From a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont, to far-off places with names we sometimes mispronounce, the journey that began in 1978 with 2 guys and the ice cream business they built is as legendary as the ice cream is euphoric.
Explore some of the great moments in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream history:
Ben And Jerry’s Has A Graveyard For Their Discontinued Ice Cream Flavors
An ice cream graveyard? How deliciously grim. Just as ice cream lovers cannot live forever, neither can the flavors they love. For the flavors that weren’t loved enough, there’s the Ben and Jerry’s Flavor Graveyard in Waterbury, Vermont.
Outside the Ben and Jerry’s factory is a patch of grass dedicated to the memories of the flavors that never quite caught on. Despite the financial failure of the flavors, the people who put their heart and soul into making them still feel that they deserve to be honored…and boy, do they honor them.
The Ben and Jerry’s Flavor Graveyard in Waterbury, Vermont
With a $5 correspondence course in ice cream-making from Penn State and a $12,000 investment ($4,000 of it borrowed), Ben and Jerry open their first ice cream scoop shop in a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont.
1979
Next Step…
Ben and Jerry celebrate the shop’s one-year anniversary – and the customers who made it possible – by holding the first-ever Free Cone Day: free scoops for all, all day long. The annual ice cream give-away continues today in scoop shops around the world.