How we Started
Growing up in a small beach town on the New Jersey coast, indulging in ice cream is a non negotiable. Whether it’s the daily bike rides in the spring and summer or diving into the freezer stash once the fall rolls in, ice cream has always been a year round necessity.
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When you consume ice cream as much as one does on the Jersey shore, it becomes important to get in tune with what you’re actually indulging in. Those summer night runs to the local ice cream shops started to become less frequent because of how terrible we would be feeling after our favorite soft serve. That's when we started looking into ingredient labels, and it's safe to say we never looked back. We started making our own ice cream at home using minimally processed, whole ingredients and the result was essentially a masterpiece: ice cream that was better and better for you.
We believe you can enjoy the things you love without sacrificing how you feel afterward. You deserve clean, simple ingredients—and a scoop that still hits. That’s why when it comes to ice cream, we only want Frankie’s.
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The Frankie's Mission
When you invest in Frankie’s, you’re not just buying a pint of ice cream—you’re choosing to invest in yourself. You’re making a choice to better your physical and mental health by being conscious about what you put into your body. And that’s pretty cool.
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Maybe it starts with ice cream; you see how simple and clean can still taste delicious and you apply that to the rest of your food choices. Food shouldn’t be complicated. We say Eat the Earth because every nutrient and necessity that we need to fuel our bodies has already been provided to us. ​
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At Frankie’s we recognize physical health and mental health to be equally important. What’s good for your body is good for your mind. That’s why all the ingredients we use are for your own best interest - organic, unrefined, WHOLE ingredients (and no, canola oil is not a whole ingredient). No seed oils, natural flavors, gums, or any other additives that have no business being in ice cream.
The backbone of our delicious ice cream is the quality dairy products that are locally sourced from a regenerative farm in Pennsylvania. Origin Farm provides us with A2 dairy from grass fed Gurney cows. We solely use low temp pasteurized dairy products to aid better digestion and more smiles. Because when you’re eating your favorite dessert, you should feel good—during and after.
At Frankie's we recognize that you need quality ingredients to make a quality product. That's why we set out to find the best source of dairy out there. Origin is the only regenerative dairy brand in America focused exclusively on superlative-quality golden milk from the famed heritage breeds. We encourage you to visit their website and learn more about their story, their products, and the way their practices focus on the way we should be consuming dairy.
Our Founder
Frankie McDonough
Ice cream has become more than just a sweet treat to me. I’ve struggled with OCD since I was 12, and over the past year, it’s taken over most of my life. During some of my hardest days, what made things feel just a little lighter was the ice cream sundae I’d have at night—usually vanilla with maple syrup and toasted almonds (highly recommend). As silly as it sounds, I’d come downstairs after a shower, tears in my eyes because my pajamas didn’t feel right (IYKYK), and somehow that sundae on the couch made everything okay—even if only for a minute. Maybe it’s just because ice cream is delicious, but I found it hard to stay anxious while eating it. That’s why, for me, ice cream represents comfort. It’s felt like a small reward at the end of a long day filled with racing thoughts and anxiety. But that reward doesn’t hit the same if it's not making you feel your best afterward.
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A huge part of anxiety comes from the foods that we eat, and anxiety feeds on sugar. So as someone who's struggled with mental health issues, indulging in name brand ice cream products with 50+ grams of added sugars and paragraphs of inflammatory ingredients is a hard no. It's time we start recognizing that the foods we eat do in fact have an effect on both our physical and mental well being. And I don't know about you, but I want to keep eating ice cream knowing it's not hurting my body or worsening my anxiety. In the last year, I've become well versed on the reality of how most foods are doing just that. It's hard to accept that the proof is in the pudding - literally. If you're not reading ingredient labels you're gonna need to get on that. And I encourage you to start with ice cream, where you'll see that what you're eating is bullsh*t. No one should be rewarding themselves with that.
It didn't sit right with me that something that acted as a comfort blanket was actually terrible for my health. I knew there had to be a way to indulge in delicious ice cream without compromising how you feel. And let's just say you're in for a treat (pun intended). My goal was to create something that brings other people the same comfort my ice cream has brought me. But I didn't want that feeling to only come from the taste (which it will, trust me). I wanted that comfort to come from the fact that you know you don't even need to read the ingredient label when you're indulging, and you don't need to feel guilty when you crush a pint in one sitting. Because the ice cream you're indulging in is packed with nourishing, quality ingredients. Ingredients that will make you feel good -physically but also emotionally.
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The process of creating this business has helped me find my passion in a rather difficult part of my life. I recognize that with anxiety and depression, it's pretty difficult to stay motivated to do what you love. When I was at my lowest point with OCD, the closest I could get to doing things I loved was daydreaming about them. I told myself that if I was no longer controlled by my anxiety, what would I do with my life? Thus, here we are. My hope is that my ice cream will truly make people feel their best. Whether you struggle with anxiety, had a sh*t day, or are relaxing on a summer night, I want a pint of Frankie's to make your day better. Because that's what ice cream is for. Real ice cream is back, you can tell your gut it's safe now.
