Ben Jerry's Double Dip: How to Run a Values Led Business and Make Money Too

If you’re looking for a lighthearted, interesting and fun read, this book is a great one! I bought it for a college class and only had to read a couple of chapters but once I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down! Highly recommend!!!

I bought this book because the writers, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield themselves, were both the founders and the owners running the business, so they should be closest to the story of creating the business, closer than anyone else at Ben & Jerry's, The problem with the book is that it never gets into the nitty-gritty details of starting, building, marketing, and operating the business itself. The book skips the entire startup story and fast-forwards to "social mission integration" from chapter 1! Workplace values like "Open/inclusive" and environmental values like "stewardship of natural resources" ... social mission projects like "Vermont Children's Forum" and "Head Start Book Drive" .... These efforts are admirable. I believe in their impact and reach. But they say nothing about how they found and rented their store space, how much they spent remodeling it, how they structured their business plan and company incorporation, where they got the money, how they found their first customers, how they hired their first employees, how they managed, how they spread the word beyond their initial customers, how they surveyed factories, evaluated recipes, did their taxes, ... you know, the activities that make or break so many small businesses before they even get to social mission projects. "The halls of corporate America are full of management consultants who talk a great game. Corporate America is paying millions of dollars a day for consultants to tell them how to manage their businesses well." No duh! Passages like these, which permeate the book from start to finish, are preaching to the choir! We already know the central tenet of your philosophy, but we want to hear about your action. This book was your chance to detail how you did things, down to the dirty detail. We didn't buy a book to read about social initiatives and mission statements. This book does nothing to move the needle or teach how to actually build the business itself. No insight about managing costs, no insight about acquiring customers, no insight about growth or pricing strategy, no insight about hiring. Not to mention a blurry font that made me feeling like I was reading images that had been faxed or photocopied multiple times, losing some resolution with each scan.

I teach leadership in nonprofits to ambitious and very talented college students. Increasingly students are interested in nonprofit-business partnerships. Ben and Jerry's led the socially responsible business movement and this book is both a guide to this kind of business initiative and entertaining story telling. I recommend it for real people who may be interested in beginning their own business as well as those who appreciate values led initiatives.

speedy delivery, very interesting book...

Fun book. By icons