Scooped up across 38 countries
and up to 75 flavors,
Ben & Jerry's is no pint-sized operation.
Its two Vermont factories run 24/7,
operated by hundreds of flavor makers.
Together, they pump out
nearly a million pints a day,
from classic flavors like
Cherry Garcia and Half Baked
to flavors on a mission
for criminal-justice reform
and refugee rights.
And all those flavors
have to be delicious.
Sarah Fidler: Our minimum run size,
once we get a flavor to the factory,
is 80,000 pints.
So not only do we have to love it,
but 80,000 fans have to love it too.
Narrator: We visited the St. Albans plant
in northern Vermont to
see how these famous pints
flip their way to our freezers.
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield
started Ben & Jerry's
Homemade Ice Cream in 1978.
From a renovated gas station
in Burlington, Vermont,
they launched a brand based on
sustainable ice cream making
and advocating for causes they
believed in, and it worked.
Today, Ben & Jerry's is the
best-selling single brand
ice cream label in the US.
To pump out its iconic flavors,
first it starts with ingredients.
Ben & Jerry's partners
with 250 farms globally
to source everything from
vanilla bean to milk.
Milk comes from the St.
Albans Cooperative Creamery,
just a mile and a half from the factory.
Once the milk's at the plant,
it heads to one of these
massive, 6,000-gallon silos.
But before it can be made into ice cream,
everyone involved has to
suit up, including us.
Gowns, hairnets, caps, and boots.
To make the ice cream base,
the milk heads to the blend tank.
Cream, milk, and lots of
sugar are churned together.
The factory goes through
6,700 gallons of cream
every single day.
Every ice cream flavor starts with either
a sweet cream base or a chocolate base.
Next, the Mix Master will
pour in eggs, stabilizers,
and cocoa powder if it's a chocolate base.
Then it's piped into the pasteurizer.
You can't see it happening,
but hot steel plates
are heating up the mix to
kill any harmful bacteria.
The newly pasteurized
milk is stored in a tank
for four to eight hours,
so the ingredients
can really get to know each other.
After making the two
bases, they'll head to one
of the 20 flavor vats
to get a flavor boost.
Fidler: We're always
coming up with new flavors,
hundreds of flavors a year,
and we usually narrow it down
to about three or four.
We really love to bring
our social mission values
into our naming process.
For example, Empower Mint
to talk about voting rights.
Narrator: Before Ben &
Jerry's famous chunks
can be added, the mix has to get
to below-freezing temperatures.
It's pumped through this
giant freezing barrel,
and when it gets to the
front, it's finally ice cream.
Along the way, it's quality tested,
meaning lucky factory floor workers
get to taste the ice creams.
Then it goes into the first
of two freezer visits.
When it comes out, it's 22 degrees
and somewhere between the consistency
of a milkshake and soft serve.
Now for the best part, the chunks.
Founder Ben actually didn't
have a great sense of smell,
which meant he couldn't taste much either.
So his big thing was texture.
That's why Ben & Jerry's has
some of the biggest chunks
in the ice cream industry.
These chunks end up in
flavors like Half Baked,
Chubby Hubby, or the one we're
making, Chocolate Therapy.
Workers dump in add-ins
through the Chunk Feeder,
from brownie bites and cookie dough globs
to chocolate chunks, fruits, and nuts.
They let us give it a try,
but it's not as easy as it looks.
Then it's finally time
to pack those pints.
Workers stack the empty containers
into the automatic filler.
The machine drops the pints into position
and perfectly pumps in ice cream.
It can fill up 270 pints a minute.
The pints are pushed towards
the lidder and sealed tight.
At this point, six pints every hour
are pulled off the line
for quality testing.
Quality assurance personnel
first cut pints open.
They're making sure the
ingredients are symmetrical
and there aren't any big air bubbles.
Worker: There is a small gap,
but that's what we call a functional void.
If we saw large voids,
it would be concerning.
It's actually quite the
workout, as you can tell.
Narrator: They also measure
the weight and volume of pints
to ensure that the right
amount of ice cream
makes it into each container.
Worker: So, we know the
weight of the ice cream,
and anything below 460
is not passable.
Narrator: Now back to the factory line.
It's now time for the pints
to take a second spin in the freezer.
The ice cream has to get even colder,
down to minus 10 degrees.
The pints travel along
the Spiral Hardener,
a corkscrew-shaped conveyor
belt inside a freezer.
With the wind chill,
it can get up to minus
60 degrees in there.
After three hours, the
pints are finally frozen
and ready to be packaged.
They're flipped over and shrink wrapped
into groups of eight.
Together, they make a gallon.
But you'll never actually see a gallon tub
of Ben & Jerry's ice cream,
because the company
never wants its ice cream
going bad sitting in
the back of your fridge.
Once the pints are packaged,
they're ready to be
shipped across the globe.
Abby Narishkin: Hey, guys, my name's Abby,
and I'm one of the
producers on this video.
My favorite flavor is
definitely Ben & Jerry's
Milk & Cookies, but let
me know your favorites
in the comments below
and if you have any ideas
for the next episode of "Big Business."
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