The Story of Ben & Jerrys' "Chocolate Fudge Brownie" Ice Cream!

In the 1980s, Greyston Bakery was but a small operation that specialized in making fine desserts for New York City restaurants. But after founder Bernie Glassman met Ben Cohen & Jerry Greenfield at a Social Venture Network event in Colorado, the tiny social enterprise was given the opportunity to become Ben & Jerry's sole supplier of brownies for ice cream sandwiches!

The very first shipment of these 'thin' ice cream sandwich brownies arrived in Vermont in nearly one piece...but really a handful of very large pieces. The folks at Greyston hadn't given the brownies enough time to cool before packaging them, and as a result, they stuck together in 50 pound blocks of brownie bliss. This proved to be an amazing mistake because rather than dispose of the brownies, the makers of Vermont's finest decided they would crumble the big brownies into small pieces and mix them into chocolate ice cream. The result was delicious, and Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream was born. The flavor remains one of the company's best sellers today!

Our relationship with the quirky ice cream makers continues to this day. Greyston Bakery, employing over 50 underprivileged individuals from the Yonkers community, pays its skilled brownie artisans a fair, living wage and donates all of its profits to the Greyston Foundation, a non-profit community development organization whose work supports jobs, childcare, healthcare and housing for the underprivileged. The bakery continues to provide rich, decadent brownies to its quirky friends in Vermont and offers its delicious fudgy treats to consumers under the Do-Goodie name. I guess you could say that together, we’re a batch made in heaven!