The Man on the Wrapper Is Now the Brand's Loudest Critic
Ben Cohen built a $1.1 billion ice cream brand on the premise that profit and purpose reinforce each other. Today, the 75-year-old co-founder is running a public campaign called 'Free Ben & Jerry's' — and the target is the company that bears his name.
Cohen accuses The Magnum Ice Cream Company, the current owner of Ben & Jerry's, of gutting the brand's independent board and cutting off its philanthropic arm. The campaign has collected more than 200,000 signatures pushing Magnum to sell the brand to more socially minded investors.
'We're trying to keep Ben & Jerry's soul alive,' Cohen told Fortune. 'They ain't got no soul. The only mission these guys have is profit.'
From a Burlington Gas Station to a Billion-Dollar Brand
Cohen and childhood friend Jerry Greenfield opened their first scoop shop in a converted gas station in Burlington, Vermont, in 1978. Money was tight from the start — the pair nearly broke even because they were scooping cones too generously, forcing a pivot to packing ice cream in two-and-a-half-gallon tubs for retailers.
Cohen quickly saw the tub as something more: 'It was real estate,' he said. 'I wanted to use it to tell the public stuff they might not be hearing about in mainstream media.' That instinct produced the Peace Pop, a chocolate-covered ice cream bar whose wrapper called for redirecting defense spending toward peace-promoting projects — a move that divided consumers but cemented the brand's activist identity.
In 1985, the company created the Ben & Jerry's Foundation, seeded with 7.5% of pretax profits. Over four decades, the Foundation distributed more than $70 million to social-justice causes.
The 2000 Sale and the Governance Clause That Became a Battleground
In 2000, Cohen and Greenfield sold Ben & Jerry's to Unilever for $326 million under a condition that the brand would retain an independent board to oversee its social mission. For years it was cited as a model for how a conglomerate could acquire a values-driven business without hollowing it out.
That arrangement held for roughly two decades. Ben & Jerry's and Unilever have been engaged in a legal dispute since 2024, according to the source. The independent board alleges the parent company prevented it from supporting causes central to its social mission and moved to remove board members through a nine-year term limit.
Following a demerger with Unilever in 2025, The Magnum Ice Cream Company became the brand's new owner. In July, the Ben & Jerry's Foundation announced it will shut down operations by the end of the year after Magnum cut its funding. Cohen calls it 'an asset-stripping campaign dressed up as governance reform.'
A Magnum spokesperson pushed back, calling the Foundation's account a 'mischaracterization of events' and stating that 'three of the independent directors chose to make themselves ineligible to serve by refusing to sign our Code of Business Integrity.' The spokesperson added that a maximum nine-year term has been established for board members across the business. A legal challenge over the governance changes and funding cuts remains pending in New York federal court.
Notably, Ben & Jerry's is Magnum's best-performing brand, posting the fastest growth among its four main products.
The Takeaway
The irony here is sharp: a brand built on the idea that free enterprise and social mission can coexist is now exhibit A in a dispute over what happens when corporate governance collides with contractual idealism. Whatever one thinks of Cohen's politics — and his views on U.S. foreign policy and economic leverage are well outside the mainstream — the underlying business question is legitimate. A brand's equity is inseparable from its identity. Buyers who strip that identity for short-term margin are not cutting fat; they are consuming the asset itself.
The market has already voted on authenticity. The numbers will follow.
