Local ice cream icon Jeni Britton, founder of Jeni’s, is building a business in New York City, but she’s holding on to her home in Columbus.
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No one screams for ice cream louder than the heart of the Midwest. Home to several staple ice cream shops, quality ice cream is a novelty.
While she’s still connected to Columbus—through her family, her business and through the creative inspiration she draws from Ohio’s forests and parks—Jeni Britton, founder of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams and co-founder of fiber bar company Floura, has made New York City her new home—at least for now.
At the beginning of Labor Day weekend, Britton moved into an apartment on the city’s Lower East Side that she is renting from a friend for the next year, documenting her early experiences on her Instagram. Speaking to Columbus Monthly by phone, she shared her early impressions of life in New York City.
“I love it,” she says. “Because I’ve been coming here for so long over my life, I’m very connected with the food community here.” She’s also excited to be closer to her partner, a furniture designer she says she’s been dating for the past year.
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Britton says the move made sense for her new business, Floura. “We make dietary fiber from produce trimmings. The produce company that we work with is one of the biggest in America.” That company, New Jersey-based F&S Fresh Foods, located about an hour from Britton’s new home, supplies some of the country’s largest food retailers—places like Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Starbucks—with fresh fruit salads.
Floura then uses the trimmings from the fruit, things like “apple cores and melon rinds and pineapple rinds, which are very high in prebiotic fiber,” to produces bars that, according to Floura’s website, help consumers “bridge the fiber gap.”
With Floura’s production happening at F&S and the rest of the team based in based in the city, being on the ground allows Britton to work more closely with her staff and business partners.
Britton is always on the go, though, and while her base of operations may be shifting, she’s not leaving Columbus behind. Currently, she plans to be here for one week every month, which may increase to two in the future. “I’ll never sell my house in Columbus,” she says.
“Everything I do, every Jeni’s store you walk into, it’s Columbus. It’s a little embassy for what we are there, and that’s really important to me. … It’s who I am at my core.”