2021 ANNUAL REPORT TO STAKEHOLDERS
Our mission as a company is to make better ice creams and bring people together. We are a creative-led, community-spirited company. We truly believe our differences are our strengths. It’s about each of us bringing our awesomeness in — our whole selves. And together we make something greater than the sum of our parts.
What follows is a look back at our 2021 as a company— what we did, what we’ve been working on, where we’re at now. We found ways to grow the company, and, in turn, our impact. From opening shops in three new cities and adding new wholesale customers, to finding new ways to show up for our communities in times of shared need. While people weren’t able to gather at our shops for most of the year, we found different ways to bring people together. And you’ll see that we’ve been working on improving ourselves and our company, too.
Community We make ice cream to bring people together. It’s our reason for being as a company. It’s why we make ice cream as a community—in partnership with the growers, makers, and producers who supply us with ingredients— and it’s why we design our shops as neighborhood gathering places. We believe all human beings are equal, that our differences are our strengths, and that making someone feel loved is one of the most powerful things you can do. And while we don’t think ice cream is going to save the world, we do think ice cream can be used as a force for good.
Jeni’s is a Certified B Corporation endorsed by the international nonprofit B Lab as a company that meets rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. Using Direct Trade ingredients, employing a diverse team of people, working to improve our environmental and social impact—it’s all part of how we operate and an important part of our company culture. We build community wherever we go, from near our kitchen in Columbus, to the cities across the country where we have scoop shops. Working with people we know and trust helps us get the best ingredients we can find. We’re proud to be a B Corp. It means we’re an evolving company—pushing forward to be better tomorrow than we are today.
Scoop Shop Fundraisers We hosted 41 fundraising events—in the form of ice cream socials and pint drives—in our scoop shops across the country, benefiting community organizations ranging from elementary schools and public libraries to non-profit healthcare providers serving transgender communities and addressing the ongoing mental health crisis. Total funds raised: $22,404 in charitable donations.
DC’s 7th District Children’s Holiday Party The Children’s Holiday Party in DC’s 7th District has been happening for more than 50 years. Hosted by the Metropolitan Policy Department and the Marine Corp (the Marine barracks are right outside of our Barrack’s Row shop) we’ve been the dessert sponsor for the event since 2019, and donated 500 servings to attending children this year.
The 5,000 Baby Project Fundraisers Nationwide Children’s Hospital is working to democratize healthcare with an innovative, inexpensive, noninvasive system to evaluate babies for neuromuscular and developmental disorders. The 5,000 Baby Project aims to capture the movement of at least 5,000 babies, including those with a diagnosis and those with no known risk factors, and then, using artificial intelligence machine learning to evaluate the participating babies, use the data to classify movements as healthy or “at risk” to test and refine the system’s ability to predict a baby’s risk of developmental delay. We donated 5,000 pints to support this important work and the families who participate.
Virtual Volunteer Event Team Jeni’s home office joined Besa, a Columbus organization that helps coordinate volunteering, to gather virtually and make fleece blankets for the YWCA Columbus’ Family Center. Volunteers were responsible for purchasing their own fleece fabric, and were guided on how to make fleece tie blankets while also learning about the YWCA’s service to the Columbus community and how community needs had shifted. The blankets were delivered to the YWCA so that children experiencing homelessness could select a new blanket for themselves upon arrival at the Family Center shelter.
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) is Georgia’s leading pediatric healthcare provider. The non-profit has been around for over 100 years and is focused on improving child health and wellness through awareness, prevention, and education efforts in the community. After meeting with CHOA, we determined that there were three ways that we could help support their work and give back to their organization—through their staff, patients, and patients’ families. Beyond a very successful ice cream social and pint drive, we donated free scoops to all 12,000 CHOA employees.
Adopt A Senior For as long as anyone can remember, we’ve lent our trucks and some Team Jeni’s muscle to deliver gifts in Besa’s Adopt a Senior Program. See Besa’s great video at besa.org/adopt.
Hello, Summer To celebrate the first day of summer—and what was, at the time, a lull in the pandemic—we served free ice cream to 40,420 people during our first annual Hello, Summer celebration.
Park of Roses Cleanup Team Jeni’s Columbus fulfillment center cleaned the Park of Roses as a team-building volunteer day. From leaf raking to heavy lifting, the muscles usually used for packing and shipping ice cream made a Columbus gem shine a little brighter.
Habitat for Humanity Team Jeni’s kitchen team helped Habitat for Humanity build a playhouse—from helping to organize the event and unloading trucks, to setting up painting, assembly, and supply stations. The initiative provides playhouses for local families in need, providing children with a safe place to play and to imagine what home means to them.
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Through sales of our collaboration flavor with Dolly Parton, Strawberry Pretzel Pie, we raised money for Dolly’s Imagination Library—a book gifting program that gives free books to children from birth to age five. The collaboration resulted in providing a book to 3,500 children each month for one year. To date, Imagination Library has gifted more than 173 million free books!
A Kid Again Co-founded 27 years ago by Poe Timmons, our Executive Vice President, COO & CFO, A Kid Again’s mission is to make life for families who are caring for a child with a life-threatening condition “normal” again by helping them gain back moments of positive, family-shared experiences and memories. The children’s non-profit works to create communal and interactive environments with fun-filled adventures and activities year round that complement but do not overtake day-to-day living. In addition to hosting 150 A Kid Again families (400 kids) for ice cream, we donated $30,000 to the organization to honor Poe’s efforts and leadership, and to fund the creation of more Covid-safe Adventures in a Box, more group activities (when it’s safe), and the opening of more A Kid Again chapters around the country.
174 Volunteer hours
77
Total volunteers
23 Service projects
16
Partner non-profits
A snapshot of where we’re at currently— 2021 diversity statistics for:
3% Unknown
1%
A force for good Treating every single person equally—behind the counter and over it—is not just an expectation here, it’s a way of life. Jeni’s has always been a place where many kinds of people come together. As a community, our differences are our strengths, and when each of us gives generously of ourselves, we are an unstoppable force for good.
Great American Speaker Series Our ongoing Great American Speaker Series provides a forum for Team Jeni’s to continue learning. A cross-functional group of employees selected three speakers and a member of the team to interview the featured guest in front of the company. Every year this series brings our team together in meaningful ways—and the powerhouses we hosted this year inspired and motivated us to be a force for good.
Representative Joyce Beatty Representative Joyce Beatty, Chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, is an avid civil rights activist and native Ohioan with a strong history of connecting people, policy, and politics to make a difference. Beatty has represented Ohio’s Third Congressional District since 2013. She currently serves on the exclusive House Financial Services Committee and is the first-ever Chair of the Financial Services Diversity and Inclusion Subcommittee. Congresswoman Beatty was the first African-American female to chair the Columbus Urban League Board.
Chris Mosier Chris Mosier is a trailblazing hall of fame triathlete, AllAmerican duathlete, and a 6-time member of Team USA. In 2015 he became the first known transgender man to represent the United States in international competition, and was the catalyst for change for the International Olympic Committee policy on transgender athletes. He is also a 2x National Champion and the first transgender athlete to compete in the Olympic Trials in any sport in a category different than their sex assigned at birth.
Shaka Senghor Shaka Senghor is the head of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion at TripActions. His memoir, Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death and Redemption in an American Prison, debuted on The New York Times and The Washington Post Best Seller Lists. He is also the President of Shaka Senghor, Inc. and Founder of Redeemed Sole. As a content creator and consultant Shaka’s focus is shifting societal narratives through storytelling and developing workshops with high entertainment value and deep social impact.
C A R P E S P L EN D
I D UM
Jeni’s Leadership Intensive Jeni’s Leadership Intensive (JLI) is an educational program with a mission to cultivate leadership skills among high potential performers resulting in an official Jeni’s certification. Through educational engagement in courses to which individuals may not have had previous access—Public Speaking, Business, Finance, Brand Marketing, Customer Service, and Leadership & Management—the program is designed to meet the needs of college graduates or high potential performers who are seeking to advance their careers. This program will help ensure that the path to professional development and personal enrichment makes all of us stakeholders in a better future of true equity and inclusion. Advancing the causes of racial equity and social justice will also be woven throughout the program. In 2021, we selected the first group of 12 program participants, confirmed instructors, finalized the in-person agenda for the 5-day program, developed the coursework syllabus, and scheduled the event twice—but both times ending up having to push the launch of the program to 2022.
Start Strong & Thrive Since the founding of our company, three core values—talent, hustle, and guts—have been prized above all else among team members. But after the racial justice- and pandemic-related events of 2020, we decided to add two more to the list: empathy and resilience. In 2021, we made the five values the backbone of our annual performance management process, and created and launched a new onboarding and training program for all employees called Start Strong & Thrive (SST). Our new SST program trains employees on their role in maintaining a welcoming and respectful work environment for all, including the knowledge and skills required for bias awareness and mitigation. The SST program is useful for all employees, but can be particularly helpful to our employees who are new to the workforce; Jeni’s gets the unique privilege of being the first place of employment for many people each year. SST supports the launch of a strong and successful work experience with the right trajectory, helping to avoid mistakes that can stall careers and suboptimize the work environment.
Fair Chance and Differently Abled hiring We began Fair Chance and Differently Abled hiring in our warehouses this past year and will be rolling it out fully in 2022. Studies show that employment is the single most important factor in reducing recidivism and that people with criminal records are no more likely to be fired for misconduct than people without records, and they’re statistically less likely to quit. We default to open hiring—employing anyone on a first-come, first-serve basis without an interview and without asking about criminal records and don’t run background checks (except when obligated by Department of Transportation regulation)—when the candidate pool is only the size of open positions. Everyone, regardless of their background, is fairly and consistently assessed and interviewed for roles for which they are qualified. We want to become a community leader at providing welcoming, supportive employment for people rebuilding life after incarceration and for people who are differently abled, whose abilities allow them to effectively do the essential functions of one of our open positions.
Inclusion Audit After completing an inclusion audit of our training, job descriptions, and postings, we created an Equity and Inclusion Lens Guide with which to review all current and future materials. As part of that process we updated our Interview Guide, including the use of gender-neutral pronouns; changed interview categories to our core values; created a new process for interviewing candidates without work experience to allow candidates a more even playing field to successfully interview; and created a list of larger training updates to broaden accessibility of our materials for those with different learning styles and reading-related disabilities.
Fellowship It takes a community of people to build ice cream from the ground up: growers, makers, producers, suppliers, customers. The people and companies who make Jeni’s ice cream possible aren’t anonymous accounts; they’re our partners—and we couldn’t run our company without them. We believe we get higher quality ingredients when we know the people we’re buying from, so we buy direct whenever we can.
ESTIMATED POUNDS USED IN 2021
2,987,798 Pasture-based milk / Smiths Dairy 143,642
Almond Brittle
125,462
Fair Trade Dutch Cocoa Powder
67,660
Buttermilk / Arps Dairy
56,774
Blackberries / Stahlbush Island Farms
50,277
Cold Brew Concentrate / Slingshot Coffee Co.
46,840
Peaches / The Peach Truck
44,941
Honey / Deer Creek Honey Farms
44,911
Heavy Cream / Arps Dairy
37,359
Yogurt / Arps Dairy
18,990
Blueberries / Stahlbush Island Farms
14,124
Ohio Strawberries
11,403
Organic Fairtrade Vanilla Extract / Madagascar
7,966
Rosé / Peregrine Ranch
7,938
Dark Chocolate / Theo Chocolate
7,692
Coffee Beans / Intelligentsia
6,909
Pumpkins / Hirsch Fruit Farm
6,440
Blackberries / Hirsch Fruit Farm
6,064
Goat Cheese / Mackenzie Creamery
5,967
Brulee Bits / Gardners Candies
3,692
Vermont Maple Syrup / Butternut Mountain
3,012
Toffee / Gardners Candies
2,939
Nutmeg Blondie / Greyston Bakery
2,743
Sea Salt / Jacobsen Salt Co
1,227
Pretzels from FitJoy Foods
398
Whiskey / Middle West Spirits
294
Apple Brandy / Watershed Distillery
Roody In the fall, we ordered custom Jeni’s beanies from Roody, who works with Eden Reforestation Projects in Haiti to plant one tree for every item that Roody makes. Deforestation began in Haiti when colonizers cut down trees for coffee, indigo, tobacco, and sugarcane plantations run by slave labor. Today, the leading cause of this deforestation is charcoal production and the consequences have been devastating. A mere 1% of its primary forests remain, and the UN estimates that 30% of those remaining trees are destroyed each year. The Haiti project has been hugely successful with more than 6 million trees planted and more than 100 employees who are paid fairly for a critical project. 775 trees were planted because of our order.
Shop Decor When Jeni opened her first shop 20 years ago, she purchased fabric from a local fabric store and, with the help of her mom, handmade her own pennant banners to decorate it. The banners brought design, color, and dimension to the shop and she continued making these banners for each of her shops in the early days. This past year we worked with the same fabric store and commissioned the help of several local sewers to hand make new versions of the banners for our shops. The project was a labor of love—supporting other small businesses and bringing some color and life back into our shops just like those early days.
Environmental Impact We resumed our Zero Waste shops initiative where possible after temporarily suspending the program in 2020 while the majority of our shops were closed for dining in. Currently, 95% of what you buy in our shops is reusable, recyclable, or compostable and we’re continuing our march toward zero waste in our shops through a critical approach to what comes in (sourcing) and what goes out (waste).
Making Better Ice Creams
We scooped 12 brand new flavors:
All three channels of our business— scoop shops, wholesale, and online— experienced double digit growth.
+45%
Increased total company revenue by 45%, ending the year at $95.7 million.
<2x
We have more than doubled our revenue in the past 3 years.
+23% We produced 23% more pints in 2021 than 2020.
We opened 15 new shops, expanding into three new cities—Dallas, Sarasota, and Philadelphia—bringing our total number of shops across the country to 65.
We served 12.9 million scoops.
We fulfilled over 230K local delivery and pickup orders.
We formed new partnerships with great retailers like Jewel, Acme, Giant Martin, Giant Landover, and Fresh Direct, enabling people to get Jeni’s who previously couldn’t. You can now find our ice cream in 4.7k+ doors nationwide and we’re the #1 and fastest growing premium wholesale ice cream company (>$5.99).
More than 7 million new users came to our website this year and our online orders almost tripled—up 2.8x or 178%.
We were named one of the fastest-growing privatelyheld companies in the US on the Inc 5000.
We were named one of America’s Fastest Growing Companies by the Financial Times.
Caramel Pecan Sticky Buns
Sunshine
New Product Plant Based — Other Dairy Sofi Award Winner
Best Ice Cream winner in the World Dairy Innovation Awards
Everything Bagel
Recognized as “Highly Commended” in the Best Dairy Dessert category in the World Dairy Innovation Awards
AdAge Creativity Awards Finalist For DTC brand of the year