Ben Cohen: Co-founder of Ben & Jerry's
Business Owner · Food & Beverage
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield opened a Burlington, Vermont ice cream parlor in 1978 after a bagel business proved too expensive. The chunky style was developed to compensate for Cohen's anosmia.
About Ben Cohen: Co-founder of Ben & Jerry's
Bennett "Ben" Cohen (born March 18, 1951, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American entrepreneur, activist and philanthropist and a co-founder of the ice cream company Ben & Jerry's, as well as a prominent supporter of progressive causes. He was raised in Merrick, New York, on Long Island by Jewish parents Frances and Irving, and spent at least one summer at Buck's Rock Performing and Creative Arts Camp in Connecticut. Cohen met his future business partner Jerry Greenfield in a seventh-grade gym class in 1963, and they continued together to Sanford H. Calhoun High School. In his senior year Cohen worked as an ice cream man before leaving for university. He studied at Colgate, Skidmore (where he mostly took pottery classes), New York University and the University Without Walls program of UMass Amherst, pursued pottery for a decade and dropped out of college after his sophomore year. In 1977 Cohen decided to go into business with Greenfield, and in May of the next year the two opened Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream Parlor in Burlington, Vermont. They had intended to start a bagel business but found the equipment costs prohibitive and switched to ice cream, choosing Burlington because it was a prominent college town with no ice cream shop. The company's distinctive chunky style of ice cream was developed to compensate for Cohen's anosmia. Sources: English Wikipedia (Ben Cohen (businessman), accessed September 2026).
Basic Information
Co-founder, Ben & Jerry's
Company Details
Ben & Jerry's
Ice Cream, Food Manufacturing, Activism
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