, turned them around, and then sold them. He approached everything with that kind of attitude. You know, every problem is a nail if you're a hammer.'