Ben Cohen

But eventually, we did have a need for more money.

And so we held a national public stock offering.

And that was when we formalized our giving into the Ben & Jerry's Foundation, which is

independent from the company.

We were fair trade before fair trade was fair trade.

That's correct.

I met Bernie at the first meeting of what became the Social Ventures Network, socially conscious business people that were coming together

We're walking around this lake together.

Bernie was a Jewish Buddhist nuclear physicist monk.

My kind of guy.

My kind of guy.

Sounds radical, yeah.

So we're walking around, and he says, hey, I've started this bakery, Grayston Bakery, and I am in the Buddhist community.

I am at the fringes of the Buddhist community because I'm looking to actually do work in the world.

And there's another section of the Buddhist community that's just looking to improve their internal self, right?

So he's at the very edge of it, and he started this bakery.

I'm at the very edge of the business world, because I'm trying to integrate these social concerns.

We find each other at the edges of our worlds, and we were just in the process of...

setting up a new plant to make brownie ice cream sandwiches.

And I said, hey, we're looking for a second supplier because the one supplier we have is this small business.