Jeni Britton, founder of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, remembers watching her grandfather eat an entire apple, including the core. That might have planted the seed for her new business—creating high-fiber snack bars from fruit waste.
Over the last 20-plus years, Britton has built Columbus, Ohio-based Jeni’s into an ice cream empire, now counting 80 scoop shops across 15 U.S. states. Her unique flavors of ice cream are also sold by the pint in grocer’s freezer cases, so she is not exactly a neophyte on the retail product side. Jeni’s is also a Certified B Corporation with a strong sustainability mission.
Now Britton is expanding her mission with the launch of Floura—a product that combines her zeal for zero-waste, nutrition and flavor creativity into a snack bar. She works with a facility in Vineland, New Jersey, that cuts up fresh produce for Trader Joe’s and other companies and harvests the trimmings. “We take the apple cores, watermelon rinds and mango skins before they leave the facility. They contain valuable prebiotic fiber,” Britton told Restaurant Business during a visit to New York City for the Summer Fancy Food Show.
Called “fruit crush bars” on the label, Floura comes in five flavors: Blueberry Matcha, Mango Cardamom, Brambleberry Lavender, Vanilla Rooibos and Raspberry Rose. A chocolate Brownie Batter variety is coming in September. Each bar contains about 13 g fiber.
“The idea is really to bring the flavor we bring to ice cream into fiber, because it is so important,” Britton said during a media presentation, adding “95% of Americans are deficient in fiber by at least 50% and it's causing chronic illness. And even worse than that, 41% of our kiddos have one or more chronic illnesses, and a lot of that has to do with the lack of fiber in our industrial diet.”
Britton wasn’t sure her fans would follow her from ice cream to fiber, as it is kind of a “zag.” “I was really worried that people would be like, ‘fiber, what do you mean?’ but they are really interested in it.” The zero-waste angle is especially appealing; the company’s website claims that Floura is diverting more than 100 million pounds of produce from landfills.
The Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream founder got Floura off the ground with a Kickstarter campaign launched in March 2024, which generated excitement and backing. The product is now being sold in select retail stores and online, and on the wholesale side, through Faire. Floura Bars are not currently sold at Jeni’s scoop shops.
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