Lowe communicates Jeni’s growth projections to keep employees engaged, even if they’re just scooping ice cream for the summer, because maintaining the close-knit, communicative culture of a small company is key.
“One of the ways we maintain the culture is with a private Facebook page just for Jeni’s employees,” Lowe says. “It allows us to spread the love from the shops to the fulfillment team and have Jeni speak directly to the team in a way they’re used to communicating with their friends.”
Protecting the culture
At first, Jeni’s grew one step at a time, only hiring when necessary. Lowe was Jeni’s first salesperson until he couldn’t keep up with calls.
“We grew as we needed to because we needed to be very conservative with capital and make sure the sales were there to support additional team members,” he says. “The business school case study would say go get capital, grow the team and then grow the sales. We didn’t want to be beholden to financial investors that would drive behaviors not consistent with the company, so we grew slowly to protect the quality and the culture.”
Eventually, Lowe assembled skilled sales, marketing and fulfillment teams to build Jeni’s wholesale business. He realized they could help other food producers who wanted to make the leap beyond local. So in 2013, he created Eat Well Distribution as Jeni’s sister business to offer those skills across the industry.
Meanwhile, Lowe’s retail growth plan for Jeni’s scaled slowly, beginning near Columbus where new locations were “safe bets,” before expanding into Cleveland. When the team grew comfortable, Jeni’s made the leap into Nashville.
Now, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams is the No. 1 restaurant in Nashville, according to TripAdvisor, and the two scoop shops stay as busy as Columbus, if not busier. The success repeated in Chicago and Atlanta last year, and Food & Wine and Time magazines named Jeni’s one of the country’s best ice creams.
“The reason for that is the quality of the ice cream and the quality of the service experience,” Lowe says. “Quality has to lead. We cannot grow, we should not grow, if it would negatively affect quality. In fact, we’ve found that our growth has enabled us to make better ice creams every day.”
