Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream (July 2006)

Ice Cream is one of our favorite foods. One of our treats on the trip was an ice cream bar whenever we stopped for gas. It was refreshing, especially on a hot day. No wonder we didn’t lose much weight on this trip.

When we were in Vermont, I knew that we had to visit the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream place. I remember the first time I tried Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia and I was hooked right away. Although Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is expensive and it is only sold in quart, it always has interesting flavors to try.

Earlier that day, we toured a Maple Candy factory which was quiet and we were the only tourists; after that, we also toured Cabot Cheese Factory which was a little busier with 20 to 30 people. When we arrived at Ben & Jerry’s Factory tour location in Waterbury, Vermont and right away, we sensed the difference: this was a big time operation. There were big tour busses parked out front and parking assistants directing us far away to the back to park. The place had a festival feel with people bustling around.

From where we parked, we had to walk past a graveyard, filled with tombstones in honor of flavors no longer in production. Each tombstone listed the name of the flavor, its production dates and had a fun poem lamenting how the flavor met its maker. There were about 30 tombstones there. This was a very creative way of dealing with mistakes. They sure had sense of humor. There were some big picnic chairs next to the graveyard and we had a great lunch there eating the cheese we bought earlier in anticipation of ice cream bonanzas later as desserts.

After lunch, we walked toward the main factory but first we had to past a children’s playground where we let Kadia play for 15 minutes before marching past a few street vendors to finally arrive at the tour entry. It almost felt like going to Disneyland. There were a lot of people and we were afraid that we might have to wait. Luckily tours were run every 20 minutes and we were able to get the next tour. While we waited, we took turns taking pictures with a giant ice cream container’s cover.

The tour started off with a film chronicled the history of the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. We learned that Ben and Jerry had many failed ventures but they kept trying. Finally they came down to two choices: bagel and ice cream. They chose ice cream because an ice cream machine was cheaper than a bagel machine. They started an ice cream correspondence course and the rest was history. That is a great story. The tour was 3 dollars and we were expecting to try out different flavors of ice cream at the end. We were disappointed as there was only one flavor to try and only one scoop each. The Cabot cheese tour earlier was a better deal.