Ben and Jerry’s Palm Springs. Welcome to Reservations!
Transcript of the Video: Ben and Jerry’s Palm Springs
Welcome to Reservations. This is Jeff Harrison and behind the camera, that’s Andrew McCauley. Today, I am here with Sam Bay of guess where Ben and Jerry’s. Welcome, Sam. Let’s step outside here. Sam, first of all, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. Sam, tell us a little bit about you and your business and really kind of how long you’ve been in Palm Springs with Ben and Jerry’s.
Well, I’ve been here for about 15 years now. Back in the days when we first opened up, the Palm Springs wasn’t really thriving. Just about a couple of few years after we opened up the recession hit and all the housing market had crashed and everything, but we hung in there for so many years and stuff like that. And then, things are looking pretty good right now that Palm Springs has definitely turned around a bit. And, we’ve just been here for 15 years now. We’re doing pretty decent so far.
When somebody is in business, as long as you, Sam, I mean there are absolutely ebbs and flows in the economic cycle that you have no control over. But in that, and this is one of the things we want to share with it at Reservations is somebody who’s been in business as long as Sam has, they can weather the ups and downs and still come out of it. And Sam, that’s hats off to you after 15 years. I know living in the desert for the last 20, we’ve seen some flat spots, so Congratulations. Sam, do me a favor. Tell us a little bit about, what’s something that you had Ben and Jerry’s that a lot of people do not know about that you’d like to share?
We Care
First of all, Ben and Jerry’s is one of those ice cream companies that really care about what people eat. Like other ingredients are fair trade certified and non-GMO, natural and stuff like that. I mean, you walk up and down the street and you walk into any of these ice cream shops out here. They’re all use artificial stuff like artificial colors, artificial flavors, and none of these are non-GMO and stuff like that. So Ben and Jerry was founded on the concept that we’re going to go ahead and use one of the best steps that are available for the customers, instead of like trying to make that money, as much money as possible.
They’re actually the company that gives back to the community and they really care about what people eat. So that’s basically what the main difference between Ben and Jerry’s and others. So basically I always say there are always two different, ice cream companies out there. One is Ben and Jerry’s, the other one is all the others.
Something that when we first met, you talked about that a lot of people don’t know that you offer this kind of service. What is that? Well, we do ops. We do catering jobs for birthday parties, stat meetings, weddings, and grand openings or open houses or whatever that might be. Not only with sell ice cream at the shop, but we actually bring a mini scoop shop to your site if you’re having a party or anything like that. We’ll actually scoop ice cream. It was a full-service catering, service that we offer. We’ll bring a mini-scoop shop to your site and then a scoop ice cream in the cups or cones or do Sundae bars at really reasonable prices.
Free Cone Day
Now Sam, with that, and I know you have a big heart with the times we’ve met, do you do anything that helps local charities at all? Do you ever get involved in that type of thing? Oh yes. I mean, every year we donate to many different little groups and different nonprofit organizations. Especially, on our free cone day. Every year, all Ben and Jerry’s in the world have what we call free cone day. At our shop, what we do is we donate our money to a certain Palm Springs mounted police search and rescue. They are the one who goes up to all the hiking areas out here. They rescue all these people who get stranded up there and we donate.
We’ve been donating it to them for last probably about 10 to 12 years or so. And this year alone we’ve probably scooped out somewhere around like 7,000 scoops of free ice cream on the free cone day alone. Not only that, I mean, you know, we try to go in and help out, you know, a lot of the small groups out here. 
As a matter of fact, like July 4th, I am going to be out there donating for the Food Samaritan of the desert. Uh, so, you know, we’re going to go in and help them raise money and stuff like that. But we have the Palm Springs animal shelters. We have helped many different varieties. I mean, of course, I cannot help every single person who asked me to help them because we have a certain amount of budget and you know, we can only do so much, but we tried to do as much as we can to help as many little groups as possible.
Customer Service Is Our Priority
Sam, I have one final question. For somebody who’s been in business for 15 years, there has to be something that you’ve done over that time to help you be successful because this show is about helping other restaurants and other businesses quite frankly understand. What are the strategies or tactics that somebody uses to be successful or time? And I know that’s a pretty broad question, but could you kind of put your finger on one thing and say, this is probably one of those things that are the most important over time to keep me involved. Whether it’s giving back to charity or making good relationships, that kind of thing. What do you think?
Well, my thing is the customer service really is my priority. No matter where I go, where I shop, the offered me a great customer service, I’m impressed by it. So we try to do as much as we can to offer amazing customer service and trying to be as honest as possible to a customer instead of trying to make those few dollars here and there by like cheating people or I mean, you know what I mean? Not being honest to them, but honestly, it goes long way, in my personal opinion. So basically, that’s just what it comes down to.
We’re In Downtown Palm Springs
I think that’s great. Well, Sam, first of all, thank you for joining us today. Tell those people watching, where they can come to see you and Ben and Jerry’s instead of just saying, we’re in Palm Springs. Tell us where you’re located and if you have some kind of special offer if there happened to be watching it and they’re interested in and getting a little scoop of ice cream. Tell us what we got to do.
Sure, we’re in downtown Palm Springs, right in the middle of it. We’re diagonal across the street from the Starbucks and downtown Palm Spring. I mean we have a couple of blue umbrellas out there you cannot miss it. And uh, you know, I think we’re offering a 20% discount for all Facebook patrons here in the Palm Spring area right now. So just come on in and if you are not sure about some of our flavors, we offer an amazing amount of samples.
Believe it or not, we go through over 10,000 samples, sticks a month. So we want to go ahead and let you guys experience what Ben and Jerry’s all about. And if you don’t like some of the flavors, you don’t have to buy anything. But I do want you to at least come in and give us a try. And experience, some of these different ones of a kind of super premium ice cream
How Much You Give Back
You know, Sam, you didn’t say this, but having a couple of conversations with you and hearing you today, part of your success it sounds like is you’re not afraid to give. You’re not afraid, whether it’s samples or advice or customer service. That goes a long way when you’re running a business of any kind is how much you give back. Because it’s always one of those things when you help somebody else out, what do they want to do? They want to help you out. A lot of times we see it going the other way. We want to take something and then wonder why we’re not getting back. And Sam, I think you’re the epitome of someone who gives and then receive things because of the effort. And I want to thank you and also thank you for joining us today on Reservations.
Any questions there, Andrew? No questions today. I want to thank everybody for joining us. We’ll see you again. I’ll be away tomorrow, but Andrew will be on Thursday. He’ll be meeting at Peabody with Debbie Alexander, so make sure to see that she’s been in business since 1992 and she’s on that business as 1994 I bet she has some tricks of the trade. We’re also going to swing a little early and she’s going to feed us breakfast. We’ll have a little bit of a taste review on that, so catch us on Thursday. We’ll be back again then. Thanks so much.
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