WICKER PARK — Closed since April 23rd when a listeria contamination prompted a recall, Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams will reopen its Wicker Park and Lakeview outposts on Memorial Day weekend, the company announced Monday.
“The support from the community here in Columbus and throughout the country has kept us going these past few weeks,” owner Jeni Britton Bauer said in a news release posted to her website.
The Ohio-based Britton Bauer has been making artisanal ice cream for 20 years.
On Thursday, she returned to producing ice cream out of her production kitchen, making caramel from scratch in preparation for a run of Salty Caramel ice cream.
On the schedule for Friday: steeping Intelligentsia Black Cat espresso beans in cream and "grass-grazed Ohio milk."
When the shops — in Ohio, Nashville, Chicago, Atlanta, Charleston and Los Angeles — reopen on May 22, they'll be serving up Salty Caramel and other signature flavors, throwbacks such as Root Beer, and the new, limited edition ice cream, Sun-Popped Corn.
Britton Baur praised her workers for the way they handled the contamination crisis.
"There are three qualities we celebrate in our employees above all else: talent, hustle, and guts,” Bauer said. “You invest in culture specifically for times like these. Our team came together in a crisis. We will come out of this stronger as a company than we went into it.”
Jeni Britton Bauer at the opening of her Wicker Park scoop shop in March. [DNAinfo/Alisa Hauser]
Jeni's has shops in Lakeview, at 3403 N. Southport, and in Wicker Park at 1505 N. Milwaukee Ave. Pints of the Ohio-based company's ice cream are sold at Whole Foods, Mariano's and specialty grocers throughout the city.
Read the full reopening letter from Bauer here.
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