Ben & Jerry's Free Cone Day!

Happy 30th Birthday Ben & Jerry!

How Ben & Jerry's Started Out -

Back in ’66, in a school gym class, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield found they hated running but loved food. Years later in ‘78, Ben had been fired from a series of McJobs while Jerry had failed for the second time to get into medical school. So, since eating was their great passion, armed with a $5 correspondence course in ice cream making, they opened their first scoop shop in a dilapidated gas station in Burlington, Vermont.

They soon became popular in the local community for the finest all natural ice cream made from fresh Vermont milk and cream. Ben had no sense of taste so he relied on what he called ‘mouth feel’, so big chunks of chocolate, fruit and nut became their signature. While they disagreed at times over the chunk size, they did agree that they wanted to enjoy themselves – as Jerry put it

‘if it’s not fun, why do it?’.

In the early days the boys were pretty bad at book-keeping. After two months they closed the store and hung a sign that said ‘we’re closed to figure out whether we’re making any money’. And they weren’t. But they learned a lot and by 1979, began wholesaling pints of ice cream out of Ben’s VW campervan.

Today,

Ben & Jerry's is a brand of ice cream, frozen yogurt, sorbet, and ice cream novelty products, manufactured by Ben & Jerry's Homemade Holdings, Inc., headquartered in South Burlington, Vermont, with the main factory in Waterbury, Vermont and is owned by the conglomerate Unilever.

Free Cone Day is an annual event held in late April or early May, in which Ben & Jerry's scoop shops give out free ice cream cones all day. This year's event, taking place on Tuesday, April 29 2008, marks the company's 30th annual Free Cone Day.

Over one million free cones are given away each year, prompting the company's ad slogan "Be One In A Million." Charitable organizations are often present at the stores each year and enjoy a significant amount of fundraising success. Sometimes the event is scheduled to coincide with Earth Day and sometimes volunteers are on hand with clipboards and voter registration forms to help those who would like to register to vote.

The first Free Cone Day was held on May 5, 1979. It was done by Ben and Jerry as a customer and staff appreciation event for the one year anniversary of their ice cream store's opening. The 29th annual Free Cone Day was celebrated on April 18, 2007.

On March 23, 2008 Brian Clark, a freshman at the University of Michigan, was contacted by Ben & Jerry's legal team for publishing on social networking site Facebook.com that there was a Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's store's nationwide on April 1, 2008. The group appeared to be an April Fool's Joke and Ben & Jerry's promised to drop legal actions if the group was removed by March 24, 2008. The group was removed and attendees were notified of the joke. No charges have been filed. The annual Free Cone Day is April 29, 2008.

Free Cone anyone?

the ; chunky monkey, strawberry cheesecake, chocoloate therapy, phish food, cookie dough, chocolate fudge brownie, cherry garcia, & new york super fudge chunk!