What is Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams?
Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams is the Columbus, Ohio, scoop-shop chain that made ice cream a craft-food category, and its first Arizona store stands at 7051 E 5th Avenue, on the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Marshall Way, in the middle of the Fifth Avenue shops. It opened on Wednesday, March 1, 2023, with free scoops from 7 to 11 p.m. and swag bags for the first fifty people in line.
The founder is Jeni Britton, an art history student turned baker who put cayenne in chocolate ice cream in 1996 and started selling small batches at a Columbus farmers’ market. Her cookbook won a James Beard Award, and by the time Scottsdale opened the company had more than 65 scoop shops and a grocery business that puts pints in AJ’s Fine Foods, Whole Foods and Target. The ice cream is made from scratch with milk from family dairy farms, with no gums, emulsifiers or fillers, a recipe Britton says took more than twenty years to develop.
The room is bright, with floor-to-ceiling windows, a counter that New Times said “goes on for miles,” and a communal patio on the corner. The board runs a dozen or so flavors: Brambleberry Crisp (blackberries and oat streusel in vanilla), Salty Caramel, Darkest Chocolate, Gooey Butter Cake, Brown Butter Almond Brittle, Salted Peanut Butter with Chocolate Flecks, two or three dairy-free flavors and a seasonal or two. You can order a scoop in a Buttercrisp Waffle Cone, a three-flavor signature, or a flight of ten half scoops.
It is for the Fifth Avenue stroller, the ArtWalk crowd on Thursdays, families off the Scottsdale Trolley and the late crowd, because the counter stays open until midnight on weeknights and 1 a.m. Friday through Sunday. A second Valley shop followed at Scottsdale Quarter in October 2024. Our verdict: the best ice cream in downtown Scottsdale, and the easiest late-night stop in the Fifth Avenue district.
Ordering at Jeni’s
Order the Brambleberry Crisp. It is the flavor the company is known for, and the one New Times recommended twice, at the 2023 opening and in its 2025 list of the Valley’s twelve best shops, which paired it with Gooey Butter Cake, cake crumbles swirled into cream cheese ice cream. Salty Caramel is the house classic, Darkest Chocolate the serious one, and Buttercream Birthday Cake the one for children. The three-flavor signature cup is the format that lets you cover all of that in one order.
Try the flight. For the indecisive, Jeni’s sells a flight of ten half scoops, which is the way to taste a seasonal board in one sitting. The seasonals change with the calendar; the opening season’s example was Biscuits with the Boss, a shortbread and sweet cream flavor tied to a Ted Lasso premiere. Dairy-free flavors are always on the board (Texas Sheet Cake and Lemon Bar at opening), and the Buttercrisp Waffle Cone is worth the upcharge.
Prices. The company does not post Scottsdale prices on its shop page and the local press has not printed them, so we will not invent a number. It is a premium scoop shop, priced above a soft-serve window and below a plated dessert in the Fifth Avenue restaurants. Pints to go are cheaper per ounce than scoops, and the same pints are at AJ’s a mile away.
Timing. Hours by the current listings are 11 a.m. to midnight Monday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Friday through Sunday. The line forms twice: around 3 p.m. when the shops are busy and again from 8 to 10 p.m. when Old Town’s restaurants let out. After 10 on a weeknight you have the counter to yourself. Thursday ArtWalk nights are the exception, and the patio is the place to wait them out.
Getting there. Street parking on Fifth Avenue and Marshall Way is free and turns over quickly; the city’s free lots and garages are a few minutes’ walk. The shop is a block south of the canal, so it works as the end of a Scottsdale Waterfront evening too. The older dessert rooms of the district are a short walk away: the Sugar Bowl on Scottsdale Road has served sundaes since 1958, and Sweet Republic is the Valley’s homegrown answer to Jeni’s. See our coffee and dessert notes for the rest.
The craft chain that picked Fifth Avenue
Jeni’s chose its Arizona corner carefully. The chain had grown out of Columbus through Chicago, Nashville, Los Angeles and Texas on a pattern of walkable, high-rent retail streets rather than malls, and in Scottsdale that meant Fifth Avenue, the shopping street laid out in the 1950s that still runs on foot traffic in a way the Camelback Road corridor does not. The southwest corner of Fifth and Marshall is the center of it, across from the galleries and a block from the canal, and the company took a glass-walled corner space and gave it a patio.
The opening followed the Jeni’s playbook: a Wednesday night, free scoops for four hours, swag bags for the first fifty, and a local-press push that got the company’s origin story into Phoenix New Times and the Scottsdale Independent. Britton’s story is good copy, the cayenne, the farmers’ market, the James Beard cookbook, and the no-gums, no-emulsifiers line is the company’s real differentiator from the mass-market pint. By then Jeni’s pints had already been in Valley groceries for years, so the shop was less an introduction than a flagship.
It worked well enough to repeat. On October 16, 2024, the second Valley shop opened at Scottsdale Quarter with another free-scoop night and five winners of ice cream for a year, and in July 2025 New Times put Jeni’s on its list of the Valley’s twelve best ice cream shops, with both Scottsdale addresses and a note that an out-of-town chain had “quickly established itself.” Scottsdale.com’s roundup of the city’s best ice cream carries the Fifth Avenue shop too.
The 2020s have been a dessert decade for the district. Super Chunk and Sweet Provisions are homegrown; Jeni’s is the national brand that chose Scottsdale over Phoenix for its Arizona debut, and the choice says something about where the Valley’s walking traffic is. What the record does not say is how the shop is doing by the numbers; the company does not report store sales, and there has been no local press on it since the 2025 lists beyond listings and reviews.
Honest assessment: Jeni’s is a chain, and an honest one. The ice cream is as good as the hype, the Brambleberry Crisp is a real flavor rather than a marketing one, and the late hours make it more useful to Old Town than its competitors. The prices are high and unpublished, the seasonals are hit and miss, and the Sugar Bowl two blocks away has the history. For a scoop at 11 p.m. on Fifth Avenue, nothing else comes close.