Ben & Jerry’s: The Inside Scoop is an underrated business book. Traveling through the 1980s and 90’s it chronicles the growing pains of America’s favorite ice cream pints.
It’s a business book with two parts.
The fun stuff.
Two hippies create, grow, and scale a super premium ice cream brand from a converted gas station in Vermont! That’s fun.
On Black Monday 1987 the duo showed up on Wall Street with “That’s Life, vanilla ice cream with pieces of stale apple pie (the stale pieces held up better in the ice cream), and Economic Crunch, which was actually some leftover Nutcracker Suite from the previous winter, renamed for the occasion.”
Ben and Jerry drove around in a Cowmobile promoting the brand. On their one-year anniversary, they hosted a block party, with Ben and Jerry organizing, acting as characters, and offering free ice cream of course.
The grind.
“Amateurs talk about strategy,” said Omar Bradley, professionals talk about logistics.”
Ben & Jerry’s wasn’t the only super-premium ice cream. Häagen Daz was the market leader and a bunch of me-toos. Starting in Vermont, a state with no Baskin Robbins franchise was probably a blessing.
But the distribution was still a grind, sometimes literally as their beat-up delivery truck broke down delivering the pints. Once they contracted out to distributors it was a game of sharp elbows for shelf space, full of kickbacks, relationships, and lawsuits.
Even the Beatles had a logistics machine!
Oh, and the people.
Every business is built on the foundation of its people. In a podcast with Brent Beshore, Anu Hariharan said she looks to invest in good teams with product-market fit. This is despite her technical and financial backgrounds. To paraphrase: It’s the people, stupid.
But that’s also the hardest part of a business.
While Ben & Jerry’s product line, market share, and revenue grew, the team’s expertise did not. They hired slowly. Not because of a great vetting process but because they were overwhelmed. They fired slowly too, a terrible combination.
Oh, and the finances!
We won’t recount the story here, but in Shoe Dog, Phil Knight writes about taking all of his profits back to the bank to say, see, these things sell, now please give me another, larger loan. That happened in Vermont too. Inventory. People. Facilities. Raw materials. New facilities. At least they could drown their sorrows in a fresh pint.
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Be your own boss with your best friend(s), but work like hell.
Sounds right.
The Waiter's Pad 
