Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream in the tub is still great, but the brand’s newest chocolate-covered ice-cream bar on a stick?
“It ain’t the same,” Ben Cohen, the company co-founder, told the Guardian. Sure, the chocolate coating is still thick enough, but the ice cream itself is “kinda fluffy”, Cohen said – an insult in the ice-cream world that suggests extra air was added to cut costs.
The criticism is surprising coming from Cohen, who opened his eponymous ice-cream shop in Burlington, Vermont, with childhood friend, Jerry Greenfield, in 1978. But it’s perhaps an apt metaphor of how he feels amid a simhttps://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jul/31/ben-jerrys-ice-cream-magnum-boycottmering fight to take back Ben & Jerry’s from a parent company he says has silenced the brand’s trademark activism.
For Cohen, 75, the battle is legal and existential. Ben & Jerry’s social and economic value was protected for decades, he says, by an independent board with final say on the brand’s voice, values and ice-cream quality.
But that independence has all but disappeared, Cohen said. In November 2024, Ben & Jerry’s board sued parent company Unilever, claiming it was blocked from voicing support for Gaza, and accusing Unilever of breaching their agreement. The lawsuit is still making its way through federal court.