Seattle Restaurant Spotlight: Frankie & Jo’s
Image credit: Frankie & Jo’s
In honor of Seattle Restaurant Week, we want to highlight a few chefs and restaurants who support our markets and work with our vendors. First up is Frankie & Jo’s. Their plant-based ice cream aims to change the way you think about ice cream. One of their current seasonal flavors, Apple Orchard, is made with apples from Collins Family Orchard, who has been with NFM since 2006. You can try the flavor at any of Frankie & Jo’s locations until November 2nd. We talked to the team behind Frankie & Jo’s about what supporting local farms means to them.
Q: Tell me about Frankie & Jo’s. What is the origin story?
F&J: The vision for a new kind of vegan ice cream was born in 2011 by our founder Autumn Martin, who believed then that plant-based food would be the way of the future. She knew that to change the minds and the traditions of a society, it would take a quality that at least matched, or surpassed its animal-based counterpart. With years of dreaming, projections, resisting nay-sayers, product development, and the search for the right business partner, she united with Kari Brunson in late 2015. The two have woven the vision into the masterpiece fabric that is ice cream for good.
Since then, the mission of Frankie & Jo’s has been to radically shift the way you think about ice cream.
Q: Sustainability and ethical sourcing are important parts of your mission. Can you tell me more about that?
F&J: One of our company’s family values is tending. That is, tending to the earth, our community, our customers, and to our employees in Seattle through the way we conduct business and create our product. This is why sourcing thoughtfully is wildly important to us, as it should be for any business. We start each sourcing journey by researching the history of an ingredient, which often leads us back to many small and quality producers, farmers, and purveyors.
Q: What is the process for choosing and creating your seasonal flavors?
F&J: When planning our seasonal flavors, we often think of an emotion we want to evoke based on a particular month or season. Our creative team spends lots of time dreaming up new flavor ideas, and our amazing culinary team brings them to life. We love using seasonal vegetables and fruits, adaptogens, superfoods, and herbs to flavor our ice cream. On the first Wednesday of each month, we launch three epic seasonal flavors.
Q: How does being plant-based influence the way you choose new flavors? Are there limitations to the kinds of flavors you choose?
F&J: Absolutely. We use ingredients that come only from plants, which means we are 100% vegan. We are also 100% gluten-free, even our maple vanilla waffle cones and Supercookie dough bites. We source the majority of our ingredients from certified organic farms and purveyors. There may be some seasonal, local fruits and vegetables we use in our recipes that don’t have an organic certification but are grown with organic practices. We do not add any gums or other stabilizers to our ice cream. It is also very important to us to offer ice cream flavors that are alternatively sweetened with dates, maple syrup, and/or coconut sugar.
Q: Tell me about the Apple Orchard flavor. What is the inspiration behind it?
F&J: Our inspiration behind our October season, Apple Orchard, was to encapsulate the magic of the changing season into an ice cream. In the past we have always had a flavor that featured the warm, coziness of autumn, and this year was no different. We made a warmly-spiced granola and a gooey, sweet golden apple jam that has roasted apple pieces from Collins Family Orchards and mixed them throughout a perfectly light pink coconut and oat ice cream.
Collins Family Orchards has been our source for local produce for years, even more than just apples. We have always been impressed with the quality and taste of their produce. So, it was an easy decision to use their high-quality honey crisp apples to create our delicious jam this month.
Q: Can you tell me about other local farms that you have sourced from in the past or plan to source from in the future?
F&J: We have worked with Foraged and Found Edibles, Sterino Farms, Hayton Farm, Shenandoah Farms, Local Roots, Inaba Farms, Bow Hill Blueberries, Ralph’s Greenhouse, and Boldly Grown Farm to name a few!
Q: How often do you shop at the farmers markets to look for new flavors/inspiration?
F&J: Every week! Our team is full of Seattle Farmers Market frequent shoppers, and you will see us frequent the West Seattle, Columbia City, Ballard, and Fremont markets -- to name a few.
Q: Is there anything else that you want our farmers market shoppers to know about Frankie & Jo’s?
F&J: The vision of Frankie & Jo’s is so much greater than making ice cream and creating a brand that people love and believe in. We want to reduce our dependence on animals for our food, our traditions, and our daily lives.