RICHMOND, Va. -- While Kendall Appich might have been working at Capital One in Richmond, her dream job was not with the area's largest employer.
"I had that, I wouldn't say midlife crisis, but just like, I'm still young enough in my late 20s. where if I want to try something, now's the time we don't have kids," she said. "I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to create the next great food product."
After some soul searching and discussion with her husband, the couple landed on a frozen custard truck. Two, to be exact.
"I always thought that Richmond needed and deserved a Midwest-style frozen custard. But I was too chicken to actually do something about that back in the day," she said. "[I finally] decided I was going go the entrepreneurial route and thought of all the different businesses that I would want to start. And then I just kind of had that aha moment of remembering the lack of Midwest-style frozen custard in Richmond and thought, well, I could probably figure that out."
After a trip to the Midwest to learn about perfecting the process, the Appichs returned to Richmond where they now produce and serve dessert from two food trucks.
"It is made fresh every single day," Kendall said. "We generally batch what we call our flavor of the day. It's anywhere from chocolate to strawberry to black raspberry to coffee. We have 10 or so flavors in our repertoire now. And then we make vanilla the rest of the day on the truck in real-time. It's kind of like that, you know that feeling you get when you go by the Krispy Kreme sign and you see it on you're like, Oh, yeah. It is that kind of experience. Like you can see it coming off the chute when you come up to the truck in order and typically you're eating custard that is literally seconds old."
Click here to see if Jiji is near you this week and learn more about Jiji Frozen Custard on this week's Eat It, Virginia!
