How I Built This with Guy Raz - Live From The HIBT Summit: Jeni Britton Bauer of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams

Episode Date: February 27, 2020

Our eighth episode from the 2019 How I Built This Summit features Jeni Britton Bauer, the founder of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. In this live conversation with Guy, Jeni talks about maintaining authenticity while growing her company, and how Columbus, Ohio played a key role in her company's success. We'll be releasing a few more episodes from the Summit, so keep checking your podcast feed. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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The Shins, and many, many others. That show is happening on March 26th in where else, Seattle, at Benaroya Hall, and then the very next night, March 27th, I'll be in San Francisco interviewing Ken Grossman, founder of one of the biggest craft beer makers in America, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. That's happening at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco.

Now, if you haven't been to a live recording of the show, they are super fun. Come on down, meet your fellow listeners, be a part of the show, laugh, cry, grab some How I Built This Swag, and come say hi to me and the team. So I really hope to see you in either or maybe both San Francisco and Seattle on March 26th and 27th. For tickets, visit nprpresents.org. Hey, everyone. So today we've got another one of my conversations from the how. I built this summit that happened last October in San Francisco. Jenny Brittonbauer has spent the past eight years perfecting her signature line of ice cream flavors,

which include fluffer nutter pie, goat cheese, and cherries, and my personal favorites, brambleberry crisp and biscuits and peaches. And these are just a few of the unusual flavors you'll find Jenny's splendid ice creams, which all began at a Columbus, Ohio farmer's market back in 2002. Today, Jenny's is a staple at Whole Foods, and there are nearly 40 scoop shops across the United States. In my live conversation on stage, I asked Jenny about staying true to herself and how her ice cream can be that amazingly good without any egg yolks. I want to talk to you about a word that comes up a lot, and I have really mixed feelings about this word. And I hope some of you do too, which is authenticity.

We hear this word a lot. be authentic, be your authentic self, your true self. And one of the really cool things about your story that I remember is that in the early days, when you had your first version of what would become Jenny's splendid later on, you used to wear like torn jeans and you had green and purple hair. And at a certain point, you realize that that actually wasn't working, that something about your look and the aesthetic of what you were selling wasn't right. And you decided to change.

you took the dye out of your hair, you started wearing all white, you sort of looked like a pharmacist, and your ice cream shop, or an ice cream maker. It became, it kind of reflected that clean aesthetic. And I'm wondering, I mean, you know, you could say, well, Jenny, you know, you weren't being your authentic self at that time, but of course. I absolutely was. It absolutely was. Yeah.

I realized that I was communicating through what I was wearing. And it was, you know, it was, you know, goofy thristore outfits. I mean, they were really cute, and I had pink hair for a long time. But I wasn't conveying that sort of who I think I felt like on the inside, honestly. And what I thought that I wanted from my ice cream maker, you know. The other thing was that at Scream, my first ice cream shop, I thought that I could be this ice cream artist, and, like, everybody would be so excited about whatever I was doing today

that they would just, you know, come down and figure it and stand in, and, you know, what's the great Jenny have today? And, you know, I was really thinking more like an artist or, you know, a wannabe artist. I quit art school to make ice cream then. And when I got to Jenny's in 2002, when I opened Jennings, I took all emphasis off of me on purpose. I had learned the lesson that no one comes to a business for whatever I'm making today. I don't go to businesses for that. I go to a business for what I had the last time I was there, not for some new,

thing. I might change my mind when I get there. And so once I learned that, I knew that I had to create this signature line that everybody knew about and that it was like craveable in the middle of the night and you just had to have it the next day. And then I could play around with other stuff. And then those could move on to the signature list if they were good enough and if people loved them enough. And so that was part of like that take the emphasis off me, put it on customers, still add, you know, my passion to this, but not make it about me anymore, make it about other people. And I knew what people loved because I knew what they loved at Scream when I had my first shop, but I didn't always have that. So that constant disappointment is not a very good way to run a business.

Do you sort of agree with me this idea of authenticity is being complicated? Because, you know, the message we get is be your true self, be your authentic self, and not all of us know how to do that or what that actually means. Yeah, it is. It's a complex thing right now, especially when you talk about companies and brands building authenticity and starting with authenticity. because what is that actually mean? That's something that you can't make. You have to do. And it takes a long time.

And I think that so many times, for me anyway, I think authenticity, it's a trust for yourself and it's not trusting that you'll never make mistakes. It's trusting that you will, but you'll get yourself out of trouble. And I think the authenticity almost comes from that place of trust for yourself, you know,

because the people and the companies that we find the most authentic are the ones that are making mistakes sometimes or that are trying things that are pushing themselves. So I want to sort of shift gears a little bit and ask you about perfectionism because for those who know about your company and about you,

you're a bit of a perfectionist. I mean, you obsess over ice cream in a way that few people obsess over any products, right? Yeah, well, I mean, we, you know, start with what the cows eat. And that every year, our ice cream recipes change. I mean, right now we're talking about extended hold times for pastoralism.

and how that will impact stability. We don't use stabilizers, emulsifiers, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, and a whole bunch of other ingredients that are very typical in ice cream, or even egg yolks. But we figured out that there's various ways to make milk proteins act that way, and it's really fun and it's extremely delicious. But it's all still an experiment, and it's a big challenge. I think it's one of the reasons that 24 years in, I'm still extremely excited about what we can do this year,

and what we're going to try this year is going to impact what we're going to do next year. I mean, there is, sorry to interrupt. Sorry, I can get, like, really excited about this. Yeah, I know, no, me too. I like, I can feel my cheeks. Yeah, I mean, I guess I was, I've noticed that there are no egg yolks. So it's the sort of, I guess you call it. Unless you want it to be, unless you want there to be egg yolks, like in an eggnog or something like that.

But, I mean, even like the peaches you buy for the peach, um, cobbler or the cherries you use for the goachies. I mean, you source it in an obsessive way. The cows are grazed on. Well, and we're patient. So, for me, it always starts with people. And so it starts with building a relationship. with a grower or a producer. And then we can work out quality together

because we know that that's the way that... I mean, that's how you get the best stuff. So sometimes it can take years to figure out which kind of strawberries grow in Ohio and how can we extend that season by a few weeks so we have time to process them all as they come in. There's all sorts of cool stuff that you can do, but you really have to have a good relationship

with your farmers and your growers and your producers. Or like whiskey, you know, there's too much alcohol in the whiskey. We couldn't add enough to ice cream, you know, and still abide. by the law, so we work with our whiskey distiller to create a lower alcohol whiskey so we can add a lot of whiskey to it. But those kinds of things, all are based on relationships. I mean, but with that level of obsessiveness, right, you're paying a premium for really high-quality products. It also means that your ice cream is more expensive. A pint of Jenny's is expensive compared to a pint of,

you know, another brand, right? It's very dense. There's a lot of ice cream that's packed in there It's a really high quality stuff. I mean, presumably your company can make a lot more money if the pines were $2 cheaper. Yeah, but I think that for us, that passion is growing as a community. You know, it's that sort of community-spirited business and making something truly beautiful that we're all really proud of. I mean, in our stores, we have 39 stores,

and we have, well, the peak this summer, we had 1,800 team members in the stores. And I think it's because mostly Because those people who work in our source are so proud of what we do That over the counter it's sort of a natural They're naturally good at service Because they're just proud of all of these back-end details That we will never probably be able to convey all of them over the counter

But they know that Like it's that detail and the and the intention behind it That everyone feels And it's this crazy magic But you feel it I mean do you think that there is a an argument to be made that you should pursue perfection, that you should pursue an uncompromising, just absolutely no cutting corners at all? I mean, or...

It's like having a garden. I mean, sometimes you're going to have a very lush, beautiful area, and something's going to get a little bit withered. Hopefully nothing dies, you know, but that's what you're doing. You're moving your resources around. I mean, ultimately, we only have a limited amount of resources that we get to do this with. And so you're constantly shifting. Yeah. I mean, you are in and entered a crowded space. A lot of ice cream makers. A lot of people here working on baby clothes and different products where there's, you know, there's a lot of competition. I mean, how do you really break through in a crowded market? Time. I mean, it's one person at a time. It's all on the street level. It's time and that starts small and build sort of

mentality of business because you get to create, I didn't know how to make the ice cream I know now when we were younger. And let's say we would have taken, you know, a whole bunch of money early, and I don't think anybody would have given it to us anyway, but let's just say we could have done that. I wouldn't have had the time to work out these details and the things that I now know about ice cream. I needed all this time. I spent at least eight years boots on the ground just making ice cream and serving it before I ever started growing. And that time is everything for me because I learned all of that. I mean, I studied art. I didn't study ice cream. chemistry. And honestly, I failed every math class I ever took, and ice cream is math. So I had to

learn all that stuff. And for us, that's what's worked. And I think in ice cream, when we look at what's happened in American ice cream for the last hundred years, there was like a new sort of great American ice cream concept every like 10 years. And then it kind of stopped at Ben and Jerry's. I mean, there's been a couple other things that sort of were okay but not great. And now we're in another ice cream moment. And I think it's because we've really devoted this like, time to building it into a real, I mean, a community that means something. And it doesn't just mean something on paper. It feels a certain way.

And I think that, like Ben and Jerry's, I think that they did that. It was a moment in American history. Every industry and every business is so different. But I just don't think that you can just create an ice cream shop and just bounce onto the market. It's just too complex of an industry. And we've seen so many come and go over the years. It's very hard.

Dairy is a complex industry. You know, of course, we always think everybody else's businesses are so much easier than ours. You know what I mean? I'm like, I'm not doing dairy again. But it's been amazing and it's been a joy. And I'm an absolute evangelist for dairy farmers. I'm curious to get your take on growth, right? Because we sort of were fed this mantra that growth is good and growth is important,

but there are also consequences when it comes to growth and challenges. So for a company like yours, it means you've got to start. source more stuff. It means you've got to build more shops. It could mean that you lose control of the quality as you have more stores and more shops. And I think most of your sales are still online and at stores, right? People buying pints at Whole Foods and other places rather than the scoop shops. But, I mean, how important is explosive growth? I mean, do you want Jennings to be like Baskin-Robbins? I mean, I love growing so much. I like the challenge of business and I love all of that. I don't think that my company would ever grow just because of growth.

I don't think anyone in our company is motivated by that. I think it's been really fun to grow where people are buying our ice cream and then be able to offer them service. I'm very service-driven. As a person, it's very personal to me. And so being able to open shops is really important to me in places, even where we're selling a lot of ice cream and Whole Foods, for instance, to be able to open a shop in that community where we know people know about us

and love us. then we can offer that sort of service and that moment. And, you know, I do think that ice cream is a really lovely moment, a place that you can get to know somebody else better, and it's, you know, just a special thing. So, gosh, I have so many thoughts on this because I think that you can get better as you grow. And that's been my experience.

And when we were really small, and there's this sort of glow around the sort of mom-and-pop sort of thing, I think, especially in ice cream. But when we were small, we were really limited by what we could buy. I mean, we had to do an ice cream mix. You couldn't get a company to help us. We couldn't get the dairy that we wanted to.

We couldn't get the milk that we wanted and we knew we were surrounded by these farms. We couldn't get them outside of the system commingled with the other milk. Even our strawberry grower, who now grows fields for us and he's got his brother involved and the other guy down the street.

You know, it was like flats at a time or whatever, and so we really couldn't do much planning and then sometimes he wouldn't have enough or whatever. So you actually feel like up to this point, we've gotten so much better as we've grown in terms of ice cream quality and definitely in terms of service. And we have so much more to do and it takes resources to do it. As you know, the theme of the summit this year is kindness and collaboration.

I love that so much. And I know that there's been many examples of that on your journey. Can you share just one example of somebody who was kind or collaborative or just who helped you when you started and how that enabled you to get here. I don't know how many of you are from smaller cities like me. I'm from Columbus, Ohio, but Columbus, Ohio, yeah. I love Columbus very much. And my whole story is about asking for help.

My whole story. I mean, I started with, I always say nobody starts from nothing. We all have our brain, brawn, and buds. And that's literally like how we started the company. But that community came out for me. And I think once I started to prove myself, so it wasn't immediate, but once I started to prove that I was in it and that I would care and that I was going to do this and it was going to be here for a long time, the community came out in a big way.

And at that point, you know, it becomes this love fest. Like now I'm super committed. I want to get back to the community. They're supporting me. And I, in a way, love these sort of smaller cities. I see it in other cities as well where the whole city can kind of rally around a few businesses and companies that they love, whereas sometimes you get lost in a bigger city. there's other advantages of being in a big city with a new company.

But that has been amazing. And I just would put that credit back on Columbus. And I love it to this day and we'll never leave for that reason. I mean, I travel a lot, but I will always go back home because that's my place on earth. Jenny Burton Bauer, founder of Jenny Splendid. Thank you all. Jenny, thank you. That's Jenny Britton Bauer, founder of Jenny's Splendid Ice Creams.

Jenny joined me live on stage at the How I Built This Summit, which happened in October at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in Sanford, We'll have more of my conversations from the summit over the next few weeks, so keep checking for updates. Thanks to Candice Lim, who produced this episode, and Ramtin Arablui, who wrote the music. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. This is NPR.