| The founders of one of the country's leading ice cream brands spent only a pint-sized sum learning how to make their product. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield became friends in seventh grade, back in 1963. Originally, they set their sights on being a doctor (Greenfield) and an artist (Cohen). But once they reached their 20s — a rejected medical school applicant and a potter who dropped out of college — they decided to enter the food industry instead. The duo came close to becoming bagel makers, but they realized that producing ice cream was cheaper (bagel-making equipment can be pretty pricey). Their dessert education arrived through a Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences correspondence course, which sent them a textbook in the mail and required only open-book tests. The course has since been replaced by a weeklong series of workshops, the Penn State Ice Cream Short Course, which bills itself as the country's "oldest, best-known, and largest educational program dealing with the science and technology of ice cream." Established in 1925, the program has attracted representatives from Baskin-Robbins, Haagen-Dazs, and Blue Bell Creamery who want to improve their knowledge of research and development, quality control, sales strategies, and more. To prepare to run Ben & Jerry's, Cohen and Greenfield also purchased various brochures from the Small Business Administration, sold for 20 cents each at the post office. Next, they decided to open a shop in bucolic Burlington, Vermont, home to the University of Vermont's campus (and thousands of hungry students). Their doors opened in 1978 in a former gas station with unsightly holes in the roof that Cohen attempted to patch up with tin sheets and tar. Cohen and Greenfield secured the location by combining a $4,000 bank loan with their pooled $8,000 (including $2,000 supplied by Cohen's dad). All of the ice cream was made in a 5-gallon machine, and the shop originally sold eight flavors: Oreo Mint, French Vanilla, Chocolate Fudge, Wild Blueberry, Mocha Walnut, Maple Walnut, Honey Coffee, and Honey Orange. However, as the flavors got wilder — think Chunky Monkey, Cherry Garcia, and Phish Food — many more outposts and a wholesale delivery business followed, as did an IPO. In 2000, Unilever — the parent company of Breyers and Klondike — paid $326 million to acquire Ben & Jerry's. | 
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