Making ice cream in the 21st century | Jeni Britton Bauer | TEDxColumbus
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.ค. 2024
- With the odds stacked against them, Jeni and her team reimagined and rebuilt her company from the ground up in the summer of 2015, turning a cataclysmic event into a triumphant revival. In this interview with Mike Bills, The Director of the Center for Innovation at The Ohio State University, Jeni shares how 21st century thinking opened up a path forward, and how her company has come back with intensified focus, clarity, and a deep sense of gratitude.
Jeni Britton Bauer opened Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams in 2002 with the singular goal to make better ice cream. Today Jeni’s is a community of growers, makers, artists, writers, doers, mathletes, dairymen and beekeepers who make every batch of ice cream with milk from grass-grazed cows, Ohio wildflower honey, whole fruits, vegetables, and herbs from nearby farms, as well as rare, carefully sourced ingredients from around the world, including Fair Trade Ndali Estate Vanilla, Direct Trade bean-to-bar Askinosie Chocolate, and Direct Trade Intelligentsia Coffee.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at ted.com/tedx
Epicurious led me here
Nancy Pelosi led me here.
Lol you & I, both.
Summary: for reasons unfortunately not explained, one pint of Jeni's ice cream tested positive for listeria. For reasons unfortunately not explained, the decision was then made to pull all current Jeni's frozen products, which was six month's output. This was devastating for the company because they were then out of stock. They considered selling just the right simplest flavor but that could have meant two months before they had other flavors available. They have stores and can't just close them. They tried other ice creams but nothing was similar enough to Jeni's for them to sell. Ultimately they decided to hire a big factory to make their ice cream for them, automating much of their manual process. Perhaps putting their own ice cream makers out of work? Again, that wasn't explained. This talk was tediously unfocused and full of platitudes and half-baked, useless metaphors. There's maybe two minutes of information here, and many obvious questions are unanswered. Most pertinently, the entire goal of this talk and it's focus is to explain what happened to their company and what they did about it and in sixteen minutes they barely touched upon it but in the vaguest terms. A pint tested positive for listeria, so they disposed of all their ice cream and contracted a factory to produce their ice cream so they could reopen their stores more quickly. Presumably they will continue to use mass manufacturing in the future. They don't explain if that means the end of their smaller, more "artisanal" manufacturing process. Jeni spins it like they were outgrowing it anyway, and praises the virtues of larger, more expensive, more automated factory manufacturing as having more consistency. She says it was never about being "artisanal", but about serving people good ice cream. Fair enough. But as the head and public face of this company, she should figure out how to communicate about her company more effectively. She's charismatic and I believe she's capable of doing so. I didn't know anything about the recall before watching this video, and yet I'm disappointed that this talk designed to provide answers left the audience with more questions than answers. Not because it didn't have enough time, but because it used it's time very poorly. Instead of actually telling us _why_ the major events happened and how the company has changed, Jeni spent her time indulging in multiple extended pop culture references. Get it together. It wasn't even explained why there was listeria in the ice cream, or if they know why, and why it won't happen again. This vagueness is frustrating. I trust the ice cream is good and will continue to be, but be a little more open and transparent. It will engender trust far more than vagueness, misdirection and marketing mumbo-jumbo. I suspect Jeni could have cleared up all reasonable suspicions and the major questions in just a few minutes, and it's a shame that she didn't. Why be vague and secretive? Does it protect the company? It shouldn't. I think it's more likely to be counterproductive! Just be direct and tell the truth frankly, because you have a trustworthy reputation and I doubt you have anything to be ashamed of or that you must hide.
In reading you're very well thought out opinion, I couldn't help thinking about Famous Amos cookie company and how he ended up selling his incredible product to a huge corporation that only wanted to sell the name Famous Amos had developed through a great cookie. In the end, I know Wally Amos was very upset that he had to sell his company and how his awesome cookies were changed for profit sake. Jeni's seems to have ventured down the same path, maybe not as desperate as Wally was, (or were they)?
Graeter's has never had a recall. :^)