Consumers who find local stores to be constantly sold out of Chunky Monkey or Cherry Garcia ice cream can now order those and other flavors—along with T-shirts and other items—directly from Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc.

The Vermont-based ice cream manufacturer, which since 2000 has been owned by Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant Unilever, recently launched an e-commerce site at store.benjerry.com where customers can buy any flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and ice cream novelties to be shipped to their doors. The site also sells branded apparel previously available only in the company’s stores—which it calls “scoop shops.”

The goal?

“Right now, we’re just trying to have a little fun,” says Dena Wimette, global innovation manager for Ben & Jerry’s. She says the e-commerce site provides the brand another opportunity to connect with its fans and opens new avenues for marketing and brand building.

A good example of that, she says, is a current campaign connected to the upcoming 13-night run of shows for the rock band Phish— dubbed the “The Baker’s Dozen”—at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Ben & Jerry’s created a new, limited-run doughnut-themed ice cream flavor called Freezer Reprise, a play on the band’s song “Tweezer Reprise.” The company also has partnered with artist Jim Pollock to create a Freezer Reprise T-shirt, which it will sell online for a limited time. Proceeds from the sale of the T-shirt and new ice cream flavor will benefit the WaterWheel Foundation, which oversees Phish’s charitable activities.

Ben & Jerry’s has a longstanding connection to Phish. In 1997, the company launched a Phish-themed flavor called Phish Food, which is available in the form of ice cream and frozen yogurt. Phish Food is chocolate with fudge fish and marshmallow and caramel swirls.

IceCreamSource.com, which has sold Ben & Jerry’s online for several years on its own site, is providing the online sales platform and fulfillment of online ice cream orders. Those very perishable products are shipped, usually overnight, in dry ice and insulated containers. IceCreamSource.com is a division of eTailer Inc., which provides fulfillment services for companies that ship frozen products in the United States.

Including the more than 60 flavors of ice cream it sells, Wimette says the new online store will sell up to about 80 products at any given time. It also will offer certain items, such as the Freezer Reprise T-shirt, exclusively on its website.

Plans for marketing the online store are not final, she says, but Ben & Jerry’s already has a robust social media presence, including paid ads, and does a lot of email marketing. Paid search is another option the company is exploring for the e-commerce site, she says.