06/08/2026
Another week in the books, and another week without our ice cream cookie sandwiches.
I figured it was time for a little transparency.
Like everyone else, we’re feeling the effects of rising costs. The gluten-free cookies we use for our ice cream sandwiches have now more than doubled in price from when we first started carrying them. I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to find a more affordable option from another gluten-free baker and even looking into the possibility of making them in-house.
The cookies have gotten so expensive that I’d need to charge over $10 for an ice cream sandwich just to maintain the same margins we’ve always had. That’s not a price I’m comfortable asking people to pay, so for now we’ve decided to hit pause while we look for a better solution.
For now, we’ll be bringing back slices of ice cream cake, and after our vacation in a few weeks, I’m hoping we’ll have a new plan in place. More details on that tomorrow.
On a related note, we’ve been reopened for 7 months now, and today I received our sixth notice that beef prices are going up again—another 20 cents per pound starting next week. I bought enough to get us through until vacation, hopefully giving me some time to figure out what comes next. There comes a point where you can only absorb rising costs for so long before decisions have to be made.
At the same time, I’m trying to manage my own health, continue losing weight so I can have the surgery I need, run the day-to-day operations of the Joint, and keep prices as reasonable as possible for our customers. Some days it feels like every challenge shows up at once.
But we’re still here. We’re still fighting. We’re still serving the gluten-free and gluten-full food that got us here in the first place. And we’re still doing everything we can to keep Jay’s Joint affordable for the families who support us.
Thank you for sticking with us through all of it. ❤️
— Jay
Sometimes being a small business owner means making decisions you don’t like. I’d rather be honest with you about why we’re making them.