New CEO at Ben & Jerry's Plans to Whip Up Activism, 'Whirled Peace'

By Vanessa Fuhrmans 

Ben & Jerry's, the ice-cream maker known for its social advocacy as much as its chunk-filled flavors, has a new chief executive who is promising to ramp up the brand's corporate activism.

Matthew McCarthy, a food-business veteran of Unilever PLC, which bought Ben & Jerry's in 2000, succeeds Jostein Solheim as CEO.

Mr. Solheim, another longtime Unilever executive, led Ben & Jerry's for eight years and is moving into a broader role overseeing all of the Anglo-Dutch company's food and refreshment businesses in North America.

Mr. McCarthy has a track record in the kind of sustainable food production Ben & Jerry's has long promoted. At Unilever, he led an initiative to transition Hellmann's mayonnaise to 100% cage-free eggs and more recently launched Unilever's first organic snack brand in the U.S., Growing Roots, which gives 50% of its profits to U.S. urban farmers. He also led the company's 2017 acquisition of Sir Kensington's, an upstart maker of high-end condiments.

The CEO change comes as Vermont-based Ben & Jerry's has been diversifying into new ice-cream products and boosting its political activism. During the 2016 election season, it launched an "Empower Mint" ice-cream flavor in support of a voting-rights campaign. More recently, it has advocated for the passage of Amendment 4 in a Florida referendum in November, which would restore voting rights to former felons.

The 49-year-old Mr. McCarthy calls "Phish Food," named after the Vermont band Phish, his favorite Ben & Jerry's ice cream. It and "Imagine Whirled Peace," a tribute to John Lennon's "Imagine," are among the Ben & Jerry's ice creams with musical or other pop-culture references.

Mr. McCarthy said he plans to amplify the brand's tradition of promoting environmental sustainability and advocating for social causes while promoting its ice cream flavors. Over the next few months, he said, the company will unveil new initiatives.

"Many people are feeling a tremendous lack of trust in [public] institutions around them," he said. "We need organizations, including businesses, to step forward more than ever."

Mr. McCarthy said Ben & Jerry's also has new product plans in the works. Competition among premium ice creams has intensified as relative newcomers such as Halo Top have won market share with low-calorie and nondairy products. To compete, Ben & Jerry's launched its first nondairy vegan ice-cream flavors in 2016 and, earlier this year, introduced a line of "Moo-phoria" ice cream with 640 calories a pint or less. (Many of its traditional ice creams top 1,000 calories a pint.)

Though Ben & Jerry's doesn't disclose sales, its share of the U.S. ice-cream market in the 12 months ended July 14 was the third-largest at 6.9%, slightly higher than the prior-year period, according to market-research firm Nielsen Co. The company sells ice cream in more than 30 countries.

Write to Vanessa Fuhrmans at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 15, 2018 08:44 ET (12:44 GMT)

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