About the Guest

Jeni Britton Bauer is an American ice cream maker and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the artisan ice cream movement, Jeni opened her first ice cream shop, Scream, in 1996, then founded Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams in 2002. As Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Jeni remains the beating heart of the company and is in charge of all creative output—from the ice cream itself to the supporting details that enhance the experience of eating it.

Episode Summary

In this episode, we chat with Jeni Britton Bauer, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams. Tune in to hear how Jeni and her team navigated COVID-19, managing everything from production changes to scoop shop safety for team members and customers alike. Zach and Jeni discuss what it takes to run a successful omnichannel brand and the essential aspects of entrepreneurship. 

Episode Transcript

Zach Goldstein

(00:01):

From fake meat and robot chefs to ghost kitchens and delivery drones, the restaurant industry is rapidly evolving. Welcome to Food Fighters, bringing you interviews with the leading industry trailblazers. I’m your host, Zach Goldstein.

Zach Goldstein

(00:18):

Welcome back to food fighters. I’m your host, Zach Goldstein. I am excited as summer is approaching to be talking with Jeni Britton Bauer, founder of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams. Jeni is American ice cream maker and entrepreneur pioneer of the artisan ice cream movement. She opened her first ice cream shop Scream in 1996 and then founded Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams in 2002 as founder and chief creative officer Jeni remains the beating heart of the company and is in charge of all creative output from the ice cream itself to the supporting details that enhance the experience of eating it. Jeni, welcome to food fighters.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(00:57):

Hey Zach, it’s good to be with you.

Zach Goldstein

(01:00):

Excited to chat with you. I have certainly been sampling flavors while I’m locked in home and excited to be emerging from the pandemic. You’ve had an interesting year. I mean, this has been detrimental for most restaurants from full service all the way down to fast casual, and yet you’re announcing the opening of new scoop shops, Dallas, Durham, San Diego. You’ve been shipping ice cream all across the country. Tell us about your business, your business model and what makes Jeni’s unique nabled us to have thrived during the really tough year for many restaurants.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(01:42):

Well, yeah, I mean, it’s interesting that when, when I go back a year ago, obviously none of us knew what was going to happen and we were all trying to tell the future and, you know, see the future and create this vision that we could get behind and then March forward and, you know, as a business, you have to be able to predict what’s going to happen six months from now. You have to be able to make what you’re going to make and get all the ingredients and the team to do it and all of that. And so we were really having to make very big, really important decisions and kinda take big risks. I mean, back then we decided that, well, even though our leadership is saying that we’re going to be back by the 4th of July, We didn’t believe it. But what, what that meant was that we had to switch, we decided to switch our production from buckets to pints. And that’s huge because if we hadn’t been, you know, in quotes back for scooping, we wouldn’t have had any buckets to scoop from. So we decided that pints were going to be the thing. We were going to be able to deliver pints. And we were just going to make a hard pivot to that. So that was one thing, but those are one of many, many things. I mean, it takes many weeks to get pints just printed. So there’s just, you know, behind the scenes, so many swerves that you’re making to accommodate that. And I’ll just give a shout out to the sort of creativity of the team as well, because, you know, we can make it look like we meant to do all of it but at the same time, really behind the scenes we’re just making due, we’re living off the land making do with whatever we have and, uh, and trying to make it as beautiful as an experience as possible. We changed our mission actually for the year, which is uncommon in business. But I really do think that your mission is not like your marketing statement, that it’s your marching orders. And you know, it’ll always be, make better ice creams and the word better is really important to us because it’s active and it’s constant. And then the other part of our mission is always to bring people together through the way that we purchase ingredients and the way that we serve people in our communities. But we switched it or addended it to keep people safe, customers and team, and to survive the year.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(03:47):

And so that just was, it kind of enabled us to make different choices and to free up our leadership, to like really think differently about how we were going to survive and how will we were going to absolutely keep everyone safe. You know, that was that sort of marching order. You’re going to keep everybody safe. Everybody’s gonna feel good to going to work so that we can keep our doors open in any way possible. So there were a lot of things that we did behind the scenes that contributed to that. And of course, we’re really lucky because if this has happened for us a few years back, we would have not survived the way we we did or maybe we would just barely hung on the way that so many of our small businesses are. We now have three channels, so we could pretty easily pivot to both nationwide delivery, which we’ve been doing since 2004, but also incorporate national or local delivery into that pretty easily through our website. And so we, weren’t just reliant on some of the food delivery services, which do take a big chunk of what you make on that. And then grocery really picked up. And so we already had that grocery is a really tough thing to break into. We were already broken in on that front. So it really saved our company I think.

Zach Goldstein

(05:00):

It’s pretty unusual and you, you highlighted it just now, it’s pretty unusual to change your mission and to redirect people. And yet it was unusual and still is in many ways, unusual times. How did you determine what the duration of that would be, how to communicate that to your organization? And just as a leader, how to rally your team behind this is an unusual time and we have to act differently.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(05:31):

Communication really was everything. Transparency, you know, these are the times for conspiracy theories and those come from people not feeling safe. TThis was just a time that we needed to be really clear about everything. So we were, we just pulled everybody. First of all, we met we created a special counsel, not just of our leaders, but a few others. I think there were 12 or 13 people on the council, and one of them was a communications person, ho actually their job was sort of a little different before COVID but we sort of put them into this heavy communications role for that reason. But we met daily at noon for months, months, months, mean most of the year just to kind of make sure that we were, we all knew what was going on because we were all flying kind of our own directions and doing the best we could in our sort of corner of the business. So coming together every day at noon was kind of our place to, to, to just come together so that we were communicating accurately out to our teams and everyone felt like they were always on the same page and always had any issues addressed pretty quickly.

Zach Goldstein

(06:45):

Yeah. That’s, that’s great. You mentioned the other thing that you just mentioned is the power of, of your multi-channel approach, obviously scoop shops, but the ability to do digital sales for pickup and delivery and the ability to ship nationwide, at least directionally, give us a sense for just how big that swing was in your business from the pre COVID to middle of COVID period year over year. I mean, how fundamentally did everything switch?

Jeni Britton Bauer

(07:15):

We were before COVID shops really drove revenue and after COVID, it’s really wholesale or grocery channel and eComm that, that drove revenue, it’s pivoting back now, it’s kind of swerving back a little bit, so it’s evening out a little, but it’s definitely, it was, it was, um, you know, our, our shops still, I would say broke even. But, you know, they were really the driver of revenue in our whole company, and then it switched really switched.

Zach Goldstein

(07:44):

Fascinating and do you think it will return? I mean, this is the question everyone’s asking and impossible to prognosticate, but do you think it will return to the same place where shops remain the core driver of revenue once we’re on the other side of this, or have we seen a permanent shift in the way you expect your customers to engage with your product?

Jeni Britton Bauer

(08:05):

What we’re seeing in and we’re in so many different cities and in different cities, they have different regulations and cultures around COVID. So in particular in the south, what we’re seeing actually is that people are returning to stores and moving a little bit away from local delivery. We want to hold on to some of that because it’s pretty fun and what we can do with that. Like, for instance, if you’re going to a party, you can just have us deliver some ice cream, or we’ve been doing gifts, if somebody’s birthday, you know, you can have a little birthday package from us delivered. It’s not just, you know delivery to you to consume now but you can give gifts that way locally and things like that too. So we’ve had a lot of fun coming up with different menus. So we’re hoping that we can hold onto some of that, but I really to see people back in the stores and I’m so delighted that actually is happening. So I do think that there, we’re still, we’re still waiting to see what the future really looks like when it all shakes out, but we’re definitely seeing people anxious and excited to get back in their communities and in our stores and elsewhere.

Zach Goldstein

(09:11):

This has been one of the challenges. I think that a lot of national restaurant and retail brands have faced is the wide range in, I think you said it well, local, not just policies, but actually culture around responding to COVID. What have you done to empower local management teams, store level management teams or regional teams to adapt to what they’re seeing on the ground, because one size fits all is not really going to work as you think about the great reopening, if you will.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(09:47):

Yeah, no, it really hasn’t worked the whole year. But what we are able to do is just say, well, we’re safety first. So if our team doesn’t feel safe coming to work, then we won’t be able to open our doors at all. That’s number one for us. And so we talked to our local teams. We want to make sure that they all feel safe.

Zach Goldstein

(11:52):

Well, yeah. And what I think is so powerful about the fact that you’ve tied this to your mission and the values for right now, it’s not myopic on the word safety only tied to what can COVID do, which is obviously a massive safety threat. It’s I have to look at the word safety broadly and that’s what happens when you have a mission that you can rally behind. It’s really nice.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(12:17):

So much of what we did this year was helping people feel safe. You know, we’re all in our corner of the internet and whatever information we’re getting is what we believe. And, you know, part of making people feel safe is to help people get the facts and understand the facts and believe the facts so that we’re not all coming with different ideas of what those are and even still that’s going to happen. But safety really also it’s how people are feeling because we had a lot of, you know, mental health became a really important thing in our company this year, because people were really scared and depending on what you were listening to, it would be, it could be much worse, you know, it could be worse. So part of what we were trying to do is help very young people feel safe and that means emotionally safe, as much as anything else.

Zach Goldstein

(13:13):

Food fighters stay on the cutting edge.

Zach Goldstein

(13:17):

I would actually broaden safety because in many cases, people sitting at home feeling scared, ice cream is something that can provide a different type of safety and well being. And you are an innovator in the flavors you’ve brought to this world. I mean, just, just to name some of them, raspberry rose jelly donut, sweet cream biscuits and peach jam, right? I mean, skillet cinnamon roll, being a personal favorite. As you think about the process of innovating and bringing new flavors to ice cream, or frankly just innovating in food in general. What is your process as a chief creative officer and founder? How do you think about keeping, pushing the envelope and staying true to your brand?

Jeni Britton Bauer

(14:11):

Well, it’s a lot of fun. I will say that I feel like this has been, I mean, I’ve been doing this role in the company for 26 years. I mean, I’ve had my two companies, you know, in the nineties, I had another company called Scream, but really, you know, this is what I’ve done for so long. And what it is really, I think is, I always fall back on the time that I spent in the market, which is where I started both of my businesses. It’s a, it’s an indoor public market. I spent 10 years there, boots on the ground, making all of the ice cream and serving the ice cream, alongside a little group of high school kids and you learned so much in doing that. So I learned a lot about preferences, about what people expect, ice cream, the fact that Americans love salty, sweet, love caramel in any form, that kind of stuff, I kind of know the buckets that we’ll do well, buckets being, um, you know, the categories that do really well.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(15:04):

And so that all came from actually like, boots on the ground experience, which I will just note, I’m a big advocate for small business and main street business. And one of the things that I really think is missing and how we teach entrepreneurship in business is that time, you know, that you have to spend with your customers and with your idea in order to hone what you’re doing. And right now we’re just pitching, we’re really pitching to young people, the idea of pitch it, launch it, and then go to the moon instead and also get money, which means you’re working for someone else. Now I’m kind of on a tangent, but it’s important because I think that’s how you learn. That’s how you learn. That’s why to this day, you know, when we put out stuff, it’s almost like, I love to say, we know what you want.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(15:50):

I mean, it’s partly what we want, of course, but it’s also like, we’ve just been doing it for so long, but when I laid down a list of 10 flavors, you know, they’re all pretty. I mean, they’re ones that we want to make. And then we get into the kitchen and then it’s just a process of whittling down, you know, three or five that we really love the best. And usually what happens is, when a flavor really hits it is emotional. It like, you know, it, when it’s right, when everything is imbalanced and it really like makes you want to like move it’s weird, we will actually like, your shoulders will go up and down and you’ll actually like, kind of dance. You’re like, this is it.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(16:33):

I mean, it happens when the flavor is perfect. This happened recently actually with the everything bagel, ice cream, you know, we put out this flavor because it was so good. This year it’s actually a flavor we made in 2013. And we brought it back this year because of the everything bagel kind of craze. And we were testing it in the kitchen and we tasted the first bite and we were all just dancing. And we were just like, this is incredible. And you know, you can’t help your body wants to move. And then we were like, but maybe it’s a little strong on the garlic and onion. Nobody wants garlic breath after eating ice cream. So we went back kind of reformulate it, dialed those down. And then when we came back around it, it didn’t make us move.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(17:18):

It didn’t move our physical bodies. And we were like, Nope, we got to keep the onion and garlic at the full rate or whatever it is. So that, and it did. I mean, when it launched, people were like no way. And it went crazy. Everybody was crazy for it. And of course sold out like in a day, all that. But it is, it’s something about like, you know, it’s emotional and it’s like this a two way conversation, I would say with our customers. And you’re always listening and learning and observing.

Zach Goldstein

(17:49):

It’s a very under emphasized point about entrepreneurship and, and we hear it in frankly, every type of company building, but in the food space, the importance of deeply understanding preferences and how to create that emotion for your customer, there is no data-driven approach to coming up with those answers. You have to, you have to pick it up over time and with, you know, having those conversations, seeing the look on someone’s face when they taste flavors that you’ve put in front of them.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(18:26):

And so much of that, it took me a long time to know this actually, but so much of it is getting ego out of it because, as a creator, you, you have all the stuff that you want to do, but you’re in a different place than your customers. You had it all, and you’re in a very different space, you know, things that, you know, work and don’t, and maybe you want to try things you’re excited about and all the why’s, but you need to get that out of the equation. I mean, to really make something to people are gonna go crazy for, you have to just put yourself aside and really think about what is really beautiful and what is going to make someone feel really good. And I always say, feel loved. And I like to think that through our ice creams, we can make people feel loved. It’s just, you know, something that I say all the time, but it really is putting yourself aside. I think the best artists and poets that I know in authors do the same thing. And I think it takes us a little while to get there. I think just in life as creators,

Zach Goldstein

(19:22):

For sure. One of the humorous questions about for instance, a winemaker is how are they not, drunk on their own supply all the time. They love it so much. I wonder what the comparable version is for an ice cream maker. Are you just constantly eating ice cream? How do you, I mean, if I, if there’s a pint of Jeni’s ice cream in my house, it’s not lasting very long. I would imagine you’re within arms reach of a lot of them quite often.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(19:54):

I mean, I have a special freezer in my garage just for my ice cream. And right now they just dropped off. Normally we would do this in the test kitchen, but they just dropped off an entire box of all the summer flavors that aren’t out yet just for my final approval. And I’m going to go down and eat them right after this. I’m constantly eating ice cream and I love it so much. I just think it’s such a beautiful experience. It’s like, I can never get enough of it. It’s just like, it’s like cold and it shocks you and it’s like frozen, but also not frozen, you know, it’s solid, but also liquid. And it’s just like, it’s all about scent. It’s beautiful on the inside, not on the outside, like as it blooms, I mean, all of this stuff.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(20:38):

And I just, I just think it’s just think it’s so cool. And the fact that it’s been on earth for actually a really long time, but even in America since 1767, that first ice cream shop opened, I think in Philadelphia. And then it’s been along this American journey and so it’s such a historic and wonderful and neat thing. And you can see why people throughout history loved ice cream, as soon as they started eating it because it’s frozen and you’re putting in your body. And back then for most of human history, like that just wouldn’t happen, especially not in summer, you know? So even like taking yourself back and trying to imagine what it would be like to be someone who didn’t have air conditioning, but like could actually have a frozen cream spoonful of frozen cream in the middle of like a warm day, because you could get ice and water or ice in a salt to, to freeze it. I mean, that’s so cool.

Zach Goldstein

(21:27):

It puts a smile on my face to hear you talk about ice cream. It’s just, it’s neat. It’s one of the downsides of a podcast that sound only I am certain we, and everyone listening are just smiling as you described that it right now.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(21:42):

It’s not just mine either. I mean, I’m a person who gets ice cream all the time from everywhere.

Zach Goldstein

(21:48):

Fair enough. So the last thing I wanted to talk about, and we’ve, we’ve touched on it a bit, it was this decision to move into CPG and both direct to consumer, but also distribution through grocery. It’s worked so, you know, on some level, we have the benefit of looking back and saying that has been a successful strategy for you, but I I’m certain, there were times where that felt like a lot of work. And why don’t we just keep building scoop shops? We know this is working. What were those risks? Where were the sticking points for, you know, the many restaurants that are thinking through how they might do that?

Jeni Britton Bauer

(22:29):

Well, it’s a very different business and you have to think of it as a completely different business. I mean, the flavors that so well in our stores are not the same ones that sell well in grocery. And that was true. I know that when I stand in a grocery store, I want something different than when I’m in a chef’s restaurant or in our ice cream shop. You know, I mean, I’m in the shop maybe for a little bit of an adventure and to some, to try new things, but like in the grocery store and probably serving ice cream to more than one person, you know, I’m going for more of the basics or something familiar. It’s just, you have to think of it as a completely different business and then do what you do best, which is okay, who are our customers and how can we make them really happy?

Jeni Britton Bauer

(23:08):

How can we really speak to them and make something valid of value to them in this place? So it isn’t enough to have a really good recipe and put it in grocery. It’s, it’s really about what do people need and how can I use my talents to make that for them. And in that place where they are at now. It is a hard business. And so you just have to be ready for that. And it was kind of weird that we decided to do all three at the same time. And at sometimes at some points, we were regretting it because it means that you have to spread all of your resources super thin over three completely different businesses, instead of being able to kind of dive into one and make it as perfect as you can.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(23:46):

But we decided to do that because ice cream, well, first of all, I will say that, like in the nineties, I was like, well, Ben and Jerry can do it. I can do it. I mean, it was like, you know, it was just always a thing. It was like, we were in, of course we’re going to do grocery because that’s what you do. I guess I didn’t really take a ton of time to think like, and we’re going to have three channels or be an omni-channel retailer. You know what I mean? We’re not, you know, it was like, and I knew that, um, you know, we were going to do our website really early because I’d actually called Florence Fabricant at the New York times in like 2003. And she was like, can I help you? And I was like, yeah, we’re just wanting to tell you, we’re doing this really beautiful ice cream in Ohio.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(24:21):

And she was like, well, can I get it in New York? I was like, oh yeah, no, you can’t. And she was like, why don’t you call me when I can get it into New York? I’m like, oh God. Okay. That’s right. Of course, you’re the New York times. Okay. So we created the website and then I called her back and I was like, okay, now you can get it in New York. And she wrote about it. And so we used that as kind of a launch pad and then ought to be a national company. And then we were able to open stores where we grew pockets of fans. So that was actually really cool, but, you know, in a way it’s like, you know, you look back and you’re like, yeah, it was a great strategy. But then also at the time you were just like, let’s try it. And it worked, but, but it is a hard business. You just have to think of it as totally different. Each channel has a completely different set of customers. And how can you use what you know, and love and your talents to make those people really happy the way you’ve done in your restaurant or bakery.

Zach Goldstein

(25:10):

But before we go, I’d be remissed to not mention something that’s really special about the brand, you’ve built the fellowship model. And you talk about it taking a community of people, the growers and producers and suppliers and customers and your team. Talk about the fellowship model and how that’s become so core to your culture and your vision at Jeni’s. And what can other brands learn specifically from what you get out of making that type of commitment to your community?

Jeni Britton Bauer

(25:47):

Well, first of all, the word fellowship comes from the Lord of the rings. For me, it comes from Tolkein. I love and facts. It was like right when I was starting my business, that the Lord of the rings movies were coming on, I grew up with Tolkein and I just loved those so much. And I almost think that’s all you need to do, to be an entrepreneur is to believe in yourself the way that Frodo did or you know, to create, to think of it like a fellowship, right? You don’t need business books and all of that stuff, just think, just think of it like a fellowship, you know, every single person on that fellowship serves a very specific role and together you make something greater than the sum of its parts. And so for us, that includes our customers, our makers, growers, and producers out in the fields.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(26:28):

And, and then of course our team and just every, all of our stakeholders and together, we make something greater than the sum of its parts. We’re all working together on this mission. And that is, what’s so important to me. And when I think about like COVID, and I think to back a year ago, and I think like, what happens if we let’s say go out of business or what happens if we explode? What happens? Well, all of it’s not just our little company it’s, you know, Mike and his family who grow our strawberries and berries for us, or Brady and Ryan who do the whiskey. It’s so many people who will be impacted by that and companies and those people who have employees too, you know?

Jeni Britton Bauer

(27:15):

And so it really is like, it starts to be, it really feels like it’s so much more for us on the inside then ice cream. I mean, it’s like it, which is, I will say for anybody out there, who’s like, you know, a business person, cause I don’t speak business language really. But you know, in that world of business, like if you want to bring in the best top, most incredible talent, be a really good place to work, that has a mission and purpose way outside of the sort of core job you do every day. And you will get, you will get that people, those people, the fellowship sort of almost creates itself and continues to create itself. Because if you can live up to all of those values that you’ve created together, then you just continue to attract awesome people.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(28:00):

And there’s just so many great reasons to operate a business like that. So I’ll also say to people who have ideas, you know, life is compromised. You’re never going to get everything done all at once that you want to get done. I mean, we have such, you know, big ideas, but you can build a company that, that is good, that that is a place you want to live. And I think of it like building your own world, you get to choose the rules, you know, you get to choose the people that you know, to surround yourself with every day. And it’s, it’s pretty cool. It’s pretty great. And you can do it.

Zach Goldstein

(28:28):

That’s awesome. Well, it has made something special with Jeni’s. As you think about that a gigantic freezer of ice cream, what are you grabbing? What’s your favorite at the moment right now?

Jeni Britton Bauer

(28:42):

Oh, my goodness. Well we have a new one coming out exclusively at whole foods. I have to plug that one, cause it is so good. It might have something to do with, I’ll just say maybe something like my favorite candy bar, like the take five bar inspired by that. So look for that this summer. Oh my gosh. It’s downstairs in that box right now. Um, I always love our brown butter almond, brittle. It was inspired by Roald Dahl and a flavor he grew up eating in Norway. He wrote about it as a grownup and I read his writing on it. And then I made that ice cream from the writing. And I’m told it’s very authentic to this Norwegian flavor that he grew up on. So those two are the ones I always go for it. And then any of our buttermilk, well we call them buttermilk yogurt. Sometimes we call them a lot of things because nobody, I don’t know whenever we put buttermilk or yogurt on something, people don’t buy them, but they’re so good. And we have a rainbow one in our stores. That’s like just sensational and they’re so good with like pies. They’re just very tart and very creamy and beautiful.

Zach Goldstein

(29:34):

I will check them out as temperatures warm up and we’re spending a lot more time outside. You started making mouth water. So Jeni, thanks for spending time with us on food fighters. It was great to hear your story, enjoyed the conversation and looking forward to seeing more scoop shops, opening up all across the country.

Jeni Britton Bauer

(29:52):

Thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of this spring!

Zach Goldstein

(29:57):

You’ve been listening to Food Fighters with me, Zach Goldstein. To subscribe to the podcast or to learn more about our featured guest visit thanx.com/food-fighters. That’s Thanx, spelled T H A N X.com/food-fighters. This podcast is a production of Thanx, the leading CRM and digital engagement solution for restaurants. Until next time, keep fighting, Food Fighters.