« Fat people are victims…of business | Home | Frozen yogurt and Starbucks »
Ben and Jerry need your help
By Daniel | May 13, 2008
Despite their humble hippie beginnings in 1977, today Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield are multimillionaires. Not only from all their hard work in launching the superpremium ice cream segment, but for having the good sense in 2000 to sell their company to Unilever, a British-Dutch consumer-goods conglomerate with $54.8 billion in annual sales in products. Although the corporate image of Ben & Jerry’s continues to be about contented cows, social issues and passionate entrepreneurs, it’s now owned by the same corporation who brings you SlimFast, Lipton tea, and Vaseline.
So you can understand why I’m outraged over the company’s plea for donations to “save” the Ben & Jerry’s Kirkland scoop shop which is apparently being temporarily displaced for the construction of a development called Lake Street Place. Unlike Baskin-Robbins, most B&J scoop shops are not franchises; they are company-owned.
On their site SaveOurShop.com, you’d almost think that helping the store’s operation remain intact for their anticipated 3-5 months of displacement is more worthy of your cash than sending aid the Chinese earthquake victims. In the email they sent customers, they wrote:
For those of you who do not yet know, our shop will be forced to vacate this building (along with all other tenants) for 3-5 months or more during our coveted summer months. We will keep customers posted, but it currently looks like mid-July through October (+/-).
We still need the support of our community to make it through and re-open. Please view our web site: saveourshop.com and if you are inclined to, please click on the “make a donation” button.
Thank you for seven years of support, and we hope to make it through this to keep serving Kirkland the best ice cream in the world!
Oh my GOD! What will the yuppies, hipsters and urbanites of downtown Kirkland do without their beloved neighborhood Ben & Jerry’s scoop shop for three whole months? They’ll be forced to travel all the way to Belltown for their fix of Chunky Monkey. Or worse, on their next trip to Whole Foods they’ll have to (gasp!) buy it in pints!
They don’t detail how the donations they are soliciting will either prevent the developers of Lake Street Place from temporarily displacing the scoop shop, or provide for a nearby temporary location to keep the Cherry Garcia flowing. Downtown Kirkland is a parking nightmare; I’d be happy to get my B&J fix elsewhere even if only to have more spaces available.
“We still need the support of our community to make it through and re-open.” WTF? Can’t the owners with $54.8 billion in annual sales spare a few Euros to cover expenses during the shop’s downtime? Don’t they think with a more vibrant retail scene in downtown Kirkland that they’ll make even more money once construction is completed?
Yeah, it’s a bitch that this is happening during B&J’s peak summer season. Just as much of a bitch as those who showed up at the store for their recent “Free Cone Day” were turned away. It seems with the current recession, price of gas and state of the world that any company who pocketed $5.5 billion in net profit last year has got some nerve asking their customers for donations. Don’t I “donate” to them every time I buy their products?
In an interview by the Boston weekly newspaper The Phoenix, co-founder Jerry Greenfield said, “… we’re still employed at the company, but we’re not involved in operations or management. So we have no responsibility, no authority, and very little influence.” If he did, I’m sure he would be as outraged over this plea for “donations” by a multi-billion dollar corporation as I.
Guess in the interim I’ll have to suffer through the mental stress of picking my own mix-ins at Coldstone Creamery. Decisions, decisions!
Topics: Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
May 14th, 2008 at 10:39 am
The store is not company owned. It is a franchise. I am a customer, and I pass by the shop an average of 2-3 times a day. 6 months a year, there is scarce daytime business, and not a lot in the evening, either. Winter is a financial drain for this store; business is slow and the rent is still high.
The request for donations may not be the ideal way to ask for help, but rather than trashing every property owner who tries to redevelop his property, the franchise owners have taken the high road and spoken in support of downtown redevelopment.
May 14th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Thanks to Dori Monson at 710-KIRO for allowing me to vent on this. It seems the store is actually NOT company-owned but a locally-owned franchise. Still, the Lake Street Place development didn’t happen overnight. The owner must have known for months or even years that the construction would require that she cease operations temporarily during the construction.
Hello? That’s what business interruption insurance is for! Or at the very least, maintain a reserve of working capital to see you through.
The owner maintained that she started her website “to answer questions” from her existing customers. That’s fine. So why did she use the corporate email tool (I signed up for “ChunkMail” on the B&J corporate site) to solicit donations from *everyone* who lives around her shop and not *just those customers* who asked questions? I’ve never once been in this particular scoop shop (the line’s usually too long and nowhere to park) and didn’t know about the issue with her business until I was emailed.
We’re not talking about a business that’s crucial to the community like the only grocery store in a rural area. It’s a yuppie ice cream shop!
Again, this happenstance was not a surprise to the business owner. I don’t have any sympathy for someone who didn’t have the foresight to manage their business properly.
As for making a donation to keep the Chunky Monkey flowing to downtown Kirkland? I’m sending my cash to more worthy causes like the American Diabetes Association.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Daniel, you no nothing about small business. There is no feasible way to get that kind of insurance for a small business.
Where is your apology for blaming the Big Corporation for this?
Stick to something you know, if there is anything in that category.
May 15th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Dear SB, I’m a “no nothing” (sic)? You have no idea who I am or what I’ve done. I happen to be a former business analyst for Dun & Bradstreet as well as a small business owner myself…I know PLENTY!
In my comments above, I noted that I was mistaken about this being a company-owned store. The fact that the owner used the corporate “Chunk Mail” list to get her message out gave me that impression. As I said, I have never been in that store nor signed up for that individual store’s mailing list.
Insurance is a cost of doing business and should be factored into regular expenses. By the way, according to the Insurance Institute of America, “Business interruption coverage is not sold separately. It is added to a property insurance policy or included in a package policy.”
“Feasible”? Now who’s talking out their ass? It might well be that coverage added to the owner’s existing liability policy is only a few more dollars a month. What if the store had a fire? Or an electrical problem that made all the Cherry Garcia melt? Those are the things such a policy would cover.
More at http://www.iii.org/individuals/business/basics/interruption/