Happy throwback Thursday! Today our throwback year is 1978, the year that the first Ben & Jerry’s opened in a converted gas station in Burlington, Vermont! Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield were childhood friends before they decided to go into business together. Initially, they wanted to have a bagel business, but they found the equipment too expensive. So they took a $5 correspondence course on ice cream making from Pennsylvania State University. The first flavor they created was Vanilla. Cohen has severe anosmia, meaning he doesn’t have a sense of smell. He relies on textures to provide variety in his diet, which is why the company started adding its trademark chunks to its ice cream. They started the annual tradition of “free cone day” in 1979 to mark their first anniversary. Now, over one million cones are given away each year. The most popular flavor Ben & Jerry’s was Cherry Garcia for many, many years. But in a 2013 survey, it was revealed that chocolate chip cookie dough was the customer favorite. The company gets around 13,000 suggestions for new flavors each year. Cherry Garcia was suggested by 2 Dead Heads from Portland, Maine. If you ever visit the Ben & Jerry’s factory in Waterbury, Vermont, you can go to their Flavor Graveyard, where over 300 now-discontinued flavors have their very own headstones and clever epitaphs. Learn more here.