Ben & Jerry’s Co-founder Quits After 47 Years, Claiming Unilever ‘Silenced’ Social Mission
Tensions between Ben & Jerry’s and its parent company, Unilever, have come to a head.
After 47 years, B&J co-founder Jerry Greenfield has quit the ice cream brand amid an ongoing public dispute with Unilever over the war in Gaza, among other social justice issues. In an open letter posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday night by the company’s other co-founder, Ben Cohen, Greenfield said he can “no longer, in good conscience, remain an employee [of the company].”
Cohen and Greenfield sold their mission-driven brand to conglomerate Unilever in 2000 for $326 million. As part of the deal, Greenfield claims B&J was guaranteed the “independence to pursue our values.” The unique merger agreement included a clause allowing the brand to maintain its own independent board of directors with authority over its social mission, per Reuters.
“For more than 20 years under [Unilever’s] ownership, Ben & Jerry’s stood up and spoke out in support of peace, justice and human rights, not as abstract concepts, but in relation to the real events happening in our world. That independence existed in no small part because of the unique merger agreement Ben and I negotiated with Unilever,” wrote Cohen in the open letter.
He continued, “It’s profoundly disappointing to come to the conclusion that that independence, the very basis of our sale to Unilever, is gone.”
The relationship between the two companies began to sour in 2021 when B&J tried to halt sales of its products in “Israel-only” settlements in the West Bank, prompting Israeli businessman Avi Zinger to sue the company. Unilever ultimately granted Zinger a license to sell the products with different branding.
Most recently, B&J filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit in a U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Unilever in November, claiming it has repeatedly blocked the brand’s attempts to take a public stance on the crisis in Gaza.
Greenfield’s departure comes as Unilever readies to spin off its ice cream business into a separate, standalone publicly traded company: The Magnum Ice Cream Company. TMICC will be incorporated in the Netherlands, with shares expected to list in Amsterdam, London and New York in mid-November 2025.
Last week, Cohen and Greenfield penned a letter to the TMICC board requesting that B&J be allowed to operate once again as an independently-owned company. The duo argued that, although Magnum is a new company, it retains the history of Unilever’s actions against B&J.
“We no longer believe that Ben & Jerry’s belongs under the umbrella of a corporate entity that fails to support its founding mission, and which is reducing the company’s value by undercutting one of the critical reasons why customers love and support the brand,” reads the letter.
