Our Values
Over the years the company has grown to support numerous staff, so too have the Values grown to reflect our collective ideals.
Mission: The Franklin Fountain aims to serve an experience steeped in ideals, drizzled with drollery, and sprinkled with the forgotten flavors of the American past.
Honest
We value honesty in our products, ingredients, and relationships internally and externally. Honesty is created through transparency and communication, along with perpetual self and system improvements.
Creative
We value the creativity that comes from fresh perspectives and challenging assumptions. Our presentation is elevated by our craftsmanship. Our artistry interprets the forgotten past, while welcoming in the present.
Natural
We foster growth within our company and staff by working with peoples' natures, and nurturing their best qualities. We have a reverence of Nature, that we promote through our actions, choices, and design.
Community
The Franklin Fountain was created as a third place, a space for community.
Community is an active word that takes intentional and effort- the fabric of community can only be woven when two threads come together in cooperation - and a community thrives when it supports inclusivity and diversity - a beautiful fabric made with different textures and colors.
Progressive Humanism
Humanism stresses the goodness of human beings, and emphasizing common needs.
We want to build a world for the children to inherit. We want our shared ethics to be expressed in the business through social responsibility and mutual aid. We strive for sustainability, not just ecologically, but economically for our business, our staff, and our vendors.
Ingredients That Matter
Most ice cream makers formulate based upon cost - our approach is to formulate based on taste, and be inspired by our love of history and community. We source our ingredients from local suppliers whenever possible, although we also depend on a global supply chain for quality ingredients in order to maintain the excellence of our products.
Eggs & Dairy
Leiby's cream is gathered from local PA farms, and delivered weekly by Cream'O'Land to make our ice cream.
Shane's Buttercreams and Caramels are made with Kriemhild Dairy. Kriemhild Dairy makes butter from the milk of 300 grass fed cows, that live across 5 farms in upstate New York.
Our Shane Hot Chocolate is made with local regenerative A2 heritage milk from Origin.
The eggs we use are organic and cage-free from Alderfer Eggs.
Sweeteners
Organic, fair trade, naturally vegan sugars from Wholesome sugar is used to sweeten Franklin Fountain products, while Itaja Sugar sweetens Shane Chocolate.
Instead of corn syrup we use tapioca syrup, maple syrup, or honey depending on the application. Our maple syrup is from PA and distributed by Lancaster Farm Fresh Co-Op. Our five rooftop beehives are buzzing with activity most of the year, yielding a delicious honey complex honey that we sell seasonally. This urban apiary is managed by Don Shump of Philadelphia Bee Co. For our products that use honey as an ingredient, we use Swarm Bustin' honey.
Fruits
Our Hot Apple Cider come from Three Springs Fruit Farm.
Berks County Frecon Orchard Peaches, and Lancaster County Mast Farms' Strawberries are cooked by Bauman's into purees for Franklin Ice Creams. They also create the fruit butters that go into our Apple Butter and Pumpkin ice creams.
In the Summertime you can enjoy a scoop of our dairy or vegan Blueberry ice cream, made with Blueberry Bill Farms blueberries of Hammonton, NJ!
We also source fruits from the locals that grow them best, Coconut Cream from Indonesia, Alphonso Mango Puree from India, and Paw Paws from Ohio.
Nuts
The Hybrid Hazelnut Consortium at local Rutgers University supplies us with hazelnuts. They are committed to creating a research and breeding program to develop hazelnuts as a widely adapted, high yielding, and low-input sustainable crop.
Our whole nuts are roasted by Wricley Nut in South Philadelphia.
Nut butters are used in everything from Shane Peanut Butter Cups, to Pistachio Ice Cream. We get our nut butters from Nutty Novelties of Telford, PA.
Grain
All of our flour is organic and from Small Valley Flour Mill in Halifax, PA.
When we make special malt or barley confections, we love using grains from Deer Creek Malt, Pennsylvania's first malthouse since prohibition.
Chocolate
We use Guittard, est. 1868, high quality chocolate in our hot fudge and ice cream inclusions.
Our ever-growing Chocolate Works Department uses ethically sourced cocoa beans from Central & South America, imported by Uncommon Cacao. We sort, roast, and grind the cocoa beans into chocolate used for all products at Shane Confectionery, and as a dip for our Keystone Ice Cream Bars.
& More!
Our Coffee Ice Cream, coffee concentrate, Shane's Coffee Caramels, and our staff's coffee is all made with Herman's Coffee, roasted in South Philadelphia.
Flake Sea Salt, used in our Sea Salt Caramel and Whirley Berley Ice Creams, as well as Shane's caramels, is gathered out of the Atlantic Ocean in Avalon, NJ and marketed under the Salty Acres; the salt is hand harvested and solar evaporated.
Certified naturally grown lavender from Warwick-Furnace Farms in Chester County, PA, flavors our Lavender Soda and Shane Lavender Caramels.
We love using local New Liberty Distilling Kinsey Bourbon Whiskey for both our house coffee extract, and our seasonal Irish Coffee Ice Cream.
We source our large hand twisted pretzels from Shuey’s Pretzel Factory.
Our Philanthropy
Beginning in 2021, we decided to take a proactive & personal approach to our annual philanthropy. Our staff are the heart and soul of our business; their concerns and interests are all of ours. Every year we survey our coworkers, and generate a list of philanthropic causes important to them.
Each month we donate $2 from each sale of our Have a Heart Sundae to a different local organization based on staff suggestions.
By focusing our attention on one cause at a time, we hope to concentrate our efforts and amplify our reach.