39 Random Fun Facts to Celebrate Our 39th Birthday!

2nd May, 2017

Happy birthday to us! Friday 5th May marks Ben & Jerry's 39th birthday, and while we'd like to celebrate by eating 39 tubs of ice cream, our bellies would probably prefer that we find another way to show our excitement. So, we thought we'd dig up 39 weird, random, totally unnecessary fun facts about Ben & Jerry's to share. Maybe have a spoonful of Cookie Dough for each one, in our honour:

Item number 1

Jerry was the first CEO of the company, so they compromised by putting Ben’s name first in “Ben & Jerry’s”.
Item number 2

Ben & Jerry’s was going to be a bagel company, but Ben and Jerry found the bagel-making equipment to be too pricey. Their plan was to deliver bagels, smoked salmon, cream cheese and the New York Times on Sunday mornings.
Item number 3

Each employee gets 3 tubs of delicious Ben & Jerry’s goodness a day.
Item number 4

Dastardly Mash was the only flavour ever to contain raisins.
Item number 5

We have a graveyard where we bury our discontinued flavours. There are over 300 flavours that have been sent to the graveyard.
Item number 6

Founders Ben Cohen & Jerry Greenfield met in 7^th grade gym class in Long Island in 1963. They were the two slowest kids in class.
Item number 7

Ben and Jerry moved to Vermont and completed a $5 correspondence course in ice cream-making from Penn State. They get a perfect score because the test was open book.
Item number 8

The first flavour ever created by Ben and Jerry was Vanilla. Gasp!
Item number 9

There is a tree house and a slide in the Ben & Jerry’s offices – both are used often.
Item number 10

We created Cookie Dough after a fan anonymously suggested it at our first Scoop Shop. It’s since become an ice cream legend.
Item number 11

All of the meeting rooms at Ben & Jerry’s headquarters are named after ice cream flavours.
Item number 12

Ben & Jerry’s has two hot air balloons that they break out on special occasions. One is shaped like a Cherry Garcia ice cream cone and is almost 100 ft. high.
Item number 13

The summer after their freshman year of college, Ben Cohen drove an ice cream truck, and Jerry parked cars at the local beach.
Item number 14

The first Ben & Jerry’s location in Vermont was a renovated petrol station, where they shared space with a local farmer who sold produce.
Item number 15

Ben wanted to call the business “Josephine’s Flying Machine”, but Jerry didn’t like it.
Item number 16

The first tubs were Oreo Mint, French Vanilla, Chocolate Fudge, Wild Blueberry, Mocha Walnut, Maple Walnut, Honey Coffee and Honey Orange.
Item number 17

Unfortunately, none of the original 8 flavours have survived.
Item number 18

There’s a Scoop Shop that sits on stilts in Bannister’s Wharf, Newport, RI
Item number 19

Canada was the first country outside the US to celebrate Free Cone Day.
Item number 20

Ben & Jerry’s headquarters are dog friendly, and many employees bring their pups to work.
Item number 21

21. Worldwide, our most popular flavour is Cookie Dough.
Item number 22
Jerry used to drop boxes of toffee from the top of a ladder to break them up to use in Coffee Heath Bar Crunch.
Item number 23

In 1986, Ben and Jerry got into their “Cowmobile” and drove across the United States, handing out free Ben & Jerry's. Sadly, it burned to the ground on the way home. Ben said it looked like a giant Baked Alaska!
Item number 24

This year, PETA gave Ben & Jerry’s their annual Proggy award in recognition of the new vegan Non-Dairy line.
Item number 25

Each waffle cone has an average of 259 little squares. Why so many? The textured surface holds more ice cream than a smooth surface.
Item number 26

When Ben & Jerry’s first started, we sold soup, crepes, and pottery alongside the now-famous ice cream.
Item number 27

Bourbon Pecan Pie can only be found in the state of Texas.
Item number 28

The machinery we use to create our Cores flavours is based on a German sausage maker.
Item number 29

Including ice cream, light ice cream, low fat ice cream, no sugar added ice cream, Carb Karma, Greek and regular frozen yoghurt, there have been 43 flavours with ‘Vanilla’ in the name.
Item number 30

We have Flavour Labs at our Waterbury, VT factory and at the Scoop Shop in Tokyo, Japan, where we create wild new flavours every week.
Item number 31

Chocolate Therapy and Oatmeal Cookie Chunk are the only Limited Batches we’ve ever made into full-time flavours.
Item number 32

Speaking of Oatmeal Cookie Chunk, we’re pretty sure it’s our most-missed flavour. Maybe.
Item number 33

The first Free Cone Day was in 1979 and was the founders’ way of thanking their customers for helping them get through their first year.
Item number 34

The cow you see on Ben & Jerry’s packages is named Woody, after Woody Jackson, the artist who designed her in 1983.
Item number 35

We were the first ice cream company in the world to make Cores, tubs of ice cream with a thick core of something euphorically awesome (like caramel or cookies) in the middle.
Item number 36

Since the late 1980’s, we’ve gotten all our delicious, fudgy brownie chunks from Greyston Bakery, a social mission-led bakery in Yonkers, NY that employs folks who have faced barriers to employment.
Item number 37

100% of the profits from Greyston Bakery benefit the Yonkers, NY community, and we are proud to be a part of it.
Item number 38

This year, we handed out over 1 million free scoops of ice cream on Free Cone Day. Woohoo!
Item number 39

Earlier this year, we launched our new cereal milk ice cream flavours in the US by putting a giant cereal bowl in the middle of Grand Central Station in New York City! People were PUMPED.