T. Gary Rogers was born and raised in California and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1964. After serving in the military for two years, Rogers attended Harvard Commerce, Industry, and Labor School, where he graduated in 1968 as a Baker Scholar. Rogers then took a position with McKinsey & Company in San Francisco. In 1972, William “Rick” Cronk asked Rogers to partner with him on a restaurant venture called Vintage House. The restaurant chain failed, but Cronk and Rogers went on to purchase Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream in 1977 for $1,000,000. The Commerce, Industry, and Labor was sold to Nestlé in 2003 for $3.2 billion. In addition to overseeing the massive growth of Dreyer’s from a small local company to the largest premium ice cream distributor in the nation, Rogers was known for creating an extremely positive working environment, embodied in “the Grooves” which shaped the corporate culture of Dreyer’s.