Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream Inc.: Keeping the Mission(s) Alive

The Super premium Ice Cream Market

Super premium ice cream was distinguished from other ice creams by its higher fat content and its lower level of “overrun,” the amount of air contained in the ice cream. As a result, super premiums tended to taste richer and creamier than traditional ice creams. Competition in the super premium category was focused on product quality, flavor differentiation, and marketing. Once a consumer had made the choice to “invest” in a super-premium ice cream at twice the price per ounce of premium ice creams and three or four times the price of regular ice creams, a 5% or 10% pint price differential was not a critical factor in the ultimate purchase decision.

It was only in the 1980s that several companies began to capitalize on market research that showed that ice cream consumers valued quality over price. Major packaged food companies such as Kraft (Frusen Gladje), and Pillsbury (Haagen-Dazs) flooded the market with new varieties of ice cream and other frozen novelties. Several small companies briefly flourished and then stumbled (Steve’s Homemade Ice Cream) or perished (Shamitoff Foods). During the 1980s, product quality and price points trended upward as consumers came to view ice cream as an affordable luxury. This attitude allowed premium and super premium ice cream volumes to grow at a 14% annual rate during the 1980s—about seven times as fast as the average consumer product.

As aging baby boomers began to see their waistlines expand, processors responded with “reduced guilt” products with lower fat and cholesterol, enabling light and fat-free ice cream categories to develop. At the same time, demand for super premium ice creams continued to grow.¹ As ice cream manufacturers addressed smaller market niches in order to stimulate growth, the market fragmented into hundreds of flavors and a half dozen gradations of fat, from super premium with 20% butterfat to fat-free frozen desserts with no sugar. During the 1980s, virtually all of the gains generated by the super-premium and premium categories came at the expense of the middle brands. This trend was projected to continue into the 1990s.

Following this initial period of rapid growth, the super-premium ice cream market experienced a “shake-out” in the late 1980s that, according to industry analysts, continued into 1990. Initially, some of the smaller players that had not established a strong retail foothold were eliminated. Since then, the shake-out was expedited by a shelf space crunch in the freezer cabinet as retailers made room for the increasingly popular frozen yogurts, ice milks, and nonfat ice creams. (Exhibit 7 shows the leading super premium producers in 1990.)

The super-premium ice cream market in 1990 separated into two relatively distinct sub-segments: producers oriented toward traditional flavors such as vanilla, chocolate, coffee, and chocolate chip; and “mix-in” flavors. Mix-in flavors generally consisted of a base ice cream of vanilla or chocolate to which chunks of candy bars, cookies, nuts and/or fruits were added. Mix-in costs ranged from zero for vanilla to as much as a third of cost of goods sold for some flavors. Selling prices, however, were the same for all flavors. Thus, a product mix skewed toward traditional flavors would produce significantly higher gross margins than those of a mix-in specialist. Haagen-Dazs and Frusen Gladje primarily targeted the traditional flavor sub-segment, while Ben & Jerry’s and Steve’s focused on the mix-in category. During the 1980s, Haagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s emerged as the dominant forces in their respective categories. (See Exhibit 8 for Ben & Jerry’s market share figures). Haagen-Dazs had attempted to introduce flavors more toward the mix-in side of the spectrum in order to abate the rapid market share growth of Ben & Jerry’s. This effort was only modestly successful, as it appeared that the new flavors had cannibalized Haagen-Dazs’ existing line while Ben & Jerry’s continued to flourish.




¹The ice cream market reflected a 1980s trend—those consumers were interested in only the very best or the very best value.