The tale of Ben & Jerry’s humble beginnings in a converted gas station on the corner of St. Paul and College Street in Burlington is a Vermont classic. Laughably large chunks of brownies, chocolate fudge, cookies, and the like set them apart from other scoop shops of the time. But what put them on the map was a customer’s anonymous flavor suggestion that came to fruition: chocolate chip cookie dough.
The day after his 69th birthday, Ted Castle ’74 recounted the tale of his own humble beginnings as the creator and lifetime supplier of Ben & Jerry’s edible cookie dough. Yes, that cookie dough. Every bite of cookie dough that’s ever been used in any of their ice creams has come Rhino Foods, a Burlington-based frozen sweets manufacturing business owned by Castle and wife Anne ’74. And much like the iconic duo behind the three-part-mission ice cream company, Castle operates Rhino with a bigger picture in mind than just the bottom line.
Today, Rhino Foods is a certified “B Corporation” with a distinct mission to positively impact the community through innovative business practices. The company’s 250 employees have access to perks like no-questions-asked assistance funds—up to $1,000; long-term employment through a rotational seasonal employment network of local businesses; and on-site recovery, physical therapy and language classes. It’s been a “journey,” Castle says of the family business.
“I use that word a lot because we didn't have aspirations to try to grow to a certain size and sell the business or have to be this big. It was more about trying to be sustainable and doing business the right way.”
The Right Person for the Pint
By no coincidence, Rhino Foods’ tale begins at a scoop shop, too—Chessy’s Frozen Custard—alongside Anne and a funny little treat called a Chesster—an ice cream cookie sandwich that the Castles perfected in the eighties. When the cookies and bakery-style mix-ins game began to take over their ice creams sales, they knew it was time to pivot—and then pivot again, and again. “Over time we used to make cheesecakes, we made brownies. We just kept innovating and trying to figure out who we are and what we we’re good at the whole journey to where we are now,” he says.
At one point, the business manufactured Nestlé Toll House’s ice cream cookie sandwiches—a lot of them; about 25 million a year in fact, enough to become a co-packer of the product. Around the same time in the late eighties to early nineties, the Castles also supplied Ben & Jerry’s with the brownie batter and cookie dough that would be baked and incorporated into their ice creams at the shop. But it was luck that put Ted Castle at the right place at the right time during a delivery to the Ben & Jerry’s research and design lab, where he saw a box of his cookie dough cut up into little pieces.
As it was explained to him, “The Ben & Jerry's scoop shop in Burlington...takes your cookie dough and they chop it up and put it in the ice cream and make this flavor called cookie dough ice cream,” Castle recalls. “Whenever they do, it sells right out. We're thinking about starting a pint flavor called cookie dough ice cream.”
That was all it took.
“I'm like, ‘Wow, that sounds cool. Why don't you let me help you do that?’” he says. “And, I mean, it sounds crazy, but it took two years to get gooey, chewy cookie dough into a pint of ice cream with the right amount of distribution. I was lucky, man. I just happened to be there and I knew those R and D guys, and they just said ‘Yeah, you seem like a cool guy, let’s do it. Why don’t you help us figure this out?’—how's that for a crazy story?”
Not Business as Usual
While Rhino Foods is the product of some 40 years in business, the truth is, Castle really doesn’t consider himself a “businessman” in the conventional sense. In fact, he studied environmental science and played hockey as an undergraduate at the University of Vermont. The seventies weren’t a popular time for being “into business,” he says. After college, he played and coached hockey in Italy and Sweden, opened a hockey school in Vermont and was even the assistant hockey coach at UVM for a few years. Captain of the team his senior year, Castle was inducted into the UVM Athletics Hall of Fame in 1985.
But Chessy’s Custard Shop changed all that for him, not for want as much as need. Childcare and the success of the little Chesster sandwiches forced Castle to move beyond his normal duties of cleaning the machines at the shop or handling the wholesale side of the business and lean into a role as the captain of a team once again. He instituted open book management, inviting employees to participate in the business’ success through transparent finances and operations, which is still in place today.
“When you start to understand people and their relationship to the company, you realize that you want them bringing their best selves to work every day, so that they can perform their best. It’s really where my passion is,” Castle says. “I'm more interested in that—in the type of company—than how big we are.”
But the business has gotten big. So big that, in the nineties, Castle tapped into a growing community of Bosnian refugees in Burlington to help meet demands. Today, New Americans account for somewhere between 30 to 40 percent of Rhino Foods’ employees. At the Crash Café—the company’s version of a staff cafeteria and named after a herd of rhinos—18 different languages are represented on the walls. A hub of community, the café has hosted everything from a United Way resource coordinator and onsite recovery counseling to English language courses and employee massages.
And navigating the ebbs and flows of Rhino Foods’ growth has forced him to consider management issues he never thought he’d face—like a pandemic, for example, or refugee resettlement, the prison cycle, addiction or the difference having enough money to fix a flat tire can make on a person’s overall wellness.
In Case of Emergency
But it’s that last one—the financial stress, absences and overall performance issues that arise from common hardships like getting a flat on the way to work—that has particularly troubled Castle. As his business has grown to impact upwards of 250 livelihoods, it became the impetus for what he may consider his greatest accomplishment in business—after giving the creation edible cookie dough, that is.
The Rhino Foods Income Advance Program is a no-questions-asked benefit that gives employees access to emergency funds delivered as quickly as the same day they make the request. Borrowed from a financial institution and repaid through automatic, affordable payroll deductions with interest, the program makes it possible so that, for example, an employee could resolve an unexpected emergency and pay back a $1,000 loan in six months, with $50 in interest.
“When somebody doesn't have any access to credit, this allows them to take care of an emergency—or even if it's not an emergency, we don’t ask. One of our people at People and Culture (Rhino Foods’ version of Human Resources) said one of the best uses they’ve ever heard is when someone wanted to borrow money for an engagement ring,” he explains. “That’s not a basic need, but how much stress does that put on you when you can’t afford an engagement ring?”
Since 2007, over $500,000 in emergency funds has been loaned to more than 500 Rhino Foods employees—97 percent of whom have continued the automatic saving practice by depositing a portion of their paychecks into a savings account each pay period. The program’s success inspired Castle to established the Rhino Foods Foundation in 2018 as a vehicle to help other businesses implement their own Income Assistance programs. Now, more than 70 companies across the state have introduced it to their business operations, facilitating upwards of $1.3 million in financial assistance to more than 1,000 Vermonters.
Not a bad deal for a businessman who wasn’t really interested in business. Now, “I actually think business is where the most social good can come from, and also the most social harm, which is why Rhino’s purpose is to impact the manner in which business is done,” Castle says.