The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 35 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Scaling improves food quality by unlocking superior ingredient sourcing
“I think that you can get better as you grow, and that's been my experience. When we were really small, and there's this sort of Glow around the sort of mom and pop sort of thing, I think, especially in ice cream. But when we were small, we were really limited …”
Jeni's Ice Cream Would Have Failed If Launched In Brooklyn
“It would be impossible to do what we do at Jenny's. All of our money would have been in, you know, rent, and paying people, and all the things that you have to do in Brooklyn that would be different from Columbus. And here we can put it all in the ice cream, a…”
Grocery Buyers Prioritize Brands That Bring New Consumers To The Category
“Your customer when you're in grocery is not their customer, it's the buyer. And what the buyer wants to see is, yeah, sure, you can split some votes, that's okay. Are you bringing new people to the category?”
Bringing In Outside Capital Costs Founders Their Autonomy To Explore
“And when you bring in outside capital, you lose all of that. And so, you know, are, who's on your team? Who, how many people do you have? Are you ready to sort of like let go of that kind of control?”
PR Agencies Fail Startups Unless An Internal Champion Truly Believes
“I find that PR firms can be really awesome, but you have to have somebody, you have to have somebody at that firm who is your champion.
Who adores you, who believes in you, who wants to push it forward.
Otherwise it falls flat and you just, you kind of go nowh…”
Mid-Sized Cities Provide Better Startup Launchpads Than Large Metros
“When you're in a smaller, small to mid-sized city, the city gets behind it in a different way. You know, you can really try things and also fail a lot, and people still stick with you. And I have noticed that in big cities, everybody's trying new things. Every…”
Food Investors Now Seek Companies With Billion-Dollar Potential
“And I think you have to have a massive opportunity where I'm hearing people say that, you know, they're looking for companies who could become a billion dollar company.”
Founders Need Personal Attorneys Entirely Separate From Company Counsel
“As a founder, you know, you have your company attorney or whatever, but you do need to have Kind of your own really great attorney, just to have somebody to ask questions.”
Customers return for past favorites, not daily new creations
“I had learned the lesson that no one comes to a business for whatever I'm making today. I don't go to businesses for that. I go to a business for what I had the last time I was there, not for some new thing.”
Early capital would have prevented Bauer from mastering ice cream craft
“Let's say we would have taken, you know, a whole bunch of money early and I don't think anybody would have given it to us anyway, but let's just say we could have done that. I wouldn't have had the time to work out these details and the things that I now know …”
Britton Bauer: Standardized tests like the SAT are an invalid evaluation metric
“I really thought that was horrible. I still think that's horrible. My mom thinks that's horrible. It's horrible. You can't judge people by that kind of stuff. It's just not right.”
Britton Bauer: Customer return visits depend on consistently offering past favorites
“The thing that draws me back to a business every single time, no matter what the business is, is the thing that I had last time I was there. I might change my mind when I get there, but it's always the thing I had last time that I loved.”
Britton Bauer: A critic loved the exact ice cream he previously hated
“The same ice cream he hated before, he loved now.”
Britton Bauer: American ice cream can be the best in the world
“We want to set the standard for American ice cream. American ice cream can be so much better, that it's the best ice cream in the world when it's made a certain way”
Britton Bauer: Jeni's recalled 265 tons of ice cream during 2015 crisis
“We got approval from the FDA and we did a full recall within hours, which meant that that 265 tons of ice cream that had been out in the world came back to us.”
Britton Bauer prefers making ice cream over selling out to corporate acquirers
“I mean, I like making ice cream, and I want to make ice cream, and that's what I do, and how I, it's actually how I think. You know, I'm 44 years old, I started making ice cream when I was 21, 22, so more than half my entire life, most of what I remember, has …”
Raising Institutional Funding For Britton's New Venture Flora Proves Challenging
“I've been building this company for two years really scrappy, and we've gotten some angel investors for early stage just to get us to kind of figure out what we're doing. And now we're kind of going after the bigger funding, but we are finding, yes, of course,…”
Jeni's Recalled 265 Tons Of Ice Cream Following A Listeria Discovery
“So we decided that we were going to recall everything which meant that that 265 tons of ice cream that had been out in the world came back to us, and there we were.”
Jeni's Ice Creams avoids stabilizers, emulsifiers, corn syrup, and egg yolks
“We don't use stabilizers, emulsifiers, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, and a whole bunch of other ingredients that are sort of very typical in ice cream, or even egg yolks.”
Jeni's operates 39 scoop shops with 1,800 peak summer employees
“I mean, in our stores, we have 39 stores, and we have, well, at the peak this summer, we had 1800 team members in the stores”
Bauer spent eight years making ice cream before scaling Jeni's
“I spent at least eight years boots on the ground just making ice cream and serving it before I ever started growing, and that time is everything for me because I learned all of that.”
Smaller cities rally around local businesses better than major hubs
“I see it in other cities as well, where the whole city can kind of rally around a few businesses and companies that they love, whereas sometimes you get lost in a bigger city.”
Britton Bauer: Butterfat's low melting point makes ice cream ideal for scent
“Butterfat melted below body temperature because I was working with other fats that perfumers often use fats that are solid at room temperature but melt immediately on contact with your skin. And so I knew that butterfat was that kind of a fat, and that ice cre…”
Britton Bauer: 2015 Listeria outbreak traced to hairline crack behind equipment
“In the end, the Listeria was coming out of a hairline crack over by the wall behind a piece of equipment, and it's like, we finally found it, which we celebrated.”
New Venture Flora Operates Inside A 600,000-Square-Foot Produce Facility
“So we are located actually inside of a 600,000 square foot produce processing company that makes cut produce for all your favorite grocers.”
Britton Bauer: Enlisted three classmates to sell homemade pixie sticks at school
“I mean, we would make 10 dollars by the end of school. We could go get pizza for the whole group. Wow. I had, like, other people selling them. I'd make them at night, and then I had three other people selling them, too, and we were selling them all over the sc…”
Britton Bauer: Ohio State initially rejected her before accepting her via letter
“Of course I applied to Ohio State, and they said, no thanks but I wrote them a letter. I was just like, well, ok, I know you, like, I get it, but here's what I was doing. While I was not getting good grades. And the next thing I knew, I got a letter, and it sa…”
Britton Bauer: First venture was fully funded by partner's parents
“I had a friend, and so she and I were messing around with this together, and she was able to get all of it from her parents.”
Britton Bauer: Recorded PBS documentary convinced North Market to accept stall
“Anyway, he recorded it and sent it to us, and that was how we got in the market, because they watched that and realized that an ice cream company can be a thriving part, a part of a thriving market.”
Britton Bauer: Scream Ice Cream experienced $9 and $3 sales days
“We had nine dollar days. I think the worst day I ever had was a three dollar day.”
Britton Bauer lived on $638 a month operating Scream Ice Cream
“I made 638 dollars a month for the entire time we were open. I mean, I took that home to live off of for those three, four years.”
Britton Bauer: North Market enables $30K startups with 2M annual visitors
“I mean, you can start up there fairly inexpensively, 30, 40,000 dollars, and you've got two million people walking through every year.”
Britton Bauer: Wholesaling ice cream triggers state over local regulations
“So if you want to make ice cream and sell it over the counter, you're governed by your, you get a permit from your local health department. But if you want to make ice cream and sell it to somebody else to resell, you then are, you then move to the state agric…”