Ben and Jerry’s annual Free Cone Day attracts a medley of people: longtime customers, Urban students and passersby drawn to the long line. Ben and Jerry’s has celebrated Free Cone Day since 1979, when it originated a way to thank their customers. It has grown to a global scale, serving ice cream in 24 countries.

  In the Haight, it draws some long time customers, including a man who came to Free Cone day as a child, and now brings his own children. Social media and the long line alert others to the presence of Free Cone Day.

  Free Cone Day has additional impacts in the community outside of providing free ice cream. Each year Ben and Jerry’s chooses an organization to donate to, and this year the donations from Free Cone Day went to a local high school, Lycée Français de San Francisco, raising money with Free the Children to sponsor the village of Verdara, India. Ben and Jerry’s donates its store and its ice cream, and the donations solicited go to this charity.

  While many of the people waiting in line claimed that it positively affected their feelings towards Ben and Jerry’s, for Urban students, the prices deters them from being frequent customers. As Alex Edwards (‘18) said, “it’s good marketing but it’s not going to want to make me get ice cream here ever again because it’s just so expensive.” He concluded that, “It’s almost like a little Urban holiday.”