The shortest case study on a $300 million ice cream shop

I recently shared a post that some of you found very useful.I've since written a case study that you'd find interesting.In 1978, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield opened a homemade ice cream parlor in an abandoned gas station in Burlington, Vermont. They sold Ben and Jerry's for $300+ million in 2000.Here's their crazy story.Fred Lager wrote this amazing book "Ben and Jerry's: The Inside Scoop" about the early days of the business.COLLEGE DROPOUT: Ben Cohen talked with one of the mechanics at Pied Piper about the idea of dropping out of school. “Why you wanna drop out of college? It’ll be good for you,” the mechanic said.IDEA: With the exception of buying a big rig and becoming cross-country truck drivers, most of Jerry and Ben’s ideas for a business involved food. They both liked to eat, so it seemed like a logical career move. Their first idea was a bagels delivery service.LOCATION: Burlington was the coldest college town, which was why it hadn’t been on their original list. But the cold weather also accounted for the lack of competition. Vermont was the only state that didn’t have a Baskin-Robbins franchise. Blue Ocean Strategy? You bet.BUSINESS PLAN: They came up with a copy of a business plan that a pizza parlor in New York had used, and suggested that Jerry and Ben change the word “slices” to “cones,” and use it as the model.WORK: They worked incredibly long days on the renovations, starting first thing in the morning, and going long into the night. When they couldn’t stand the cold anymore, they took a break at the bus station down the street.PRODUCT: Their product was also going to be very heavily flavored, largely as a result of Ben’s sinus problems. “It tastes great,” he’d tell Jerry when asked to evaluate a new test batch, “but I can’t tell what flavor it is.” Jerry would go back and up the dosage. To compensate for Ben’s inability to distinguish subtle flavor variations, they decided to put lots of chunks or add-ins in the ice cream. Many of the flavours were developed with the idea of creating texture variations and a “mouth feel” that Ben could respond to.LAUNCH: They opened on May 5, 1978. Business kept getting better and better, and on or around the ninth day it was so good that they ran out of ice cream, and had to close early. They averaged about $650 a day in sales during the summer months.MARKETING: Ben and Jerry came up with the idea of driving a converted motor home, which they dubbed the Cowmobile, on a cross-country scoopathon during the summer of 1986. For Ben, the idea of spending the summer driving around the country with Jerry was too good to be true.There's so much to say on Ben and Jerry's that it'd take 10 posts like this to capture all the crazy ideas they tested in the 1980s and 1990s. For further reading, the best resource is the book, of course.If you liked this, I share similar stuff here see hubwealthy.com/wealthy