A Bit of Optimism - A Rebel With a Cause (and a Cone) with Jeni’s Ice Cream Founder Jeni Britton

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

What if a great business was built like a handmade mixtape? A lovingly crafted experience that is as much a love letter from its founder as it is custom-tailored to its audience.Before Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams became a household name, Jeni Britton was a 22-year-old art school dropout scooping her ice cream creations at a farmers market in Ohio. She didn’t have investors, connections, or a playbook. What she did have was a vision - not just for ice cream, but for connection.Jeni believed her bold ice cream could be a conduit for something bigger: a place where people feel seen, conversations happen naturally, and strangers become community. Over the next two decades, she bootstrapped her way from a small counter to a nationally recognized brand by doing everything the slow, hard, old-fashioned way — one customer, one flavor, and one act of service at a time.She refused shortcuts. She prioritized people. And she built her company like a handmade mixtape — crafted with intention, risk, rebellion, and love.In this conversation, Jeni explains what true entrepreneurship really is: not hype, not hyper-growth, and not chasing venture capital, but the courage to follow a vision long enough for it to start leading you. We talk about the creative process, the power of service, the lessons learned from young employees, the myth of “scalable ideas,” and how walking in the woods helped Jeni discover her next chapter - Floura.Jeni’s story is a reminder that the best things in life - and in business - take time, heart, and a willingness to make something beautiful even when no one is watching.This is A Bit of Optimism.---------------------------This episode is brought to you by the Porsche USA Macan---------------------------Visit Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams: https://jenis.com/Check out Jeni’s newest venture — Floura: https://www.floura.com/

You know, whether it was, like, driving around listening to Metallica and just, like, getting revved up to go. Do you listen to Metallica? Metallica? I mean, I grew up in Ohio, Slayer, Metallica, all of that. Oh, my God, this changed my whole major of me. It was like this nice little, you know, Midwestern absolute nonsense. You're heavy metal.

Oh, all of it, you know. I did like Def Leopard. Oh, well, yeah, sure. Just Pyromania, just the one album. That was great. Yep. Yeah, I mean, you know, that was fun. You realize it's a whole generation that we're just tuned out of what we're talking about now.

Yeah. My next guest and I are both Gen X. We're both from a generation when we made mixtapes, manually, on tape. We'd spend days crafting our playlists. You needed to have a vision. You needed to know who you were making the mixtape for. You needed to have something to say. They took so much time and energy.

To make one was actually an act of love, which is a perfect segue to introduce my guest, because a great mixtape is actually a perfect metaphor for true entrepreneurship. Jenny Britton started Jenny's ice cream after she dropped out of art school at 22 years old. And more than great ice cream, that brand has helped transform the whole category. With flavors like brambleberry pie and powdered jelly donut, you can actually taste her creativity. Jenny didn't follow a playbook. She did it her way. So what does this have to do with mixtape? Simple.

Jenny built her business with love. And her business is her mixtape for the world. This is a bit of optimism. This episode is brought to you by Porsche, which, if you like German engineering, this is about as good as it gets. Jenny's is famous for its flavor. So let's start with flavor. I think cardamint is completely underappreciated as a flavor and as a spite.

Thank you for saying that. I totally agree with you. 100%. 100%. And people are actually afraid of cardamom. And so I don't know why because it seems it's so beautiful. I mean, you just open it and smell it. I mean, I use it in my oatmeal.

I use it in baked goods. It's so beautiful. Everything. Yeah. I'm an experimenter. and I just add things to things just for whatever. And so let's trade off ridiculous things that shouldn't go together, that go get together that you discover just by being creative, okay?

Oh, yeah, okay. You want to go first or shall I go first? You go first. Okay. I sprinkle cinnamon on eggs. Fried eggs. Fried eggs, scrambled eggs. Just eggs.

I sprinkle cinnamon. Salt, pepper, cinnamon on eggs. Salt and pepper. Salt and pepper, because that's the base. I like it, okay. And then I add cinnamon to eggs. Yeah. It is spectacular.

Doesn't make it taste like a pancake. Doesn't make it taste like anything else. It's just great. Because cinnamon can be on sweet things or on savory things. It really can. It's magical. It is. And it's in like Cincinnati chili.

I'm from Ohio. So it works. Yeah, definitely. Oh, I love that. I'm still going on ice cream a little bit because that's just my, that's the lens for me and my brain. But it'll get to other things. But I really, I will say, one of the things I always said that mint is hard to pair. Like, because in at the ice cream shop, we'll always offer like a pairing suggestion.

There's obviously ones like chocolate. But one that I discovered that I love, it's from a cocktail, but I discovered it and then I sort of related it to this cocktail is caramel and mint, which you wouldn't think about. So there's a cocktail, and I'm not a big drinker, but something like this just is too interesting to me. It's crem dameh and cognac. It's called the stinger. Don't know it. It's phenomenal. And so when I had that, I was like, that's like caramel and mint.

So caramel and mint is one of those ones, but it was a big aha for me that, like, I never would have thought. It's like, you know, I never go into the test kitchen if I, you don't brush my teeth within two hours or something, you know what I mean? Of course, it'll ruin everything, yeah. So I guess we should probably get into serious stuff. Your journey is amazing. A lot of people want to start businesses. Not many people redefine businesses. And you sort of had a huge impact in the ice cream business, as a lot of people know, bringing crazy experimental

flavors to the industry. What made you want to do it as a business? Business is hard and food business is really hard. And I think a lot of people have entrepreneurial dreams and entrepreneurial ambitions, but it's, this is a very difficult business. It's brutal. Business is brutal. It's a brutal place to exist. And there's a lot of, I mean, I love it. And it's also really hard. It starts with an idea. It starts with an idea, which I had. It changed my life. It was an epithyth this idea. I was trying to be a perfumer, and I realized that ice cream could be a great carrier of scent. So I started to use farmers market ingredients and steeping it in cream. So even like an inexpensive vanilla would be considered it's a scent. So I had the idea. The idea was interesting. And I thought,

also I thought all of the ice cream around me, and I'm from Ohio, from the Midwest. I'm from Peoria, Illinois, and Columbus, Ohio. And so ice cream is something we do all the time. It's just constantly having ice cream, especially at night, before bed, you know, if you have a date, whatever but I felt like all the ice creams was like for kind of like a nostalgia so grandparents and grandchildren so I thought well what about for people like me who want to go on dates and like you know be somewhere that has good lighting you know and and and cute and fun and discovery flavors or whatever so I had this idea but the biggest thing is I did not know how hard business would be because I was isolated Columbus is not a small city at all but I was the way that I was brought up was not

through business it was through art I had been studying art but everybody, my family had little businesses. So I did not ever think I couldn't do it. I also grew up in the city where there were entrepreneurs in the city, and so I would follow them. And I knew I had an entrepreneurial spirit since I was very young. I was always doing little businesses as a kid. It just never occurred to be not to do it.

I didn't know how hard it would be, would be the shortest answer. And it's a good thing, you know. I mean, it was a really good thing because... Define hard. Hard expensive, hard hours, hard. How do you figure... It's survival. It's just survival.

You know? It is get to the next day, you know, and especially, you know, I think that one of the reasons actually that I was good at it was because I could survive longer than anybody else off of less, you know, and I'm still that way. You know, I can still live off the land in a way that I think people think they're going to be rich right away or they're going to have, they're going to go raise money. You know, we make business all about raising money and not about customers. Did you do it with a raise or did you bootstrap? No, it was just the SBA getting loans. And eventually I raise money, but not until at least 15 years in. Okay, so it was already a thing. It's already a brand. It's already a thing. We already have an ethos. We already know what we're doing. It's an interesting question. I wonder if your form of entrepreneurship, which is, you know, getting a bank clone and like there are systems that exist to raise money. I wonder if that is a dying breed. I think it is. And I am always out talking about start small and build entrepreneurship. That's what I call it. It's like one big

bunch of words, but I still believe that in America, anybody can start where they're at and build anything they can imagine. And if, and that's the work. I mean, that's what we should be as a country. I still believe it is possible. It is really hard and it's not what we're showing. So if somebody wants to start a business, they see, oh, we have to know somebody raise money, have some kind of status. But then people do it all the time without those things. And it seems like it's this, you know, miracle or something. Yeah. It's just about one foot in front or the other one, literally one dollar, and then another dollar and another dollar. My sort of lamentation, I guess, is there was a time where people said that if you work

for a public company, that was the worst because of all the pressures from Wall Street for companies to do the wrong thing, et cetera, et cetera, that weren't in the company's employees or customers' interests, just in the shareholders' interest. But so many companies now, a venture back or private equity backed, that the pressure from the investors, the private investors, is as aggressive, if not more aggressive than Wall Street. So you have the same pressures in the private company to grow at all costs. And growth is the goal, not survival, right?

Not great product, not something that can outlast the founders, just short-term growth. And the amount of pressure, you and I both know some of the investors, and I will bring them great ideas, not mine, but I'll be like, I've got a great, and they're like, it's not scalable. It's a great business. Well, nobody would have thought my idea was scalable.

But they don't want to invest in anything that doesn't have immediate scale. And so it makes me wonder, are there an entire class of entrepreneurs that probably won't bother because somebody's talked them out of it because, quote unquote, it's not scalable, or they can't get venture, and so they think it's not viable. Or they don't know that there is such thing as a small business loan or credit card debt or friends and family or bootstrapping, you know, all of these old-fashioned ways of getting cash infusions to build a business. I'm wondering if that form of entrepreneurship is just going away. I think it is, but I think it always is ready for a resurgence because it'll be a rebellion.

And that is actually what entrepreneurship is, is a rebellion, right? That is literally what it is. Say more. If you take money from someone, you work for them. You're not an entrepreneur in my mind. Like, an entrepreneur is taking risks. They are rebelling against a system. They are planting a flag and say, I'm going to take a stand for something that doesn't exist.

and I'm going to do it and eventually once you start to get good at it you have to earn your team people start to want to help you people start to come to your team that's kind of the way I think of it so I don't want to work for somebody else

like that would be really challenging for me it would have been when I was in high school it was when I was in high school I've always been told him a nice person but you know what I mean I've never you know it says on all your school reports you know literally Jenny doesn't do she's told she's patient she's kind

but she can't follow the rules right which is like curiosity is just that, you know? So, yeah, so I think that that's where it will come from. You know, it's like in all these people who have these great little coffee shops and, you know, they inspire the kids in their neighborhood. But it won't come from. Yeah, absolutely.

And people make, you know, business has to be scalable. Well, absolutely. I mean, there's this coffee shop upstate that I'm absolutely in love with. And they are open from like, you know, whatever it is, eight to two every day. And that's it. And they're only open like, I don't know, they're not open three days a week. You know, like, it's a fantastic life. I mean, it's hard.

It's hard to go to one location every single day. I did that for 10 years at Jenny's. It is hard. For me, I have to have a bigger vision. I like to be challenged in that way. But also, I started in a farmer's market. And around me, there was the flower lady, you know, the poultry people, you know, the butcher. And all of those people had been there for years, decades.

And they're still there now, 30 years since. But that's part of the rebellion spirit, which is what they do. You're too confined in the farmer's market. It's like I've got to break out of my little town. Yeah. You know, I've got to make it to Broadway, whatever the ambition is. And I had this vision. I mean, literally, I saw Ben and Jerry's, and I was like, okay, I can do that too.

You know, I start putting salt in our ice creams and in our caramel kind of early on. It was actually a mistake. And all of a sudden, you know, the Vogue magazine people are there. And, you know, Jeffrey Steingarten used to write the food there, like, came to visit because he was very interested in that idea. And the people from Haganas are sending their people, and they're in their shirts. that say haggendaz.

And I'm thinking, like, well, if there was ever a validation that we can be bigger. Yeah, or just that we can grow. It's a huge. It's salty, because mine was actually a mistake. Salted caramel is the way everybody makes caramel in America. Right. It's just always got a little salt in it. But me not being able to travel, I was working in a French bakery.

I didn't know anything about the world. I would spend all the time in the library just reading about various places. And like a French chef from Brittany was like, to me, a very heavy accent. the caramel is salty. And I thought he meant like Swedish licorish. Right. Like, it was salted licorice. And so I started making caramel like that I thought was authentic.

With lots of salt. With a little extra salt. Yeah. Then what we were used to in America, which is like just basically what would be a salted butter in France. So, so yeah. So it was basically his poor grammar. Yeah, exactly. You invented an entirely new thing.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So when you go to France and get salted caramel, it's just beautiful. It's like this perfectly salted caramel. You don't, the salt doesn't... The salt enhances you don't taste the salt. Yeah, but in mind you taste a little more.

So I want to go back to this entrepreneurship idea. I love this idea of entrepreneurship is rebellion. And I think entrepreneurship has become a vehicle for wealth. Like we've forgotten the source of it, which is invention. Well, and also a vehicle for somebody else's wealth. And a vehicle for somebody else's wealth, which is the worst kind, right. Right, yeah. So there's a book, an old book by Michael Gerber called The E-Mith, the Entrepreneurial Myth.

Yeah. And he wrote years ago, and it was really to change. challenges the idea that like I was like I want to be an entrepreneur you know he's like he kept meeting people who were working double the time and making half the salary than if they had a job and he's like why are you doing this like my freedom is like you don't have weekends you don't have nights what you've been doing this for 10 years you work harder than you've ever worked and you don't make more money like why are you doing this and this entrepreneurial myth it's not all it's necessarily cracked up to me so I I'm going to regret this question I don't even like the

sound of the question coming out of my mouth when I'm going to ask it. Is there a formula for who should and who should not start a business? Well, I don't know. I want to say it's for anybody, but I also think that there are people who love to step into a team, do their part and go home. When I was young, I thought everybody would think like me, we all think that everything's like, I mean, I started when I was 22, so it was like I was just gung-ho and ready and excited and whatever. I thought everybody would be like that. And it took me actually probably longer than it should have to realize like, oh, yeah, other people have other lives. Sometimes when you have a vision, you get really locked into it.

And it starts to lead you. Everything that you're doing starts to lead back to or advance that vision. And you can't, you almost can't help it. You just have to keep peeling back the onion. And then all of a sudden you're in. And you're locked in. And it's, I don't want to say you don't have any other choice. It's just like, that's how it is.

and you can't really get out of it because if you do, your curiosity would kill you, right? You have to keep going. And you're compelled by that no matter how much it hurts, you know? Your turn of phrase is so good. You know, we talk about following a vision, but I think it undervalues actually what happens.

And you said there's this switch that happens at some point where you come up with this vision at some point the vision leads you. As opposed to you following the vision, it still starts with you, but when the vision leads you, it's now starting with the vision. Yeah.

And the vision will attract other people. That's right. And the vision is the one. Everything else can change, but the vision doesn't usually change. It's flexible enough, but the big vision is something that should come together because you know so much about whatever it is you're doing that you understand who you serve, who benefits, what the world looks like, you know, at the end. And then everything else between that sort of is malcolm a big way. making the thing as well, right? Because what did,

Thomas, that doesn't say, vision without execution is hallucination. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. We interrupt this podcast with an ad with authenticity. This episode is brought to you by Porsche. It's more than just a fancy car brand. It's a company dedicated to connection.

Their engineers feeling connected to the brand, their drivers feeling connected to the road. and Porsche fans feeling connected to each other. So it's no surprise that when they invited me to the Porsche Experience Center with race car driver Patrick Long, we did more than drive, we connected. Porsche as a brand is a conduit to relationships with people.

It's a commonality. I've met people all over the world, and the icebreaker is our love for the brand. But actually, what's more rewarding is the human connection, hearing someone's story, meeting you today, hearing and learning from somebody and understanding their story and taking something with you. It's about relationship.

It's about being vulnerable and getting outside of your normal routine. It's funny because as you're telling me the story, I'm sort of thinking about how my car connects me with other people and what people can learn about me. And it's really funny. Like when I'm with a friend in the car, I will literally say, listen to this and I turn on the sound, you know, and I say, I paid extra for this sound.

You know, it's like the customization. That matters to me. But it says a lot about the joy. that I want in the world. You know, sort of a metaphor. The car becomes a way for me to tell somebody about myself and you say, find those connections. And I've never thought about the car giving me

that connection with my friends who just happen to be passengers when we're going somewhere. And I see and feel your energy and how it makes you so passionate and it lights you up. And being the receiver of that, when you're in this small, confined space and you're going somewhere, like strip it back and think about the windshield as your picture frame in life

and takes me back to being a child and being in the backseat with no screens or devices. and what you see in the world and how these cars bring that connection. Those are the memories I carry with me forever. And I think it's about those impactful moments. And that's what I love about these cars. They're emotional. You know the old trick.

Do you know the old trick about sell this pen to somebody? Do you know this? No. It's a sales trick. It's a where you say to somebody, sell me this pen. right and almost every time people go so I've got this new pen here it's got you know unsmudgeable ink and it's got like and it's really comfortable to use and it's oh it's really and it's amazing how how few people say do you write oh right exactly nobody asks nobody asks any questions

they start talking about the pen and the good salespeople say so when do you write yeah I keep a journal what do you write in that journal? How often do you keep your journal? And then the pen becomes the... But it's amazing how many people start... To your point, which is go sell something, especially something you've come up with. And I think even go sell an idea.

Because in a lot of people who'd be like, I don't know, you know, versus like, I love your idea, you know? And also everybody will say, we'll sort of be like, eh, not a great idea. You'll get a lot of that. I had a friend whose rule was

if one other person likes your idea, you might have a thing. I agree with that. I 100% agree with that. if you can get one person. And I also think this sort of starts to plan to sort of what an entrepreneur is. And I love your ideas of the rebel, because I think we have a misunderstanding of what entrepreneurs are.

There's a difference between an entrepreneur and a small business owner. A small business owner owns a small business. Yeah, you'd be a dentist. And an entrepreneur solves problems. And you'll find entrepreneurs in companies, in very large companies, they are the entrepreneurs. And you can spot them because they keep getting performance reviews that they're not following the rules or they're not following the process. I mean, I started, I started out in a big company.

And all my performance reviews were, Simon, you have to do things the way that we do them. And I would always say, but your way sucks and it doesn't work. Oh my gosh. Yeah, no, that's just, I remember my boss asked me to do something and I got it done. And then, you know, sort of a few days later and he comes and knocks on my door and he goes, I need to have a conversation with you about the thing you did. That's not how we do things here. And I said, did anybody complain to you?

He said, no. I said, did I break any rules, any laws? no I said are you happy with the results he says very I said so why are we having this conversation he goes because that's not how we do things here there's a process and I'm like nobody complained I broke no laws and you're happy with the results I still don't understand why we're having this conversation and my point is is I worked in a big company but the rules I if I had a better way then then do it that seemed to make sense to me and so the entrepreneurial venture this is why I like your your definition of

entrepreneur is rebel because you can have rebellion inside companies and there's entrepreneurial things that happen inside companies and it's about seeing things or vision or problem solving all those magical things where the rules say you can't you shouldn't that's difficult that's impossible and and i'm going to use your language because i love it where the vision leads you and you for some reason get to the point where you can't not and it doesn't matter if you get in trouble and you and you can walk through even if it doesn't matter if it just doesn't matter in fact those are badges of honor. Yeah, exactly. How did you get in trouble when you started Jenny's? So you're this little ice cream shop. I mean, all the time. It was, I mean, everything from, you know, I wanted to use

grass pasture dairy, better dairy, smaller farms, just everywhere I went, it was that's not how it's done. That's not how you do it. You can't do it like that. Not using, you know, like sort of generic off-the-shelf ice cream base that a lot of dairy sell with like lots of ingredients in there that I didn't want to use. There were a lot of things we couldn't do in the beginning because we weren't big enough. We didn't have what we needed to, but not letting it stop me, right? So it wasn't perfect when we started. Give me an example. Well, just this ice cream, like not being able to go with small farms, not being able to make it with specifically my recipe. But okay, well, then we'll do this with this and it will be like this for now, but then with this idea that, you know, so you're always

inching toward the bigger vision, which is to get better dairy. And I think it's going to be six months from now and of course maybe it was three years but there were a whole bunch of those things but what happens was it was about getting better every day so then that locks in this sort of this is how i do things that's how we do things at jenny's is we incrementally just get better so we can't have everything right now first of all we can't afford it anyway but we'll just continually start to get better as we can and so then it's about honestly like just constantly finding that good trouble of like okay how can we tweak this how can we make this better but it's everywhere it's customer service and all of the huge and all of the details of that

it's our product and quality and as we grow we can actually get now vanilla beans direct trade from a specific one farm and support them to leadership i mean just like how do you survive even like learning how to be a leader over time as founders are weird people and like over the time and the company you know you're shaken up all the time over the trajectory and i was you know i built jenny's for 26 years that was all i did every single day makes a long time to become an overnight success. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

As I said, I think that we live in a day and age where there's a, look, there's a lot of talent and entrepreneurs and there's a lot of great ideas and there's a lot of disruptors. And I am just curious what the world would look like if not everything was so growth, money, and VC obsessed. And I don't think we would have creative ice cream company. Well, I take it back. You could, but it would take the same amount of time. It would take the time.

It would take the time and you'd have to prove the case because I don't think the VC would be rushing in if you, like, I have an idea of making, you know, extra salty caramel. I mean, Jenny's wouldn't pass a business school. Wouldn't, if it was your business band and a business school. And a VC wouldn't look at you. It doesn't feel any space or anything that they usually look at. And they would look at the scale and they'd look at your social media following and all these things.

And you wouldn't, you wouldn't pass muster. So it's too complicated. It's too complicated. And so it's an interesting question. Like, could that, could that company ever exist today? And what's the social value of this old school entrepreneurial bootststool? trap. Because there's a word in your vision. What's the vision that you have? How do you define your vision? Well, our mission is make better ice creams, bring people together. It's two very simple

things. Right. But they can be unpacked forever and ever. Right. Yeah. And the vision. And the vision is. What's the vision that you, that led you? Well, the vision that led me. It's always about being the sort of place for creative people to have conversations and spark conversations. We know, we know that you're there to get to know somebody else better. And so how can we be the place that people go to get to know somebody else better in, like, creating that space in America. This is the most interesting, I find this more interesting than the ice cream. Yeah, because it's not about ice cream.

Because it's not about ice cream, but even in the mission statement, like you happen to make ice cream. It could have been anything, right? What I, and I love that in the mission statement, it's, you know, we make great ice cream to bring people together. Like, it's a human mission. The ice cream is a conduit. And I'm curious, like, where did that come from?

That in your vision, it was about togetherness and human connection. Your mission, you know, ice cream is this conduit to bring people together. Where is that from? Did you have a lot of it or did you not have a lot of it growing up? I don't know, a little bit of both. So I moved every year growing up. So I didn't have, my parents just moved a lot. They were, like, across town.

It wasn't like. Just because? You know, they were kind of nomadic in that way. Okay. And so I never had like a friend even longer than a year. I mean, my sister, lucky I had a sister, 18 months here going to be at home. So we moved constantly. And I think I craved community.

And the other thing is, I've always been a very big introvert. When I was a kid, they always called it shy. I don't know if I ever felt shy. I just was an introvert. I like people a lot, a lot, but I also just, I'm an introvert. And so when I got my first job in an ice cream, actually my first job was at an ice cream job, of course. I always knew I would be in ice cream. But what happened was that I was really good at it because it helped me put my ego and

anxieties aside and just serve other people. And like, honestly, like, this is like he literally serving other people. And I excelled. Like, I wasn't shy anymore. I just had this character that I played at the ice cream shop that I loved so much. I didn't want to go to school anymore. I just wanted to be there all the time. And it was so great.

And I think that this ended up being why service is so important to me, why ice cream is so important to me. And, of course, I had no money to start. I had nothing. So my whole life ended up being that, especially that beginning. Like, I realized, like, I needed so much help. And so I would start just helping other people, and then they would come help me. So it was like, it was always about almost like an act of co-creation, just serving and helping and getting other people's participation and trying to, like, get other people to, like, enjoy it and have fun doing it too.

So the idea of servant leadership was very literal, which is literally serving you ice cream. and because I don't have to, all my insecurities fall away because we're really talking about ice cream. I mean, it's the happiest substance on earth. Yeah. You know, like nobody can be angry eating ice cream. No. You can't be depressed or angry.

I have never seen it. But you can't be angry. Yeah, you can be very, you can be depressed. You can be depressed. You go through pints of ice cream if you're depressed. But you can't be angry eating ice cream. It just doesn't exist. No.

You know, and so I love this idea that your inhibitions fall aside because you're learning this thing called service. leadership. I'm literally giving someone something that they want that will make them feel happy, and I get to be that person who gives them that thing. So I guess what I'm scratching at here is because ice cream is now a metaphor, right? Oh, it's a lot of metaphors, yes. So ice cream is now a metaphor for service to bring some betterment to someone's life, some joy, some sweetness, whatever it is. What's the ice cream that you're giving to your employees? Not literally, but, you know, how are you serving the employees? What ice cream do you give them that even gives them

joy and happiness that makes them want to, you know, come, come follow your vision with you. At Jenny's, you know, we all get out endless tastes. And so when somebody comes, they can wait in a long line. But when you're in front of me, we're together until you're done. I mean, you can stay with me for two hours if you need to. Like, we don't rush people through the line once they get up to the front. And there's something in that, like, what I loved about working, and working with, like, high school kids starting, because that was the beginning of the company for a very long time they were very young people who don't really don't really get service well you would they get taught terrible service and they often come in with what they believe because that's how they've been

treated for example going to a coffee shop like you know little things where you you might you're kind of confused and you ask a question instead of somebody answering you they like point to something you know just little things somebody they're giving you the answer by pointing yeah or they're actually literally annoyed by you because they feel that they are like in servitude or something that they don't really want to be there. So it jenny's in the early days it was about like this is a profession, this is like there's

dignity here. Like if you make somebody's day if we do this, service is a gift you give to the world. It's not something we even pay you for. Like we pay you to like show up on time and get the corners when you mop and do all those things. But like service is a gift you give. It comes back to you later. And us as a team too. But you keep giving that and

keep generating that in the world. Think about what you're creating for you. And we talk about that a lot. And so we would get high school kids who were the, I have goosebumps just even talking about it because they were just so incredible. They're just regular kids that went to the art high school. And some of them were at the theater down the street and then they came over and got jobs. But they really set the tone for who we would become because they stepped into this big role. And to this day, our team behind the counter is just so incredible. That team

is like 1,200 people now. And they're the most important thing. the company for us because we learned, like, me being on the front line. I was on the front line for 10 years. That's how I learned everything. And it's not just like the specifics. Americans like caramel better than any other flavor. It's, it's like the nuances. I think of like atomic patterning. It's like how somebody's eye might move when they like something or whatever. You start to learn these like, and you adjust your emotion every time somebody new comes around. You teach people this? They learn it. We talk about it. You can't really teach it. You have to experience it you know if you've worked in an ice cream shop for two summers and probably a coffee shop too any

fast service kind of place you know you're like looking at the third person on the line because you know you have three people down here and you're going to probably get that person and you're wondering already while you're serving this person what that person's emotional state is and that is actually how people do with these fast service you know you're going to get that person and you're starting to think about what it takes and what that energy you're going to put forward is when you get to that person but right now you're here and this person wants joyful and later on and it's like interesting this like it's so new it's so atomic almost and so we talk about like whatever you go on and do in your life remember this and and be able to articulate this forward because it's

important because it's it's an art i think a lot of people would uh complain about young people today yeah um a little bit of um obliviousness i don't know if it's the modern generation or young people. And when it comes to customer service, it's not there or less, you know, this idea of serving and service. Is it a Midwestern thing that you, or have you noticed a variation across the country? Like, is it a myth that young people today are sort of, you know, struggling to serve? Is it just sort of old people complaining about young people? Or have you noticed a trend that your store is actually helping give these young people a skill that their friends don't have. I think a little bit of both, but I mean, we're Gen Xers, right? I mean, I actually looked up your

birthday. I didn't look up your birthday, but I was doing some research. The forgotten generation. I'm September 29th, 1973, and I think you're October 9th. So, happy birthday. So Gen X, remember, we were like slackers and all that. And then the millennials came along, and then that was a whole thing. I worked with a lot of them in the early days, and everybody was complaining about them. You weren't slackers. I know, well, we weren't. No, we're not slackers. We were absolutely not something. No, I mean, definitely not. We just got to work and got stuff done and didn't complain or whine. It's why this, I get a kick out of this, which is, there are books written about the greatest generation who served in World War II. There are books written

about the boomers who broke everything and ruined everything. There are books written about millennials, Gen Z and now Gen Alpha. There are no books written about Gen X. It's so small. It's a small group. We just got to work and got stuff done, and like, there you go. Here we are. Oh, you know, we also just didn't feel important. I think our generation had success younger than our parents. So like, you know, our parents' generation, you know, they made vice president in their late 40s, you know, and our generation was making vice president in our late 30s. We grew up in very good times. In the 80s were really very good. Awesome, right? They were. They were awesome. It was a kind of gentler Cold War. Like we weren't

practicing, hiding under our desks for nuclear war. You know, it's not the 60s. And we just kind of like graduated school and got to work and got jobs and worked hard and just like, okay, this is interesting to me too because the music we were all listening to we were all united by that and i was listening to um i have some bruce springsteen some tom petty the other day come back from montreal and and i think about this every once in like the music that we grew up with was meant to get you off your chair like meant to get you to do something and it made you feel that you were bigger than you are too shy to shy to shy how shy do i yeah i mean it just karma karma karma chameleon oh my gosh Culture Club, I absolutely still.

But like we had music where the lyrics literally made no sense. But they made you. It wasn't even words. They made you feel like you could walk into a room. I mean, I was always like trying to get up my courage to give a speech or something like that. But, you know, you get the music and you go into it. And I'm not sure about this, but I feel like some of the music when my daughter is 18, it feels very like inward.

I just feel like I was lucky to, I mean, you know, whether it was like driving around listening to Metallica and just like getting reved up to go. You listened to Metallica? I mean, I grew up in Ohio, Slayer, Metallica, all of that. Oh, my God, this changed my whole major. It was like this nice little, you know, Midwestern, absolute nonsense. You're heavy metal. Oh, all of it, you know.

I did like Def Leopard. Oh, well, yeah, sure. Just Pyramania, just the one album. That was great. Yep. Yeah, I mean, you know, that was fun. You realize it's a whole generation that we're just tuned out of what we're talking about now. I know, and it's interesting.

You know, we were, somebody, I read, somebody did a speech on a, the mixtape generation and what it took to create a mixtape. Oh, it was work. And you put yourself into it. An act of love. And I was like, this is such a beautiful thing. It makes me so happy to have been a part of this. Yeah, you have to play and record on two different.

But so to bring it all back anyway, because like entrepreneurship, I think is ready for a comeback, this new idea of entrepreneurship where it isn't working for somebody else. It is more of a, not a, not that sort of heroic. It is, though. It's a Frodo, fun, adventure. But, like, I think there's that idea of, like, go get money and then, you know, be a unicorn. Yeah. Like, go be a unicorn.

But there's also, like, this kind of entrepreneurship is very humbling. You're always, like, you know, I kind of, you know, embarrassed. You're kind of, like, putting yourself out. You're taking risks. And it's never comfortable in search of this vision, I guess, or whatever. You have just summed up the best metaphor. of what true entrepreneurship is, which is the mixtape.

Yeah. Okay? Because the desire to make a mix tape is a lot of work. Like old school. You know, you need the two tape decks, right? And it's very time consuming. Like, if I wanted to flirt with somebody

and I wanted to go out with a girl, like, you know, you can't do it on the first date. That's too aggressive. No, but like five or six dates in or like when you're dating somebody in there, your girlfriend, like the way you say I love you, is you make a mixtape. And if you make a two-sided mixtape,

I mean, that's hardcore. Yeah, that's a lot of... That's a lot of effort. And it takes days. You can't even do it in one sitting. And if somebody gives you a mixtape, it's an act of love. And you're listening to it.

An act of love. Like, non-stop. It's emotional. And you don't even like every song, but you love the reason. But because they loved it. And there's a vision that has to be there, which is I want to tell somebody something.

I want to show their world something. I'm going to put my stamp on it and do it my way. And I'm going to give a little of myself. You know, it's, you're getting to know somebody through this. And even though the songs exist, like everybody knows the songs. In this order. In this order with these lyrics or these melodies or these. Oh, and then you write the notes.

And like real love is like the design and you, and like if you get a real mixtape, the whole thing is filled in with words, not just what's on there. That's right, because you've got to write the, and I think this is, this is the greatest metaphor for why you should start a business. I think that's exactly right I want to tell somebody something and there's an act of love I'm going to put in this huge amount of effort with a high probability of failure

but it's worth it and there is a rebellion to it right you should be doing your homework but instead you're making a mixtape you should be coming an accountant or a doctor or a lawyer but instead you decided to become an entrepreneur because it's so time consuming and you have to have a little bit of organization

because we can tell when a mixtape has done badly because it's just whatever was on the radio, right? Versus thoughtfully. No, I totally, totally agree. Like, what is driving you to do this? Like, what is so powerful, so important that's driving you to do this? Yeah.

Like, understanding that is it, because that's where you take the risk. That's where you take the effort. You put the effort in. So good. How do you go from ice cream to fiber? How do you go from protein to roughage? Right.

How do you go from really sweet and lovely to no taste at all? Yes. Well, it's, you know... I'm just curious how you made that transition. Like, what act of love is that? I was with Jenny's, you know, I was 100% in, 150% in, too much in for 26 years. And it was, I was probably in too long, actually. COVID was about to happen.

it was pretty clear that the team was doing great without me and I was probably hanging on a little too much you know there's still too many things that needed my attention or whatever I thought you know it was just time they were doing great and um but I hadn't put a ton of thought into it and then suddenly I didn't know who I was I didn't have anything else everybody that I knew was in there everything that I my entire world your identity was was tied into your business everything yeah it was the world that I created so that I didn't have to be in this one honestly and now I was in this one and I had to figure that out and so I was really trying to figure out who I am outside of that

it was great but it was really hard also and so I went to the forest and I just spent I mean I walked to the literal forest literal forest I went to walk not the metaphorical forest 10 miles a day or more sometimes and just hours out there every day and I started to feel really good and I and I started to eat a lot of well I actually started to eat a lot of blueberries and nuts and things like I don't know forest I was like it was like I was just becoming part of the forest and I was just like eating things, I don't know, it was just sort of a thing.

For me, it was COVID then happened and I was just like able to be out there every day. And for some reason I was craving out. But it ended up being fiber that I was eating. I started read a lot of books about fiber and realize that like when you get diverse fibers, you actually change how you feel and that, you know, 60% of Americans have one or more chronic illness and it's related to fiber and 95% of us are deficient. And it was like, you know, it was like reading all these books and, you know, peeling back that onion And then I was helping another entrepreneur just for fun, and he and I were working with other founders, and we were touring this massive produce place in produce processing company in Vineland, New Jersey, and saw the watermelon rind and the apple cores and realized that they're full of fiber, and he and I had already been talking about this.

And so it was like this epiphany moment. And again, it gets back to like, we didn't even mean to start a company. We were helping other entrepreneurs. We were doing other things. and it was like, there's all of this waste going out, well, what if we could take it and what if we could figure out how to make it into a flour or a paste

or whatever that we can use to make products that people will actually eat? And so we put together a little group of registered dietitians and functional medicine practitioners and people who could help us Ohio State University. And we just started.

And it was like, it was that sort of like the light, it's just the past just starts to be lit up. Where's the togetherness? What's that? And the thing that I love, so to me, the fun flavors of Jenny's, so if you go to a restaurant, that's fine, and somebody says, how is you doing? I'm like, it's fine, it's good, it's fine, and that's it's fine, and that's it's fine, and that's good, it's fine, and that's two things. Yes, I see what you. Not only do you talk about it after the meal, you talk about it the next day.

and jenny's because your flavors are so fun and creative it's not like how is the ice cream it's good chocolate ice cream it's good right that people are talking about it when they're done they're talking about it the next day it's like like a great restaurant it wants to create a conversation and to your point that that ice cream is simply the mechanism for people to smile and have a conversation even if they hate it oh my god i hate that one right but at least you have an opinion about it, right? How does the bar fulfill your goal in the world of creating togetherness and conversations? Well, it's interesting because it's, to me, I always say it's about making people feel better. Because at Jenny's, we say make people feel loved. That's like, that's just

what we say on repeat at Jenny's inside, outside. And so this is similar to that in that it's a chance for me to make people feel better, you know, but it's just a different kind of better. And I believe so much that there's like nature inside of you, nature outside and, and, you know, all of this. And to me, it's just all, it's all one. Can I propose a logic? Yeah. It's not a marketing thing. It's not a marketing thing. It's just, as I'm talking to you and getting to know you, if the goal is to make people feel loved, you were much better equipped to give love if you feel good. That's true. That's exactly right. If you're unhealthy, and I mean that in physically unhealthy, mentally unhealthy, like all the unhealthies, it's very hard to give love when your body is depleted in some way, shape,

or form. And one of the reasons to eat well, get sleep, exercise is you are better able to serve the people you love by giving them love. And I think you're right. This is a very, very simple and off-forgotten component of health. But if people feel good, they're better equipped to love others. And I think that that was, that's something that we definitely felt at Flora. Like, I read books, like even something like hope and optimism can come from whether you have this

microbe in your gut that's being fed the proper fiber and is releasing chemicals. No kidding. So once I read that, I was like, and there's a whole bunch of things. mental clarity, but also it affects your emotions. It's really like, it's not even your second brain, it's like your first brain. It also reduces the glucose spike you'll get from ice cream.

Yeah, exactly. Yes, so eat your fiber first, then eat that ice cream. Make sure you get your fiber, you know, whatever in the morning, before you have your crown. So we're thinking about that. We're like, wow, I mean, if we could just wave a magic wand and just get people back to eating fiber, not even

our fiber, just get people back to eating enough fiber and divers. fibrous fibers every week, it would have a huge impact on all of the challenges that we have right now, not just chronic illness that's diet-related and physical, but also how we treat each other. I read a thing recently that I found a little overwhelming, which is, you know, we're supposed to eat vegetables and leafy greens and all this stuff, and I'm like, okay. And so I would have like kale with every meal, a spinach with every meal.

And then I read a thing recently that I have to eat 30 different types of fruits and vegetables per week. Yeah, 30, well, 30 plants. So that can also be like spices and herbs. So I count those. But they have to be different. Plants. I mean, sorry, legumes, beans, nuts. It's actually not. But it's not 30 portions of kale. No, it's 30 different. You have to have diversity. That's the thing that really freaked me out. 30 is a lot. It is, and that's why flora exists. If you're out foraging and getting plants, the interesting thing about nature and our ecosystems is that every year, it's going to come up with different ones. So you could get all sorts of different variety in your diet, just by like, it's all right there. Which is probably why this is a thing,

because we are born of nature, and we ate from nature, and we evolved from nature. And it makes sense that our body's adapted for the worlds that we grew up in, which is not the world we have now. Right. So we have to go, unfortunately, recreate the diversity of nature through a bar. And we are not processing 30 vegetables and fruits and things in our kitchens anymore. And so, but You should. You can. I have to ask you a couple. We do. I don't want to end, but this is shame.

So here we go. I have a few questions that I'm supposed to ask you. Okay, great. We'll see if I can answer. Jenny's splendid ice creams almost didn't recover from a recall in 2015. What did surviving the cataclysmic event teach you? That is absolutely right. We had a big event in 2015 that was game ending for the company.

and it was and it was actually like the worst thing I've ever been to and also been through and also the best thing I've ever been through I would never go back to the day before I mean it was really the end and it was also like reputational and it was like it took me years to get through it one pint of ice cream right one pint of ice cream um with listeria in it and that's something that you work really hard to prevent just one pint it happened yeah it was one pint but it was in the kitchen so we found it and it was just like you know that's just a you know if you're not going to battle with hysteria every single day every moment of every day, you know, it's there because it's part of earth and it's, you know,

especially farm farms and soil and things like that. But it was interesting because it really made us as a company. Like it made us. I mean, we had all these values before. We had it. We were like united by our values. We thought we were like talent, hustle and guts. And I don't know. You know, we had all these things we said about ourselves, you know, we were just so cool. And we were like, whatever. And then we get into this and we get through this big storm together. And it took everything and everyone and what happened was we shed everything immediately that was not important which was actually like 90% of what we were doing for example so we got we got it down to um you know what are we here to do like what do we do that nobody else does and that was really the question

that we were asking and so do we actually have to make all of these prelines or is somebody else better at it than we are like are we being led by this idea of artisanal but it's actually not serving us, but it's making us more complex and more difficult to run and potentially even a safety issue. So we started to think like, okay, I'm thinking like this is what artisanal ice cream is, but actually it's not. I know these people out in Ohio who make candy, and they're actually going to be a lot better at making that and probably our brambleberry jam than we are. Like, we were doing everything in our kitchen to the point of like cutting the strawberries. And that was just ridiculous. It was actually ridiculous. But I never would have thought differently about it

had we not been through that. And then it was like, wow, there's like this fifth generation dairy and they can do this for us. And there's, so we kind of restructured everything and it made us just tighter and better as a company. Instead of making your own prelines, you could buy the prelines from somebody who'd make better than you better than we could give them my recipe. Or you can give them your recipe and they'll make them for you even better. And they might even say like, well, hey, we've been making prelines in our family for 150 years

and we would do it this way. And I'd be like, that's great. That's actually better than us trying to make them. And so there was just, there was a lot of that. But I think the big thing was just like, I was stuck in this perspective. that I couldn't see the other side of, and I never even would have, if it hadn't been for that. But also, I say the team is still there. Most of the people who went through that in 2015, they're all still there.

The problem with scale, is scale breaks things. And you said it, which is everything was becoming more complex. And it's likely that it's that level of complexity that you sort of misunderstood what artisanal means. That means we have to make everything ourselves, and everything has to be the best, and we have to touch everything ourselves. that that complexity that was built into the system may have created the conditions that that one pint got contaminated. And if it was always simple, it may never have happened. You know this. When it comes to food, like great food is not how complex you make it.

It's really high-quality ingredients, you know, simply prepared. And that makes great food. And we live in a world now where we've industrialized and taken the taste out of high-quality food and made it with low quality food and then we have to add tons of chemicals to put the taste back in and now we have complex foods that make us unhealthy

and destroy our guts and all the rest of it and what we're saying is this complexity breaks things and again this conversation with you is filled with metaphors which is your listeria in a pint is somebody else's cancer

and somebody else's depression and somebody else because life is getting too complicated, too many moving parts and if you can strip out the unnecessary and go back to your theme of together, which is if I just work with people who are better at this, and my friend who's better at problem solving,

my friend who's better at listening, and if we just like become friends and take care of each other, all of our lives get better. And you'd never, so you would never wish that kind of crisis on anyone. Of course not, yeah. And it's the best thing that can happen to you

because you will never cut that much out of your life without crisis. and it's so freeing and as an organization and as a human that was that was like that was it for me I mean it took years to get out of it and to get beyond it as personally and also in the company and also I knew the day that you know within the week that it happened we're going to come out of it better yeah and just to put a full stop on this we're talking about this dying form of entrepreneurship this sort of very love driven effort driven kind of entrepreneurship that's not obsessed the scale not obsessed with feeding an investor,

but rather giving a customer something magical, bringing people together. It's also the way you're describing this simplifying of a business is really the core of what capitalism is, which is sort of Adam Smith. Capitalism said, you know, the baker is driven to make the best bread and the cheesemaker is driven to make the best cheese

and the farmers made driven to make the best ham. And so what you get is the best sandwich. And so you don't have to make the best strawberries, the best prelines, the best this. the best cream. You don't have, if you have some, somebody's obsession is the best praline and somebody else's obsession is the best milk. And you combine those, what somebody gets is the best ice cream. That's exactly right. Yeah. That is, that is what Adam Smith envisioned that what capitalism is supposed to be. And the customer is always the winner at the end

of that, at the end of that equation. And we care very much about, um, what we're creating. I mean, this is just like, you know, to sort of double bow it too. And that idea of like, for me, even in the beginning, I always thought, how do we create a heritage brand now? Like, how do we, how does the brand live, the company really live on long after me and thrive and continue to get better and serve people all the time? And that's the same at Flora too. So it's just always trying to, I don't know, you know, play the infant game, I guess. Amen. There you go.

Jenny, you're the best. Well, likewise, thank you so much. And for anybody who hasn't tried Jenny's ice cream, I mean, you're missing out. Get your spoon. Get your spoon and do it with someone. Go try two different flavors, even if you get them at the supermarket. go get two different flavors and eat your heart out and eat your heart out and do a taste test because that's the fun I know I know when I go when I bought your ice cream from the supermarket and I and I really hate you for this I go to buy one pint and I end up buying three because I'm like ooh we really should try this one yeah and then you want to try them and then they're all open and we're all sitting there with spoons that's what it's about and it really it is really it is you know for depression you eat haggendaz and for joy you eat jenny Yes, exactly. I love that so much. It's so true.

So true. I love it. Thank you. So fun. Jenny, thank you so much. A bit of optimism is a production of the Optimism Company. Lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius, Phoebe Bradford, and Devin Johnson. Subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. And if you want even more cool stuff, visit simic.com. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourself. Take care of each other. other.