Fronks is Austin’s Homemade Nut Milk Made with Real Ingredients
Milkshakes, lattes, milk teas — all are arguably made better with nut milk. Whether you’ve jumped on the nut milk train for your health or you just can’t resist the nutty creaminess it adds to your morning chai tea latte, there’s no denying our love affair with these non-dairy drinks. And while it’s easy to run to the grocery store to pick up a carton of almond milk for your morning cereal, like almost everything in your kitchen, fresh is always better. For the freshest in nut milks, Austin-based Jordan Fronk created Fronks, an organic, sprouted nut milk that tastes just as good as it sounds.After Fronk started making her own nut milk at home six years ago in an effort to feed her family fresher food, she realized nothing on the shelves came close to the texture and taste of the milks she could create at home. “I didn’t set out to start a business, but as friends begged for more milk I figured I was onto something. I worked for a year to develop the perfect recipe and glass packaging and launched Fronks in January 2017,” she explains.
“I started making home deliveries myself -- Austin’s only milk lady -- arriving every afternoon with bottles of cold, fresh nut milks. People loved it.”
Now, Fronks offers three flavors of nut milk — original, cocoa, and simple — all fresh, organic, and vegan with no dairy, added sugar, preservatives, GMOs or HPPs, and they even come in recycle-friendly glass bottles. Everything they offer is limited to a short ingredient list consisting of only spring water, organic almonds, organic cashews, organic dates, organic hazelnuts, organic cinnamon, cocoa powder, and sea salt. (All pronounceable and sustainably sourced.) “So much of our packaged food has gotten over-complicated and complex,” Fronk explains. “Ingredient lists continue to grow longer and less transparent. I wanted to offer an antidote to this. In our commercial kitchen in the Hill Country outside of Austin, we sprout all of our organic nuts ourselves, sweetened only with organic Medjool dates, blended with a small list of spices and flavorings, and hand squeeze every bottle. It definitely takes more time to do it this way, but it’s worth it.”For Fronk, mindfulness of what you’re eating and feeding your family is at the heart of her business. “You have to listen to your body and choose what feels right, which sometimes means eating tacos or pizza, or, for me... cake! Everything in moderation (including moderation),” she laughs.
“‘Healthy’ can be very misleading, especially when you factor in that the food industry has billions of marketing dollars to decide what will be healthy for you this year.”
Ignoring what the industry tells her, Fronks' personal motto is “food is fuel.” An adage that she practices at home with her family and hopes that people will practice when they try her nut milks. “Choose what you put in your body with care, choose what will fuel you. I tend to seek out small producers that are doing specific things and who are doing them really well. The connection to your food through the makers themselves is nourishing on many levels,” she explains. “You can drink Fronks for many reasons -- if you’re vegan, to cut out dairy — but my main goal is to provide a nut milk that is pure, delicious, and made with attention and care. Folks have been making nut milks around the world for hundreds of years. It’s not a trend, but a time honored practice.”Fronks’ Lattes are currently on the menu of almost 20 coffee shops and restaurants in Austin (not including the countless home baristas slanging them in their own kitchens every day). Nationwide expansion is in Fronks’ long term plans. “In the future, I dream of Fronks Kitchens carefully placed across the country, providing the same locally produced, fresh milk that we offer in Texas -- stay tuned!”Marissa Stempien is a freelance editor and writer that can’t turn down a good almond milk latte. With a degree in English Literature and a minor in Asian Studies, she has written on travel, fashion, beauty, technology, culture, and food, and enjoys writing short stories in her spare time. Find her on social media at @paperandlights.
