Jeni’s Ice Creams
- Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams is recruiting franchisees for the first time, the company said.
- The brand is looking to open franchised scoop shops in the Midwest and the Southeast.
- The company has about 90 scoop shops around the US.
If you’ve ever wanted to run an ice cream shop, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams has a proposition for you.
The ice cream brand plans to recruit franchisees for the first time, the company told Business Insider.
Jeni’s will be looking for franchisees starting this fall to open stores in Southeastern and Midwestern states — both regions where the brand has already built a network of company-operated locations, said Sean Bock, senior advisor of franchising at Jeni’s.
While Jeni’s doesn’t have a set number of franchisees that it’s looking for, Bock said that the company is looking to “go overboard” in supporting its first six to eight franchisees before it considers a broader rollout of the model.
“We want to take a methodical approach” that emphasizes “quality over quantity,” Bock told Business Insider.
Bock said that Jeni’s is looking for people who have previous experience running franchises. “They know how to operate a food business,” he said.
Other franchisees could include fans of Jeni’s who are looking to make a career pivot, he said. “There’s going to be a small percentage who’s going through life right now and saying, ‘I want a change,'” he said.
Franchising is one strategy that has allowed some of the world’s biggest restaurant chains, from McDonald’s to Starbucks, to grow their businesses.
For prospective franchisees, the model represents a fast track to business ownership. Restaurant chains provide their franchisees with an already-developed brand name, menu, and set of policies. In exchange, franchisees typically pay fees, such as one-time licensing payments or shares of the sales that their locations generate, to the company.
Opening a scoop shop under the Jeni’s name will require a total investment of between $696,000 and $1,265,750, according to a draft of the company’s franchise disclosure document. In 2024, the average annual net sales from a Jeni’s shop were $997,027.
Jeni’s operates about 90 company-run scoop shops. It sees franchising as a part of its path to long-term growth, but making that number as big as possible as fast as possible isn’t the goal of finding franchisees, interim CEO Poe Timmons said.
The company wants franchisees to align with values such as being inclusive and connecting with the community. Many of Jeni’s current shops, for instance, host fundraisers for local community organizations, she said.
Since Jeni Britton founded the company in 2002, the brand has worked with suppliers, such as dairy farmers, who abide by its “fellowship model,” which requires fair labor practices and environmental sustainability, among other criteria. “We believe it takes a community to create exceptional ice cream,” the company says on its website.
The company thinks about franchising the same way, Timmons said.
“Franchising has been a part of our long-range growth plan for almost ever,” Timmons said.
Bock said that Jeni’s wants its franchised stores to be run as well as its current company-owned locations.
“We want our customers to walk into any Jeni’s and not say, ‘Oh, this is a franchise, or this is a company-owned store,'” Bock said.
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