Free Cone Day-
April 9, 2001 7:13 PM   Subscribe

Free Cone Day- Ben and Jerry's gives the world a cone- May 2, 2001
posted by TuxHeDoh (27 comments total)
 
I tried to get a free cone two years ago at the Ben & Jerry's in downtown Berkeley. Maybe in Vermont, the lines move swiftly, but at the Cal campus, the line was all the way down the block and around the corner.

I hate to be a grump, but is a $3 ice cream cone worth 30 to 60 minutes of standing in line? The minimum-wage kids serving the cones get paid more hourly than that.
posted by waxpancake at 8:00 PM on April 9, 2001


I was waiting to see how this could be given a cynical, negative interpretation. At least I wasn't disappointed.
posted by mcguirk at 9:27 PM on April 9, 2001


Yeah, and I bet the cones are poisoned, too.
posted by shinybeast at 9:40 PM on April 9, 2001


free cones = gateway to communism.
posted by pikachulolita at 9:52 PM on April 9, 2001


A free cone killed my puppy.
posted by dogwelder at 10:04 PM on April 9, 2001


A free cone caused Bush to lose the election! Oh yeah, and Nader Nader Nader!

(I'm imagining hundreds of Brill's readers coming across this thread & trying to figure out what all the fuss was about)
posted by zempf at 10:08 PM on April 9, 2001


Er.. Gore to lose the election. Dammit. I previewed that thing like 4 times, too. I suck.
posted by zempf at 10:08 PM on April 9, 2001


zempf ate a free cone and lost his ability to tell Bush from Gore! DAMN YOU, CONES!
posted by darukaru at 10:12 PM on April 9, 2001


Just a friendly reminder that Ben & Jerry's is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the international conglomerate Unilever. Have a nice day!
posted by aaron at 11:15 PM on April 9, 2001


I've enjoyed a few free cone days with lines of all shapes and sizes. Never waited more than 5 minutes for a cone, though. The ice cream gets a little sloppy, in a your-chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter kind of yummy way.
posted by sudama at 12:03 AM on April 10, 2001


Wait a minute. Ben & Jerry's has stores? Or are we supposed to just walk into a grocery store, open up a pint, and help ourselves?
posted by kindall at 2:43 AM on April 10, 2001


I have a Ben & Jerry's store not 60 paces from my apartment. Yes, it's a dangerous thing.

aaron - don't forget that they're pulling the plug on the long-standing donation policy in a year or two, either!
posted by hijinx at 4:31 AM on April 10, 2001


Heh....
I think we all should just walk into a store and open up a pint. I'd like to see the look on their faces.
That would be funny...
posted by Maxor at 4:42 AM on April 10, 2001


There's no such thing as a free lunch (soup kitchens excepted) but this is free desert, a start for charity based ice cream.
posted by Postroad at 5:14 AM on April 10, 2001


My God, have you seen the Unilever site? Uggh!
posted by flimjam at 5:37 AM on April 10, 2001


Nearly a year ago, I wrote:

Ben & Jerry's sold to these guys. Unilever. It's a huge, huge monolithic corporation. Look at all of the brands they own! What gets me more is how they put these heartwarming pictures of "ordinary people" (a statistically-generated, politically correct cross section of people living in America) on their front page. I'm sure that the farmer they show is no longer employed because of them, that the businesswoman feels bad about her body because of their products, and whoever designed their very crappy interface is making $100k a year.
posted by hijinx at 5:52 AM on April 10, 2001


Yeah, it's not exactly a Jakob-approved design, is it?
posted by aaron at 5:54 AM on April 10, 2001


Last year it rained here on Free Cone Day, and still the line was around the corner at our nearby B&J store. And, yes, I stood in the rain for my Coffee Heathbar Crunch.

I'm also drooling with anticipation for my first Father's Day Free Cone, since the baby is due in between Free Cone Day and Father's Day. Two free cones for me from here on out...is this a great deal or what?
posted by briank at 7:30 AM on April 10, 2001


oooh, I didn't know about the Father's Day deal. I got 4 cones last year on Free Cone Day. Sure, I had to wait a bit, but nothing terrible. The lines moved really fast since no one got stalled at the cash register. It was in a touristy area of DC, and I kept pulling people in. They all assumed I was putting them on, the city boy trying to pull one over on the tourists: "No, really. Free. Any flavor. Really."
posted by MrMoonPie at 9:10 AM on April 10, 2001


FCD Hypothesis #17: The wait in line on Free Cone Day from a given Ben & Jerry's is inversely proportional to the square of the distance to the nearest college campus.
posted by youhas at 1:49 PM on April 10, 2001


one day you youngsters will be old and lactose-intolerant like me, and Free Cone Day will mean nothing...
posted by culberjo at 3:51 PM on April 10, 2001


Actually, youhas, the Ben & Jerry's in Annapolis was only about two blocks from my college campus (St. John's, not the other college in Annapolis), and the line last year seldom reached the outside of the store. Of course, I'm not sure that counts--we didn't exactly have the population of U.C. Berkeley--but I enjoyed it anyway. It was short enough that you'd finish each cone just in time to order the next one.
posted by moss at 4:04 PM on April 10, 2001


FCD Hypothesis #17: The wait in line on Free Cone Day from a given Ben & Jerry's is inversely proportional to the square of the distance to the nearest college campus.

I don't know, you obviously don't live in West Michigan. Come to think of it, I don't think there are Ben and Jerry's stores in West Michigan, though we have it at our grocery stores. If there were, I'm sure everyone would line up for hours to get their free ice cream cone. Because it's free, and you can't pass up something free, can you?

Maybe you just need to work in the Dutch population to your equation.
posted by dagnyscott at 6:10 PM on April 10, 2001


Oh, it's true, CrayDrygu -- they bought B&J and SlimFast at the same time (talk about your irony).
posted by briank at 6:11 PM on April 10, 2001


Straight from the cow's mouth. Of course, it's not really the corporate monolith buying out the tiny hippie ice cream company, oh no -- if you read that press release, you'll see it's really the tiny hippie ice cream company "joining forces" with the corporate monolith to teach it some social consciousness! (Gag.)
posted by kindall at 6:11 PM on April 10, 2001


Ah well, so much for my hypothesis. Back to the drawing board! (Not that I had a great sample size to begin with: the two local B&J outlets I've tried to get to on Free Cone Days past just happen to be right next to Mission College in Santa Clara and San Jose State, respectively.) Still, it's nice to know that at least some folks in the world getting their bounty with a minimum of hassle.

Oh, and dagnyscott: the closest the scoop shops get to West Michigan appears to be Ann Arbor.
posted by youhas at 7:52 PM on April 10, 2001


Free cone? Eh. Free dodecahedron? Now you're talkin'!
posted by dhartung at 9:10 PM on April 10, 2001


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