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Ben Cohen Brooklyn native Bennett Cohen gave up such promising jobs as McDonald's cashier, night mopper at Friendly's Restaurant, pottery wheel delivery person, pediatric emergency room clerk on the night shift at Bellevue Hospital and cab driver to go into business with his junior high pal, Jerry Greenfield. Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream Parlor opened for business in May, 1978, in a renovated gas station on a busy streetcorner in Burlington, Vermont, and the rest, as they say, is history. Ben & Jerry's soon became known as much for its rich, unusual flavors as for Ben's and Jerry's community-oriented approach to business. Ben and Jerry have been recognized for fostering their company's commitment to social responsibility by the Council on Economic Priorities, which awarded them the Corporate Giving award in 1988 for donating 7.5 percent of their pre tax profits to nonprofit organizations through the Ben & Jerry's Foundation, and by the U.S. Small Business Administration, which named them U.S. Small Business Persons of the Year in 1988 in a White House ceremony hosted by President Reagan. Ben is President and a founding member of Businesses for Social Responsibility, an organization that works to promote socially responsible business practices, and his is founder and President of Business Leaders For Sensible Priorities, which mobilizes business leaders' expertise to redirect U.S. federal budget priorities away from Cold War military spending levels and toward meeting basic human needs. © Copyright 1994-2010.  All rights reserved. TopFive.com and The Top 5 List are owned by Chris White. Absolutely no publishing or reprinting without prior consent.