Blue Marble Ice Cream, NY

Blue Marble Ice Cream describes its flavors as “elemental,” a definition that reflects the choice to use the simplest, purest products possible. The dairy comes from cows raised in pastures and taught to just say no to antibiotics and hormones, and only pesticide-free fruits show up in each scoop. Blue Marble manufactures most of its ice cream in its certified-organic production facility in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, with only a light touch of sugar that highlights the quality of the ingredients. Its ice cream has won Blue Marble plenty of praise, from earning Village Voice critic Robert Sietsema's Best Ice Cream award in 2010 to being dubbed one of New York's Eight Best Ice Cream Shops by Zagat voters in 2012.

Aside from just running their ice-cream shop, however, the founders of Blue Marble manage an organization called Blue Marble Dreams, which helped fund the foundation of an ice-cream shop in Rwanda. Jennie Dundas and Alexis Miesen were featured in the New York Times and on Oprah.com for their efforts. They trained an all-women drumming cooperative to build and run the shop, which generates jobs in the community for employees and regional dairy farmers alike. As Dundas and Miesen told the Times, they got the idea from a Rwandan acquaintance who suggested that her country’s people could use some extra moments of simple joy, encapsulated in the experience of eating ice cream.