New road aims to keep Ben & Jerry’s shipping, visitor traffic apart

July 2, 2021  |  By Lisa Scagliotti

The new service road at the Ben & Jerry's factory is laid out like an arc around the north side of the facility to direct trucks away from the visitor areas including the scoop shop and playground on the south side. Photo by Gordon Miller.

A crew from Engelberth Construction, Inc., is busy constructing a new service road at the Ben & Jerry’s factory in Waterbury to separate truck and visitor traffic. 

Factory Director Georgia Szewczak, who is Supply Chain Lead for Ben & Jerry’s, said the project has been in the works for some time and was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The company decided to add the trucking road based on increasing numbers of visitors to the site and a growing volume of production at the plant, she explained.  

Ben & Jerry’s corporate spokesman Sean Greenwood said the goal is to improve traffic flow for commercial vehicles bringing in dairy and other supplies as well as transporting out the tractor-trailer loads of ice cream. All of course while the facility hosts thousands of visitors annually for factory tours, its scoop shop, gift shop and campus with a playground, the flavor graveyard and even snowshoe tours in winter.

“This new construction will allow a secondary access that will be used solely for the drop-off of ingredients and to ship out finished product,” Greenwood said. “This effort will ensure the primary entrance you see today will be used just for guests and keep it as safe as possible.” 

The company did not say how much the project costs but that the work represents an ongoing commitment to what was the ice cream giant’s flagship production facility. 

“Waterbury was Ben & Jerry’s first, large-scale manufacturing operation, and it continues to play a vital role in our manufacturing plans moving forward. This investment signifies its importance along with St Albans to provide all the original ice cream pints in the U.S. from right here in Vermont,” Szewczak said.

Design and permitting for the project have been in the works for several years and construction got pushed into 2021 due to the pandemic. “Large scale projects that affect the site always take a considerable amount of time. When you add in a pandemic in the middle of it, it can be even more challenging,” Szewczak said.