Jenni Spinner: How’s the ice cream business been treating you? Please tell us a little bit about the growth of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams (shops and retail) over the years, especially in recent years.

Jeni Britton: The ice cream business has been an incredible journey for me. Over the past 26 years, I've been viewing the world through the lens of ice cream. Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams has grown significantly over the years, both in shops and retail. However, the COVID-19 pandemic made me realize that my team at Jeni's is so capable of handling things. While I still love and am involved in Jeni's, creating flavors and contributing a creative point of view, it's allowed me some freedom to explore other ideas like the Floura Bar! 

JS: Then, please tell us about the Floura bars—the unique flavors and formulation, and how the recipe stems from your own personal health challenges.

JB: Four years ago, my body was completely out of whack from inflammation, which I was feeling inside and out. My anxiety and adrenaline were off the charts and I was struggling to find a symbiosis.

I did two simple things that changed everything: I started eating as much fiber as possible and walking in the forest every day. I still eat ice cream nearly daily! But with those minor shifts, it wasn't long before my skin began to glow again, and I felt re-energized. I'm fifty years old and feel younger than I did ten years ago.

Around the same time that I started my healing journey, I read a scientific article highlighting the benefits of using prebiotic fibers from fresh watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe, mango, and pineapple rinds. I remembered the summer days spent in Jeni's kitchen, making melon sorbet and tossing the cantaloupe, honeydew, and watermelon trimmings into the compost. Can these trimmings be used to create a product that would benefit the microbiome and the environment? This idea just really excited me and it snapped together in my mind. I called some friends, and Floura was born.

JS: Could you please share some details behind the flavors—there are some unexpected flavors emblazoned on the bar labels.

JB: We noticed that the nutrition bar aisle is full of flavors featuring expected flavors like ‘peanut butter chocolate chip’ and ‘cookie dough’. One of the things I have tremendous pride in is our point of view on flavor at Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams and now at Floura & Co. 

Our first five flavors include Raspberry Rose, Brambleberry Lavender, Mango Cardamom, Matcha Blueberry, and Vanilla Rooibos. My north star with flavor is pleasure. Is it pleasurable? Is it causing you to stop in your tracks and have an unexpected and delicious experience that engages many of your senses? This is our goal, always. Making food that is good for you, good for the planet, AND pleasurable. That is the goal.

JS: Why did you decide upon bars for this venture, rather than choosing a snack, cereal, cookie, or other form of treat?

JB: The world needs a reframe on fiber and the science behind how our food choices affect our microbiome. We’re just beginning to understand the strong links between gut health and the rest of our physical and mental health. And presently, it’s pretty difficult for many to achieve the recommended amount of fiber intake with the standard American diet. We noticed that there are plenty of protein options in the bar aisle, but definitely not enough fiber options!

Many well-meaning recommendations for increasing fiber and improving gut health make this really simple idea overly complex and challenging for consumers. Having benefited from this change in my own diet, and having done the hard work to understand the science, I really wanted to find a format that provides an easy and truly good-for-you alternative in a simple grab-and-go option.

We have SO many items lined up for future development with our superfiber powder and other beneficial nutrient products, but we decided to start with a nutrition bar because we're working with fruit pastes and fibers that are well suited for the bar format.

JS: They’re not just about taste, or BFY benefits—there’s also a significant sustainability component. Could you please tell us about that?

JB: YES! We are so excited about this aspect of Floura &Co.’s mission.

Our goal is to measurably reduce food waste and lessen the climate impact of commercial food waste while simultaneously creating a transformative change in the gut health of Americans. We aim to redirect and reinvent 100 million pounds of fresh produce trimmings that would otherwise contribute to the global crisis of food waste.

At present, over 60% of all food waste comes from commercial food processors who are preparing the cut fruits and veggies you see on the shelves at your favorite grocery. Those rinds, peels, and cores are just as fresh and in many cases even more nutrient-dense than the cut fruits on the shelves. By diverting these fresh trimmings into our process immediately and within the same facility that the cut fruit is processed in, we’re able to seamlessly divert millions of pounds of produce out of the waste cycle and into our microbiomes.

This is a shift to regenerative thinking and we’re excited to report that the food manufacturers that we’re working with are all in on this as well.

JS: Then, with Floura, you’re taking a unique route to launching the products with a Kickstarter campaign—could you please tell us why you decided to take that path, and how it’s going so far?

JB: We decided to partner with Kickstarter because we love the community-building opportunities on the platform. We really wanted to develop a product that people are interested in and believe in, so Kickstarter felt like the right place to gauge the interest. The great news is that we heard a resounding YES! We've raised over six times the amount we planned to. For us, it was less about reaching a dollar-based funding goal and more about tapping into the wisdom and passion of our community. We couldn't be happier with the result! The campaign is closed now and we're very excited to be heading into production for our backers who showed up in a big way. 

JS: What’s next for Floura? Anything you can tell us about the next steps would be great.

JB: I’m so proud to report that we’ve moved through our test production run of the Floura Bar and we’ll move into our first full production run in early June. We’ve made all of our flavors available for preorder and we expect to distribute our Kickstarter backers in June. We’re a small and scrappy team, but we’re incredibly ambitious!

We also have other products in development with a range of nutrition profiles designed to meet a variety of consumer needs. We’re not stopping at the Floura Bar; we’re only getting started. Watch us bloom!