Two innovators on 'telling stories through ice cream'

Pooja Bavishi was making ice cream in a shared kitchen space in Brooklyn in 2016 the first time she met Jeni Britton Bauer, who had arrived to mentor up-and-coming food entrepreneurs.

Bavishi was star-struck.

Bauer, now 49, was an art student who had begun to make perfume when she turned her attention to ice cream in 1996 and began selling innovative flavours at a farmers market in Columbus, Ohio. By 2002, she had started Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, which is now sold in grocery stores across the country and at more than 75 branded shops. In 2021, the company brought in $95.7 million.

At the time, her ice cream was game-changing in a field crowded with mass-produced pints. The texture was almost chewy; her milk and other ingredients were sourced from local farms; and flavours such as salty caramel — one of her first — developed cultlike followings.

Bavishi, 38, had been an admirer long before the pair first met in the shared New York kitchen where she was trying to perfect the product for her Brooklyn shop, Malai. She incorporates South Asian spices, such as masala chai, and ingredients such as baklava and date caramel into ice cream made with dairy from New York. Some flavours are playful, such as the Madam Vice President, flavoured with coconut and mango and laced with candied lotus seeds. (“Kamala” means “lotus” in Sanskrit.)

Bavishi's pints can be found in more than four dozen retail locations in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut area and are shipped nationally through the e-commerce food platform Goldbelly. She plans to expand the small shop she opened in 2015 in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn to a store in Manhattan next year.

On that first day they met, Bavishi had been trying to perfect a rose flavour but couldn’t quite nail it. Bauer gave her advice on how to use essential oils to enhance the flavour.

“I remember that so well,” Bauer said during a recent conversation. “I’ve followed you ever since. I’m so proud of you for everything that you’ve been able to do. Ice cream is actually a really hard business. I know you know how hard it is.”

“It was so important for me as such a young business owner to have that validation from someone who has been through it,” Bavishi said.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.

Why ice cream

JENI BRITTON BAUER:

In a way, ice cream just picked me. I know that sounds silly, but I was in a very creative time in my life, and I was 22 years old. I had barely gotten into Ohio State University. I was also working at a French bakery that made everything from scratch. The entire kitchen was French-speaking. I was really inspired by that. I was dating this guy who was into perfumery and chemistry. I got really excited about scent and pastry and telling stories through art. It suddenly dawned on me one night that ice cream was all about scent and that butterfat is actually a perfect carrier of scent. Once I figured that out, I knew I would start a business and that it would occupy my whole life.

POOJA BAVISHI:

There are two real parallels in my life. I had this passion for desserts, and I always was super curious about my heritage. I’m first-generation Indian American, and I always felt this longing for knowing as much as possible how my parents grew up and what it was like in India. I almost felt a little like I missed out on something. Those are the identity issues a lot of first-generation kids go through. So the way I learned about my heritage was through food.

I never made ice cream until I came to New York. To completely echo Jeni, dairy and butterfat carry flavours so well, and that includes any kind of spice infusion. And so I flavoured these ice creams with Indian spices and experimented a little bit and realized that I was honestly just craving to tell my story. It really feels like Malai is me in a product.

Is ice cream … sexy?

BAVISHI: Jeni, what do you say when people are like: “Frozen foods don’t have scent. Ice cream melts in your mouth, and that’s when you get the scent, and that’s what affects flavour.”

BAUER: Yeah, I love to talk about it, because it actually is so sexy. Sexy isn’t the right word — sensual. You can’t smell it when it’s completely frozen. It has to start relaxing on your tongue, and then it starts to bloom — and it blooms in your face, and it blooms through the back of your nose, and then you can kind of breathe, and then you’re smelling that. And that’s how ice cream works.

How do you break into the market?

KIM SEVERSON: Jeni, when you first came out with your ice cream, it seemed revolutionary. And it is not an inexpensive product. How do you put a product like that into a world of Baskin-Robbins ice cream cakes and bodega bars?

BAUER: We grew right alongside our customers, very slowly. It was a two-way conversation with them, starting at the North Market, which is our farmers market — indoor public market here in Columbus. I was there for 10 years on the front line. I would listen to their feedback, and then I would tweak. It’s just constant tweaking. But then our customer becomes the buyer at Whole Foods. And back then, there were multiple buyers in multiple regions, and you had to really drill into each one of them. And so — listening, listening, listening and tweaking.

BAVISHI: Jeni’s completely recalibrated the ice cream market by introducing an artisanal product. She changed the entire category. We followed that same model — that ice cream can be really delicious if you put really good quality ingredients in there.

We want to make sure that we’re sourcing all of our spices as ethically as possible, but that does mean that the cost goes up. And so, even though it might be a $12 pint when everyone was used to a $4 pint, the quality that you’re getting is far exceeding what we were used to before.

To change customers’ perception of that, of course, is difficult. But because there’s so many good companies out there doing the same exact thing, I think customers are understanding that for the quality, and for that value that you’re getting as well, it’s worth it.

How do you go from niche to mainstream?

This article originally appeared in The New York Times