From a meal ice cream to business in the amount of $ 125 million: as Jeni founder launched her sweet treats Empire
Jeni Britton eats pint of brown almond butter every week. It is a suitable ritual for the 51-year-old founder of the same name of Jena’s great ice cream, which turned the bank loan into $ 40,000 into dessert surgery with multi-million dollars. The company says that in 2023 it has earned over $ 125 million in revenue, with products at more than 12,500 retail locations and more than 80 independent stores across the country. Britton’s latest venture, Flour, selling fruit bars rich in fiber, made of upcicked food decorations such as watermelon and Apple nucleus bark, has so far raised approximately $ 2 million to bring the product to the market of 2024. Starting, according to Britton.
Britton attributes the growth of ice cream to lessons learned through failure and resistance. “Truly learning deeply working and decaying,” she says.
In 1996, she left Ohio State University, where she studied fine arts, to open a glass booth, manually make and serve her creations in the agricultural market in Columbus, Ohio. The trade fought financially. Sometimes Britton was so tied to cash that she advocated her ice cream with her fellow salesmen to eat. Still, on her ice cream booth, she developed her first breakthrough of taste: Salty Caramel, who attracted customers from neighboring countries. Although the endeavor was closed in 2000 due to insufficient sales, Britton says she gained priceless insights into the development of taste and innovation, the user service and loyalty of the brands.
Determined to perfect his rudimentary culinary skills and perfect his product, Britton enrolled in a course for making ice cream in Penn State and volunteered to Dairy Farms to deepen their understanding of science behind ice cream. Without formal business education, it relied on developing self -being and business books, which would later form a yen.
Two years later, she was ready to re -try entrepreneurship. This time she had a more sophisticated business model. She took a loan for small businesses in the amount of $ 40,000, which was intended for her boyfriend at the time, and began to offer a combination of seasonal and throughout the year. In six years, Britton expanded Jeni’s to four brick and mortar stores, launched an e-commerce and founded a wholesale surgery. Until 2009, as production, distribution and sales became increasingly complex, she recognized the need for experienced leadership. In order to take Jeni to the next level, she made the main decision to hire the executive director.
“At different times of different companies, you need different leaders,” she explains. Her forces lie in taste innovation, creative marketing and customer insights – not in finances, accounting or human resources. In order to bridge that gap and encourage Jeni’s growth, she appointed John Lowo, an experienced executive director with the leadership experience in General Electricas executive director.
Lowe’s business sharpness proved to be critical, especially during the 2015 Listeria epidemic, which forced Jeni to transfer focus from Britton’s creative and culinary forces to the management of crises, the financial strategy and technical operations. The outbreak led to a complete overhaul of the company’s safety protocol, temporary closure of all 21 stores and the destruction of 265 tons of ice cream. Lowe helped to secure aA $ 1.5 million loan loanFrom the Ohi Loan that invests in companies that work with insufficiently supplied communities, preventing financial collapse. In total, the company spent more than $ 2.7 million to start recall and make increasing operational changes. They included the restructuring of its Columbus, Ohio, a production facility to reduce cross -contamination, moving fresh fruits and vegetables to a separate object and testing each series of ice cream for safety.
The crisis marked a turning point for Britton, forcing her to face her own leadership challenges – especially the reluctance to take responsibility and communicate with clarity and authority. Recognizing these gaps, she hired a coach of executive leadership to learn how to influence fostering responsibility, transparency and collaboration.
“I’m a middle -aged and I really like to trust people,” she says. “But I learned that I had to get up and, when I believed something and when I thought something, I should hear me.”
Britton believes that self -awareness is key to leaders to initiate innovation and growth.
She points to Jeni’s current executive director, Stacy Peterson, as evidence of this philosophy. Peterson, who played a major role in the rapid expansion of Wingstop as a main technological clerk, took over the helm in Jeni’s late 2022. As a newcomer in the ice cream industry, Peterson’s first line of business was to deepen her understanding of the craft. She studied the chemistry of ice cream and the science of dairy products in Ohio, as she drew in shell stores to connect first -hand customers. Self -awareness often requires difficult decisions.
For Britton, this meant to deviate from Jeni’s daily operations during the Coid-19 pandemia. Years of ruthless commitment took a tribute to her physical and mental health, leaving her exhausted is little left. She also realized that her deep involvement as a founder – and the perfectionism of guilt – limited the growth of the company.
“The aircraft is built, and if I continue to twist it, it will only stay on the ground, not live to its potential,” she says.
In order for Jeni to develop, Britton had to let go. She believes that the ego is often the biggest obstacle to leaders faced with similar intersection.
“People think they are so great that when they leave, there will be a hole that cannot be filled,” she says. “No matter how important the person is, the hole is always filled. And honestly, it’s always better.”
This story is originally shown on Fortune.com
