Extra Credit: The Scoop on Cookie Dough Ice Cream

from The University of Vermont Magazine, Fall 2021

What the Nose Knows

The Scoop on Cookie Dough Ice Cream

Use the camera on your phone or tablet to read more about Ted and Rhino Foods. 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.

Since then, every bite of cookie dough that’s ever been used in any of their ice creams has come from Rhino Foods, a Burlington-based frozen sweets manufacturing business owned by wife Anne ’74 and husband Ted Castle ’74, the creator of the famous edible cookie dough. 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.

What began as Chessy's Frozen Custard—a mom-and-pop custard shop in Winooski—has transformed and pivoted again and again with Castle at the helm, eventually supplying 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 him 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.” It took two years and a lot of trial and error, but Castle got the recipe, chip and dough distribution, and consistency figured out and perfected. Today Rhino Foods is a certified B Corporation with a distinct purpose to “impact the manner in which business is done,” he says. And while cookie dough swirls and sweet frozen treats might sound like a good enough gig already, what Castle loves most is the ability to contribute to his community and employees. “I actually think business is where the most social good can come from, and also the most social harm,” he says.

It’s the impetus for what he may consider his greatest accomplishment in business—after the creation of edible cookie dough that is. The Rhino Foods Income Advance Program is a no-questions-asked benefit that gives employees access to up to $1,000 of emergency funds, borrowed from a financial institution, delivered as quickly as that same day, and repaid through automatic, affordable payroll deductions with interest. It makes it possible, for example, for an employee to borrow $1,000 for an unplanned emergency and pay it back 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.” He says one of the best uses he’s heard is for an employee to buy an engagement ring.

“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.” UVM