Offering gelato in your bar means expanding the range of products available, attracting new customers, and increasing profits, especially during the warmer months. However, to ensure a high-quality experience, it’s essential to adopt the right strategies when selecting raw materials, setting up the space, and training staff. Let’s explore the best solutions for integrating gelato into your establishment and how to maximize the success of this entrepreneurial choice.
Classic Flavors and a Limited Offer to Ensure Always Fresh and High-Quality Gelato
The success of artisanal gelato in Italy in recent years has been largely due to bars: over 15,000 bars offer gelato, especially in the warmer season. Additionally, if you want to enter the gelato business, opening a bar-gelateria is certainly an interesting option.
If gelato isn’t your main business or if you want to open a bar-gelateria and offer your customers excellent artisanal gelato, there are great opportunities to expand your product selection today. The advice is to limit the range of flavors you offer to no more than 12, focusing on timeless classics like hazelnut, pistachio, cream, chocolate, and fiordilatte. This is related to sales volumes: it’s better to offer fewer flavors and prepare the gelato more frequently, ensuring you always have fresh, high-quality products.
The Importance of the Consumer Experience
Many elements contribute to creating the consumer experience: gelato made with natural, genuine ingredients that are safe from a food safety perspective and produced in Italy, but the preparation and training of the "gelato maker" are also essential. Additionally, the environment and décor of your bar should be warm and welcoming, following the latest market trends.
A small gelato counter inside your bar allows for a constant turnover of products in the display case, making them easier to sell. Today’s consumer is accustomed to high-quality offerings, is more sensitive to quality, and has a refined and demanding palate. Furthermore, offering gelato made with organic or lactose-free ingredients can attract a broader customer base and build loyalty among health-conscious customers.
How to Make Gelato and Which Machines to Choose
There are companies on the market that produce specific ingredients for making excellent artisanal gelato and equipment for every space requirement.
You can use a traditional pozzetti display case or a modern display case, while the laboratory can be equipped with a small batch freezer and a pasteurizer of reduced size, or a combined machine that performs both the freezing and pasteurization functions. Innovative batch freezers that also serve as display cases with attractive designs are also available on the market.
An alternative to the traditional batch freezer is the soft serve machine. With these machines, which don’t require a pasteurizer, you can make up to two gelato flavors. It’s enough to prepare the mixture cold and place it directly into the machine. The gelato is immediately frozen when served. By combining multiple soft serve machines, you can offer a decent range of gelato flavors, and we recommend focusing on the classics, which sell more consistently.
Final Considerations
Integrating artisanal gelato into your business can be an important growth opportunity, but it's essential to make informed choices regarding quality, equipment, and product management. A targeted offering, careful selection of ingredients, and excellent service can make a difference, turning your bar into a go-to spot for artisanal gelato lovers.