What This Blog is About

A long time mentor and friend, Cicely Berry, often says: "all we do comes from our need to survive".

Cis is the Voice Director of The Royal Shakespeare Company. Her profound work and deep appreciation of the human spirit has affected diverse communities all over the world.

http://www.im21stcentury.com
http://www.salvatorerasa.com
Will take you to my current work.

This blog is dedicated to the belief that the overall health of a community or organization is a clear reflection of their ability to communicate.

"Cada cabeza es un mundo" - Cuban proverb

"Every head is a world"




Saturday, March 8, 2008

You Never Know What's in Ice Cream

I happened upon a film about the history of ice cream this evening on the Sundance channel.

It was fascinating to listen to:

1. Ben & Jerry, the well known American entrepreneurs who began their empire at a gas station.
Jerry described how after all the years of effort, struggle and success, the eventual public company board of directors decided they had no choice but to sell the company. Unilever now makes the ice cream. Jerry said that he had no say in the decision.

2. The daughter of the Russian immigrant who invented Hagen Daz ice cream. Her father's vision was to create a higher end better product that people would pay for. His creative name for the product was intended to sound Danish. There is no logical construction in the Danish language for the Hagen Daz trademarked logo with the two dots above the name. Many people already know about this story and that Hagen Daz was born in the Bronx, NY.

His daughter said she never could have imagined the size that her company has become. However, Hagen Daz is now distributed by Nestle. The sad thing she said, was that these organizations "own the ice cream market in the U.S." It is unlikely that today, innovative or independent efforts can compete at that level or do what her father was able to do and grow such a business.

And a curious bit of information that only makes my imagination wonder.

According to this documentary, Margaret Thatcher, prior to taking the U K's highest office was a chemist. Her work focused on ice cream and what is called "over run" in the industry. Over run is code for adding air to the recipe in order to reduce cost and quality but sell more. Apparently, Ms. Thatcher was good at adding more air and worked hard at it.

I can't testify to the facts of the documentary and I may research, but I sense some interesting connections in this mix of a social confection.

Just enjoyable to think about and save the calories. Maybe.


Sal




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