Columbus ice cream guru Jeni Britton starts Floura, a line of prebiotic-packed fruit bars

Bob Vitale, Columbus Dispatch
·4 min read
Jeni Britton, the founder of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, has started a line of prebiotic fruit bars called Floura. She said the venture combines her passions for food, wellness and environmental sustainability.
Jeni Britton, the founder of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, has started a line of prebiotic fruit bars called Floura. She said the venture combines her passions for food, wellness and environmental sustainability.

Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams founder Jeni Britton has shared plans on Kickstarter for a new line of fiber-rich, prebiotic-packed fruit bars that she says are healthy, delicious and environmentally friendly.

What’s the secret ingredient in Floura Bars?

Flour made from the rinds from watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, mango and pineapple.

This is a rendering showing the packaging and product for Floura Bars, a new product from Jeni Britton, the founder of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams.
This is a rendering showing the packaging and product for Floura Bars, a new product from Jeni Britton, the founder of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams.

http://kck.st/3PsM5lH

The Columbus entrepreneur told The Dispatch that she and her cofounder are looking to sell the bars for $3.49 to $3.99 each and that production is set to begin in early June.

Floura Bars also are made with dried fruits, toasted nuts, chia, crunchy quinoa and other ingredients, but she said the use of fruit trimmings for flour could eventually divert millions of pounds of food waste that are now trashed or composted. The watermelon rinds are nearly flavorless but contain nutrients and beneficial amounts of fiber, which she said she discovered while focusing on her own health and wellness in recent years.

Floura, by the way, comes from Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, spring and fertility.

How the idea began

In 2019, Britton said, she began walking every day in area Metro Parks. She began eating "as many fruits and vegetables as possible" and discovered their benefits in reducing inflammation and improving gut health. She began learning more about the microbiome, the term for the network of micro-organisms that live in the human digestive tract.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, probiotics are micro-organisms that live in our intestines and help keep us healthy by boosting immunity and reducing inflammation. Prebiotics are types of fiber that keep the probiotics healthy by serving as their food.

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Jeni Britton's new Floura fruit bars use a flour made from lightly fermented watermelon rinds, which she says are rich with nutrients and fiber.
Jeni Britton's new Floura fruit bars use a flour made from lightly fermented watermelon rinds, which she says are rich with nutrients and fiber.

The watermelon rinds used for Floura Bars are lightly fermented, which Britton said unlocks more nutrients, then dehydrated, milled into powder and blended with fruit. In a video posted to Kickstarter, Britton showed five flavors for her new product — raspberry rose, brambleberry lavender, mango lassi, matcha blueberry and vanilla rooibos — although the last three are still in development.

She and Floura cofounder Mark Edwards have been working on the flours for almost two years inside a kitchen at a New Jersey processing facility owned by F&S Fresh Foods. F&S packages fruits and vegetables for stores such as Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. Britton said the sight of watermelon rinds during a visit to the facility triggered a memory of research she read earlier about their nutritional value.

"We saw all these trimmings and thought, can we challenge ourselves to make something of these?"

Getting the bars to market

Britton brought in San Francisco chef Jeremy Nelson to lead product development. Carl Seletz, a former chief global officer for GNC, who led retail, wholesale, distribution and e-commerce for the Pittsburgh-based nutritional products company, is on her startup team as well. Ohio State University has shared nutritional research and other information, she said,

“This project aligns so many passions for me,” she said. “Delicious flavors, sustainability and foods that I can give to people that I love that can have a big impact on their well-being.”

Why Kickstarter?

The Kickstarter campaign is aimed more toward building buzz and gauging interest in Floura Bars than raising money for their development. The fundraiser was posted Wednesday with a goal of just $10,000 and was met in four hours. It has since been stretched to $50,000.

"The first thing we had to do was prove: Does anybody really care about this?" Britton said. Kickstarter supporters who pledge $35 will receive a box of 10 Floura Bars.

The effort is “vital to getting the word out,” Britton said, including to retailers who must decide whether to include the bars on store shelves already bulging with energy bars, protein bars and other products promising better health.

Still, she said, the money will help development of the product. It also serves another, more symbolic purpose.

"The world of entrepreneurship has changed," she said, reflecting back on the start of her ice cream brand in 2002. "It's almost as if entrepreneurship has become about raising money. I think it's still about the relationship with your customers from Day One."

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rvitale@dispatch.comInstagram: @dispatchdining

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Jenis ice creams founder starts Floura prebiotic fruit bars