hello everybody Tom Ellsworth and we’re
here on case studies this is where you
can learn things that happen to other
companies and apply those things to you
in your company today the company we’re
going to look at dryers ice cream and
there’s two takeaways today the first is
you can make a plan and do everything
that you said you were gonna do or that
you wanted to do that the outcome can be
different and it’s how to react to that
and the second thing is it’s kind of
along the same lines setting yourself a
charter or a set of foundational
principles for your company whether it’s
two people or two hundred people is the
thing that will get you through the
tough times of life those two points may
not feel like they’re related but I’m
gonna show you how they are as we look
at dryers ice cream first dryers who
doesn’t like ice cream I love ice cream
what you may not know is dryers was
founded clear back in 1906 William dryer
was a galley boy on a ship which is kind
of us cook’s helper and he basically
invented ice cream on a cruise ship and
he served the dessert to the captain and
the people that were there and they said
this is really good you know you should
do more with this and he basically
decided you know I’m gonna do it and he
decided that he was gonna make that his
American dream so he founded a company
in Oakland California it took him about
fifteen years between that experience on
the ship to opening up in Oakland
California but he did it and he called
it Dreyer’s grande ice cream because he
called it a grand dessert and it also
happened to be he was on Grand Avenue in
Oakland so as unimaginative as that may
seem that is your origin ation of
Dreyer’s grande ice cream so here he is
15 years later making ice cream it was
kind of a you might call it a hobby
business but he took it seriously but it
didn’t take off it didn’t go necessarily
nationwide he ultimately turned it over
to his son and some other key people at
the company and
they did that 1963 as William retired
the next step was they just kind of kept
the company going rolling along until
1977 so it’s about 14 years and then in
1977 they sold it to two guys Gary
Rogers and William Krunk they paid 1
million dollars for that six million
dollar business that had been around
forever but they saw something about it
they said look this is really good ice
cream this is premium stuff we could go
big with this so it was Gary Rogers and
William Kronk that said we’re gonna go
big over the course of the next few
years they thought it was really
important to establish a a charter of
principles and cultures for the company
so one of the first things they did
between 1977 and 1981 when they were
establishing and getting it off to a
good start they built this thing called
grooves and they called it that because
it’s kind of a nickname for staying in
the groove and it was a set of
principles that would guide the company
and guide the employees because they
wanted every employee to know hey this
is our Charter this is how we’ll treat
you this is what we want to be this is
the atmosphere we want to have and this
is what we expect from you and it was
kind of like a 10 commandments of how
the company would operate but it wasn’t
just a bunch of how-to so I do this
beyond time that it was actually more
fun because they truly wanted to get a
culture out of it
this would turn out to be a good start
that was critically important to them so
check some of these things out I wish I
was part of companies early early in my
career where maybe the founders had done
these things for me number one
management is people so inspire and
coach people don’t just command them wow
that’s really sharp I like that hire
smart no mediocrity allowed
we can’t allow mediocre people to come
in and influence our current people and
our current people need to know will
only hire good people to work with them
you know what that’s a great philosophy
I appreciate that we will have respect
for the individual number three
we will liberate you from oversight and
micromanaging and we will motivate you
to be trusted to get your job done
number forth people involvement it’s all
about people it’s not about numbers
numbers will take care of ourselves if
we involve our people and they truly
understand the job they’re doing and how
it impacts arrests the company ownership
owned your own job own your own function
this here’s my favorite number six coop
wah let’s celebrate a little bit when we
get something done and we introduce a
new flavor or we just meet our monthly
goals let’s make sure that we take time
to celebrate number seven train train
train equip people when we hire them
equip people when we promote them equip
people when we get them to the next
level number eight this would prove to
be key later for the company important
communications should be face to face
communication whether you’re giving
feedback or telling them about important
messages of the company do it face to
face so they can see you and number nine
let’s remember it’s an upside-down
organization we’re not a triangle going
to the top where we celebrate our
leadership everybody at the bottom of
the triangle selling the ice cream
delivering the trucks they’re out there
on the front lines face to face with
customers face to face with the stores
and they know better than we do at the
top what’s happening we are a
upside-down company and we want that
feedback to come in good news and bad
very quickly so that we know what’s
going on and we will value all those
people and then number 10 ready fire aim
it’s not to be negligent or to be a
little crazy but it really was to be
spontaneous and say we expect you to
make a decision and not just sit around
aiming aiming aiming aiming aiming
you’re expected to do something be
careful use your training get permission
but sitting around aiming forever and
never firing at something or never
executing that doesn’t get the company
anywhere so over the next 17 years
there’s a 17-year gap here not really a
gap or a continuum where they grew the
company for 17 years
and then in 1998 they were in the middle
of a four year plan to go big and they
called this the grand expansion and what
this grand expansion plan was all about
is they said it’s time to really go big
and they had grown themselves up to
about six hundred million dollars in
sales by this time and they said we need
to do more consumer marketing let’s
expand our distribution some little
interesting super premium delicacy ice
creams have been popping up like Ben and
Jerry’s and haagen-dazs and they said
we’ve got all these refrigerated trucks
we’ve got space on them
why don’t we charge these super elegant
ice cream people the super premium
people
why don’t we charge them to use our
trucks and we could deliver for them we
got space on the truck and we’re going
to the store and that’s super deluxe ice
cream in the high category doesn’t
compete with our great dryers ice cream
here so we’re not really competing with
each other they’re two different types
of ice cream so let’s make some money on
them smart also they ultimately signed
Ben and Jerry’s for a broad nationwide
agreement to do that and then they said
let’s also accelerate some new products
we can see some things like sorbet and
ice cream bars that are more and more
coming to the forefront so let’s make
sure that we follow the market with some
great new stuff
they also found a little coffee company
named Starbucks and they started
introducing some Starbucks flavored ice
cream the last thing they did is if you
take a look at this this is the dawn of
the Internet and it’s the dawn of
information systems and they said we
need to really invest in information
systems so that we know our sales every
day every place so they put all this
into the place and they were executing
and doing really well with their
execution when guess what a perfect
storm happened in the market so they had
made this grand four year plan from 94
to 98 and then in 1998 a ton of things
happen to them that they didn’t cause
but they had to react to first dairy
products and butter fat which is
core ingredient ice cream the prices
shot way up so they were having to pay
these higher prices from the farms for
the butterfat also a competitor Briers
which was owned by a giant conglomerate
started aggressive price promotions in
coupons and fighting for the grocery
store space they had never seen that
kind of fight before so briar is
fighting with dryers
then they started some years before with
some low-fat products and some sherbert
products that had less sugar in them and
for some reason in 1998 the American
consumer lost interest in healthy
icecream now as we look some 20 years 30
years later it is kind of shocking I
think you know to think that at one
point in time you have healthy ice
creams that that people were passing on
because they wanted the real good stuff
well nonetheless that’s what was
happening then and so that also hurt
what they had done perfect launches of
some new products and then a big hit Ben
and Jerry’s called him and said you know
what we don’t need you distributing us
for anymore we’re gonna figure some
things out for ourselves and we don’t
need you now that was huge because that
was a big and important partnership and
it came out of the blue they were
delivering on time they were doing
everything right but Ben and Jerry’s
just said you know what we’re gonna do
some other things we do it ourselves
and lastly one of the founders came down
with a brain tumor he would survive but
he was out of actions for months as he
got treatment and was in the hospital
and then recovering at home none of
these had anything to do with the plan
that they had put together and done so
well so the moral of story there is you
can execute a plan perfectly and there
can be a perfect storm that follows you
or unintended consequences and you need
to be ready for it
Dreyer’s could have done one of two
things going oh man we did the plan we
did it perfect we had everything going
and here but instead they said you know
the same brains that helped us make this
plan the first time guess what we’re
going to make a plan B and we’re going
to get out
this so basically they had a whole
different attitude about it they said
let’s go to Lake Tahoe with our key
people and they brought him up to the
summit and Lake Tahoe and the first
thing they did they said let’s look at
the facts and let’s the facts talk to us
and don’t deny the facts and don’t try
to explain him away it’s not anybody’s
fault in the room but let’s look at all
these facts and react to them by not
trying to convince ourselves that
something other than the truth is going
on so they didn’t go into denial and
they didn’t try to you know convince
themselves what they’re seeing is not
what the truth was they realized he
needed to do two things they had spent
money on healthy products and those
change so they were gonna have to
reorganize that they had all these
trucks in this distribution system and
all the sudden Ben and Jerry’s didn’t
need him anymore they were gonna have to
consolidate that and do a little
financial reorganization of that they
put together a multi-point plan and they
said this is what we have to do and one
of the things they said we need to go
back to grooves because grooves was that
charter of things that keep everyone in
the groove that this is how we’ll act
this is how we expect people to hat and
one of them was face-to-face
communications and they had grown huge
between the time they made that and
seventeen years later but they were
still following it in the week after the
meeting in Lake Tahoe they did what they
needed to do with the investors and the
stock market they told them what
happened and they gave him the details
in the seven days from the completing
those meetings forward in those seven
days they dispatched all the company’s
senior executives and they spoke to
every person in the company on a
face-to-face basis and they said hey the
tenants of grooves as we communicate
good news and bad news face to face
because we care about you and we’re
gonna tell you what the plan is and in
no seven days every person in the
company was in a room somewhere face to
face with an executive where they could
ask questions and get straight answers
live well
one of the things they had to explain
was there would be some layoffs there
would be some changes because these were
big hits we took even though we did
everything we thought we should of the
plan but we’re gonna revise the plan and
we’re going to come back even stronger
so the what they concluded was that they
had the support of their employees they
said you know everybody really trusted
us they believed it
what’s because when they set that
Charter grooves they stuck to it in 17
years later it wasn’t just some sign on
the wall from the original founding of
the company it was how they lived and
operated and the employees trusted that
what was on the wall would be how they
were treated and the owners trusted that
that’s how the employees would would
operate as well there is a happy ending
that happens here two years later they
had pushed sales up to 1.1 billion
dollars as they followed their
restructuring plan and they introduced
more heavy cream elegant high-end ice
cream products because that’s what
people wanted to eat they brought that
out and they drove it to here that also
got the attention of a another company
that sells a lot of things for us with a
sweet tooth
Nestle and Nestle came and paid 2.4
billion dollars for dryers in 2002 so
from a crisis in 98 they have a great
finish and the great finish that they
owed the success to yes we made a good
plan yes we put it together but the
employees that were with us were needed
to execute that plan and because that
Charter that had set the culture and we
had been loyal to that the culture made
sure the plan was completed without the
culture they all believed they could not
have had this level of success and with
a great plan without the loyalty and the
trust of people they could have lost
good employees here that said well if
the company’s in trouble I’m just gonna
work somewhere else and that would have
been a normal reaction so that’s the
story of dryers and the two things I
gave you at the beginning or the two
things are true now
when you start your company whether
you’ve got four points or ten points
establish a culture for your company
what you’re gonna stand for how you’re
gonna treat your employees and what you
expect from them and then live to it and
then when you execute your plans and
things don’t go perfectly at the end you
did everything you thought you should
but you get a different results or the
economy or something get you in a storm
that charter if you’ve been loyal to it
the most valuable asset that you have is
your people and those people will trust
you so you can react together and you
can build a plan B and move forward well
that’s the dryers case study I’m Tom
Ellsworth and now I need the custom
pillow there we go
please subscribe here to value team
entry you can see more case studies as
well as great content for the
entrepreneur the best content for
entrepreneurs on the internet featuring
Patrick bet David until next time I hope
[Music] you
here on case studies this is where you
can learn things that happen to other
companies and apply those things to you
in your company today the company we’re
going to look at dryers ice cream and
there’s two takeaways today the first is
you can make a plan and do everything
that you said you were gonna do or that
you wanted to do that the outcome can be
different and it’s how to react to that
and the second thing is it’s kind of
along the same lines setting yourself a
charter or a set of foundational
principles for your company whether it’s
two people or two hundred people is the
thing that will get you through the
tough times of life those two points may
not feel like they’re related but I’m
gonna show you how they are as we look
at dryers ice cream first dryers who
doesn’t like ice cream I love ice cream
what you may not know is dryers was
founded clear back in 1906 William dryer
was a galley boy on a ship which is kind
of us cook’s helper and he basically
invented ice cream on a cruise ship and
he served the dessert to the captain and
the people that were there and they said
this is really good you know you should
do more with this and he basically
decided you know I’m gonna do it and he
decided that he was gonna make that his
American dream so he founded a company
in Oakland California it took him about
fifteen years between that experience on
the ship to opening up in Oakland
California but he did it and he called
it Dreyer’s grande ice cream because he
called it a grand dessert and it also
happened to be he was on Grand Avenue in
Oakland so as unimaginative as that may
seem that is your origin ation of
Dreyer’s grande ice cream so here he is
15 years later making ice cream it was
kind of a you might call it a hobby
business but he took it seriously but it
didn’t take off it didn’t go necessarily
nationwide he ultimately turned it over
to his son and some other key people at
the company and
they did that 1963 as William retired
the next step was they just kind of kept
the company going rolling along until
1977 so it’s about 14 years and then in
1977 they sold it to two guys Gary
Rogers and William Krunk they paid 1
million dollars for that six million
dollar business that had been around
forever but they saw something about it
they said look this is really good ice
cream this is premium stuff we could go
big with this so it was Gary Rogers and
William Kronk that said we’re gonna go
big over the course of the next few
years they thought it was really
important to establish a a charter of
principles and cultures for the company
so one of the first things they did
between 1977 and 1981 when they were
establishing and getting it off to a
good start they built this thing called
grooves and they called it that because
it’s kind of a nickname for staying in
the groove and it was a set of
principles that would guide the company
and guide the employees because they
wanted every employee to know hey this
is our Charter this is how we’ll treat
you this is what we want to be this is
the atmosphere we want to have and this
is what we expect from you and it was
kind of like a 10 commandments of how
the company would operate but it wasn’t
just a bunch of how-to so I do this
beyond time that it was actually more
fun because they truly wanted to get a
culture out of it
this would turn out to be a good start
that was critically important to them so
check some of these things out I wish I
was part of companies early early in my
career where maybe the founders had done
these things for me number one
management is people so inspire and
coach people don’t just command them wow
that’s really sharp I like that hire
smart no mediocrity allowed
we can’t allow mediocre people to come
in and influence our current people and
our current people need to know will
only hire good people to work with them
you know what that’s a great philosophy
I appreciate that we will have respect
for the individual number three
we will liberate you from oversight and
micromanaging and we will motivate you
to be trusted to get your job done
number forth people involvement it’s all
about people it’s not about numbers
numbers will take care of ourselves if
we involve our people and they truly
understand the job they’re doing and how
it impacts arrests the company ownership
owned your own job own your own function
this here’s my favorite number six coop
wah let’s celebrate a little bit when we
get something done and we introduce a
new flavor or we just meet our monthly
goals let’s make sure that we take time
to celebrate number seven train train
train equip people when we hire them
equip people when we promote them equip
people when we get them to the next
level number eight this would prove to
be key later for the company important
communications should be face to face
communication whether you’re giving
feedback or telling them about important
messages of the company do it face to
face so they can see you and number nine
let’s remember it’s an upside-down
organization we’re not a triangle going
to the top where we celebrate our
leadership everybody at the bottom of
the triangle selling the ice cream
delivering the trucks they’re out there
on the front lines face to face with
customers face to face with the stores
and they know better than we do at the
top what’s happening we are a
upside-down company and we want that
feedback to come in good news and bad
very quickly so that we know what’s
going on and we will value all those
people and then number 10 ready fire aim
it’s not to be negligent or to be a
little crazy but it really was to be
spontaneous and say we expect you to
make a decision and not just sit around
aiming aiming aiming aiming aiming
you’re expected to do something be
careful use your training get permission
but sitting around aiming forever and
never firing at something or never
executing that doesn’t get the company
anywhere so over the next 17 years
there’s a 17-year gap here not really a
gap or a continuum where they grew the
company for 17 years
and then in 1998 they were in the middle
of a four year plan to go big and they
called this the grand expansion and what
this grand expansion plan was all about
is they said it’s time to really go big
and they had grown themselves up to
about six hundred million dollars in
sales by this time and they said we need
to do more consumer marketing let’s
expand our distribution some little
interesting super premium delicacy ice
creams have been popping up like Ben and
Jerry’s and haagen-dazs and they said
we’ve got all these refrigerated trucks
we’ve got space on them
why don’t we charge these super elegant
ice cream people the super premium
people
why don’t we charge them to use our
trucks and we could deliver for them we
got space on the truck and we’re going
to the store and that’s super deluxe ice
cream in the high category doesn’t
compete with our great dryers ice cream
here so we’re not really competing with
each other they’re two different types
of ice cream so let’s make some money on
them smart also they ultimately signed
Ben and Jerry’s for a broad nationwide
agreement to do that and then they said
let’s also accelerate some new products
we can see some things like sorbet and
ice cream bars that are more and more
coming to the forefront so let’s make
sure that we follow the market with some
great new stuff
they also found a little coffee company
named Starbucks and they started
introducing some Starbucks flavored ice
cream the last thing they did is if you
take a look at this this is the dawn of
the Internet and it’s the dawn of
information systems and they said we
need to really invest in information
systems so that we know our sales every
day every place so they put all this
into the place and they were executing
and doing really well with their
execution when guess what a perfect
storm happened in the market so they had
made this grand four year plan from 94
to 98 and then in 1998 a ton of things
happen to them that they didn’t cause
but they had to react to first dairy
products and butter fat which is
core ingredient ice cream the prices
shot way up so they were having to pay
these higher prices from the farms for
the butterfat also a competitor Briers
which was owned by a giant conglomerate
started aggressive price promotions in
coupons and fighting for the grocery
store space they had never seen that
kind of fight before so briar is
fighting with dryers
then they started some years before with
some low-fat products and some sherbert
products that had less sugar in them and
for some reason in 1998 the American
consumer lost interest in healthy
icecream now as we look some 20 years 30
years later it is kind of shocking I
think you know to think that at one
point in time you have healthy ice
creams that that people were passing on
because they wanted the real good stuff
well nonetheless that’s what was
happening then and so that also hurt
what they had done perfect launches of
some new products and then a big hit Ben
and Jerry’s called him and said you know
what we don’t need you distributing us
for anymore we’re gonna figure some
things out for ourselves and we don’t
need you now that was huge because that
was a big and important partnership and
it came out of the blue they were
delivering on time they were doing
everything right but Ben and Jerry’s
just said you know what we’re gonna do
some other things we do it ourselves
and lastly one of the founders came down
with a brain tumor he would survive but
he was out of actions for months as he
got treatment and was in the hospital
and then recovering at home none of
these had anything to do with the plan
that they had put together and done so
well so the moral of story there is you
can execute a plan perfectly and there
can be a perfect storm that follows you
or unintended consequences and you need
to be ready for it
Dreyer’s could have done one of two
things going oh man we did the plan we
did it perfect we had everything going
and here but instead they said you know
the same brains that helped us make this
plan the first time guess what we’re
going to make a plan B and we’re going
to get out
this so basically they had a whole
different attitude about it they said
let’s go to Lake Tahoe with our key
people and they brought him up to the
summit and Lake Tahoe and the first
thing they did they said let’s look at
the facts and let’s the facts talk to us
and don’t deny the facts and don’t try
to explain him away it’s not anybody’s
fault in the room but let’s look at all
these facts and react to them by not
trying to convince ourselves that
something other than the truth is going
on so they didn’t go into denial and
they didn’t try to you know convince
themselves what they’re seeing is not
what the truth was they realized he
needed to do two things they had spent
money on healthy products and those
change so they were gonna have to
reorganize that they had all these
trucks in this distribution system and
all the sudden Ben and Jerry’s didn’t
need him anymore they were gonna have to
consolidate that and do a little
financial reorganization of that they
put together a multi-point plan and they
said this is what we have to do and one
of the things they said we need to go
back to grooves because grooves was that
charter of things that keep everyone in
the groove that this is how we’ll act
this is how we expect people to hat and
one of them was face-to-face
communications and they had grown huge
between the time they made that and
seventeen years later but they were
still following it in the week after the
meeting in Lake Tahoe they did what they
needed to do with the investors and the
stock market they told them what
happened and they gave him the details
in the seven days from the completing
those meetings forward in those seven
days they dispatched all the company’s
senior executives and they spoke to
every person in the company on a
face-to-face basis and they said hey the
tenants of grooves as we communicate
good news and bad news face to face
because we care about you and we’re
gonna tell you what the plan is and in
no seven days every person in the
company was in a room somewhere face to
face with an executive where they could
ask questions and get straight answers
live well
one of the things they had to explain
was there would be some layoffs there
would be some changes because these were
big hits we took even though we did
everything we thought we should of the
plan but we’re gonna revise the plan and
we’re going to come back even stronger
so the what they concluded was that they
had the support of their employees they
said you know everybody really trusted
us they believed it
what’s because when they set that
Charter grooves they stuck to it in 17
years later it wasn’t just some sign on
the wall from the original founding of
the company it was how they lived and
operated and the employees trusted that
what was on the wall would be how they
were treated and the owners trusted that
that’s how the employees would would
operate as well there is a happy ending
that happens here two years later they
had pushed sales up to 1.1 billion
dollars as they followed their
restructuring plan and they introduced
more heavy cream elegant high-end ice
cream products because that’s what
people wanted to eat they brought that
out and they drove it to here that also
got the attention of a another company
that sells a lot of things for us with a
sweet tooth
Nestle and Nestle came and paid 2.4
billion dollars for dryers in 2002 so
from a crisis in 98 they have a great
finish and the great finish that they
owed the success to yes we made a good
plan yes we put it together but the
employees that were with us were needed
to execute that plan and because that
Charter that had set the culture and we
had been loyal to that the culture made
sure the plan was completed without the
culture they all believed they could not
have had this level of success and with
a great plan without the loyalty and the
trust of people they could have lost
good employees here that said well if
the company’s in trouble I’m just gonna
work somewhere else and that would have
been a normal reaction so that’s the
story of dryers and the two things I
gave you at the beginning or the two
things are true now
when you start your company whether
you’ve got four points or ten points
establish a culture for your company
what you’re gonna stand for how you’re
gonna treat your employees and what you
expect from them and then live to it and
then when you execute your plans and
things don’t go perfectly at the end you
did everything you thought you should
but you get a different results or the
economy or something get you in a storm
that charter if you’ve been loyal to it
the most valuable asset that you have is
your people and those people will trust
you so you can react together and you
can build a plan B and move forward well
that’s the dryers case study I’m Tom
Ellsworth and now I need the custom
pillow there we go
please subscribe here to value team
entry you can see more case studies as
well as great content for the
entrepreneur the best content for
entrepreneurs on the internet featuring
Patrick bet David until next time I hope
[Music] you
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