Kickstarter

Thank you for your support of Vanilla Jill's and the FFFYI!  Our project is the Farm Fresh Frozen Yogurt Initiative, and it means bringing an adorable cart trailer to another part of our city that is currently saturated with frozen yogurt "mix" shops.  We want to provide super healthy and super yummy treats to south Eugene, a part of the city populated largely by a health-and-local-food-appreciative customer base!

Our mission is to provide nutritious, delicious, sustainably sourced desserts, snacks and meals while educating the community with what we have to share.  In the process we, too, learn from our customers and from our continued study in these areas of interest.

We make our frozen yogurt in small batches from locally sourced ingredients.  Using local organic kefir, local organic milk, berries, fruits and herbs, whole foods, we are doing frozen yogurt like few in the world have done it...at least in recent years!  We are making a probiotic rich dessert the way they used to, BUT with a modern twist!

Some of our fun flavors include Tart Thai Tea, Espresso Stout (tastes like its main ingredient, locally crafted dark beer, and sweetened with local raw honey),  Vegan Peanut Butter (simply delicious), SF Blackcap Raspberry, and Aronia-Cherry (both made with local berries by fabulously dedicated local organic farmers).  Our regular and sometimes more traditional flavors in the soft-serve include Dark Chocolate (Megan's favorite), Vanilla Bean, Carrot-Cinnamon (a seasonal favorite), Tart, Vegan Coconut-Lime and Vegan Espresso (made with homemade organic cashew milk).

We do our best to stay on the forefront of nutrition, benefiting from the wisdom of different movements.  Our shop is blessed by the knowledge of traditional cooking techniques, the vegan raw movement, as well as artisanal, gourmet ice cream and cooking methods.  We offer all this and live and active cultures in every bite!  Additional ways that we share our knowledge and passion about nutrition is through cooking classes.  It is our goal in 2012 to also begin speaking in public schools about nutrition.  Included in this message is the need to rebel against the status quo introduced first during the Industrial Revolution and then perpetuated during and after WW2 of factory-made, processed and packaged food.

One of our main personal nutritional priorities is incorporating probiotics into every day's meals.  Inspired by this belief, we share many fermented foods with our customers: kombucha on tap, real sourdough waffles, both GF and whole wheat, as well as our kefir-based frozen yogurt.  

By moving to a second location in south Eugene we are able to share more of our healthy treats with an appreciative community of eaters.  We'll transform the traditionally "trashy" slushy into a tempting but healthy refreshment, using fresh locally grown herbs like tarragon, basil and mint.  We'll also use rooibos tea and whole fresh fruit and juice.  We'll always feature one flavor without sugar.

Green smoothies will be another new product that come from the heart.  They'll be raw and full of nutrition, featuring ingredients like parsley, carrots, beets, blueberries, strawberries, cranberries, kale, spirulina and bee pollen.  Some will be vegan and others will include cultured cream for a healthy source of fat, calcium, and probiotics.  They'll all be delicious and most of them will be green!

We look forward to launching our Yogurt Wizard as the main focus of our little cart trailer!  It is a less complicated version of a frozen yogurt machine, but able to blend toppings into 5 different homemade bases.  Imagine local strawberries blended right into your yogurt and swirled into a homemade GF waffle cone, so yummy!  We'll also have our tried and true favorites to blend right in, like organic chocolate sandwich cookies, lavender syrup, caramel sauce, SF chocolate sauce, as well our personal favorites, organic maple syrup and local hazelnuts...plus a whole lot more.  This will be one magical cart!

Lastly, in keeping with the current enthusiasm at the shop, we will continue to serve kombucha on tap and kombucha floats.

You will be able to get an ice cream treat and sit in adorable patio style seating.  It will be both a bustling and restful spot for a treat...with a favorite bakery and health food/nutrition store within steps too!

With good old fashioned sweat and some saved dollars we have already made key progress on our south Eugene plan, what we're calling the Farm Fresh Frozen Yogurt Initiative.  Your generous contributions will help us to complete the renovation of our cart and outfit it with these remaining items:

3 basin sink, small freezer, refrigerator, insulation, countertops, outdoor seating, cabinetry and windows as well as restaurant equipment.  If we surpass our goal, we will be able to add more tables and chairs, outdoor heaters, another small freezer, and a second yogurt wizard, which will help expedite orders.

We are excited to complete these last remaining tasks and thank you heartily for your support of our project!