howdoyouendsomethinggood···
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“Say thank you first.”
Night 1 · Café de Dokter
Dear Magnum,
We didn’t know how to write this. So we did what people do. We asked. We sat in the cafés of your city and asked strangers how you end something good. This letter is what they told us.
“Start with something they’ll recognise.”
In a few days, you’ll be one year old as your own company. You said it would make you more focused, more agile, more yourselves. We believed you. We still do. You, more than anyone, know that leaving something good can be the making of you.
“Say thank you first.”
So. Thank you. In 2000, before you were even called Magnum, you took a company from Vermont with strange names on the lids and put it in more freezers, in more countries, than we could ever have reached on our own. You made it bigger. This year you even opened a new line for it in Heppenheim. Somewhere tonight, someone is holding a pint that exists because of you.
“Don’t rewrite the past.”
We won’t. It was real, and for a long time, it worked. So we made you something to remember it by: an album of our story so far, from a gas station in Vermont in 1978 to today. We left the last page blank.
“Be honest about why. Don’t invent a villain.”
There’s no one to blame. That’s the hard part. You’re built to make and move ice cream brilliantly, at a scale the world has never seen. We were built to say things that aren’t always convenient. We both tried to make that fit. It doesn’t, not anymore.
“Don’t make them pay for leaving.”
So we have an offer. It’s fair, and it’s a tab we’ll gladly pick up. Let’s talk.
“Stay friends.”
Keep making ice cream. Keep the credit; you earned it. Let us take the name, the voice, and the part of us we always believed could never be bought.
“Wish them well. And mean it.”
We will always be grateful. We hope you do brilliantly.
That’s how you end something good. You keep it good.
Ben & Jerry
with a little help from Amsterdam
