Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams’ shops are set to reopen at 5 p.m. on June 20. The announcement of the reopening comes a week after Jeni’s announced that it was closing its shops once again after listeria was found in its production facilities. Credit: Alaina Bartel / Lantern Reporter
Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams’ shops are set to reopen at 5 p.m. on Saturday, just in time for any ice cream lovers attending the Columbus Pride Festival this weekend.
“The menu will be limited at first, featuring a mix of our ice creams, frozen yogurts, and sorbet — all made for us by our partners at Smith Dairy — along with sundaes, floats and sauces,” Jeni’s founder Jeni Britton Bauer said in a statement published on the Columbus-based company’s website on Friday. “We’ll be adding more flavors to the menu in the coming weeks.”
The announcement of the reopening comes a week after Jeni’s announced that it was closing its shops once again after listeria was found in its production facilities.
The company closed its shops and announced it would recall its ice cream in April after the Nebraska Department of Agriculture discovered a Listeria monocytogenes contamination in a randomly collected sample. Jeni’s reopened its shops on May 22 after removing walls and installing a conveyor belt and foot spraying stations with antibacterial foam in the company’s production kitchen.
Listeria infection, or listeriosis, is a life-threatening infection caused by eating food contaminated with the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website. People most at risk include pregnant women, newborns, adults 65 and older and people with weakened immune systems.
Although Jeni’s Columbus production facility is still closed, the company is working with Smith Dairy, located in Orrville, Ohio, so that ice cream production can resume, Bauer stated.
“We cannot thank them enough for their support these last weeks,” she stated, adding that Smith Dairy is providing Jeni’s with cream and grass-pastured milk. “They pulled out all the stops to get our ice cream made and have done a stellar job of it.”
Bauer also stated that the company intends to continue to work to get its production kitchen up and running again.
