PUNTOITALY N°2 - July - December 2012

Business&Co. 42 rely on and can help you in case problems should arise. Bargains are easy to find on eBay but often lack the after sales technical support. Secondly, making gelato for a dinner with friends is quite different from producing it on a daily basis for retail. If you wish to embark on the latter you must use professional equipment, not machinery intended to be used a couple of times a month at home, as they tend to have a microscopic compressor and brittle plastic beat- ers. With regards the UHT mix, it is important to taste it, see if that is the flavour you are looking for, so whilst you are waiting for the batch freezer to arrive use the time to request tasting samples of these mixes. Most companies have a wide choice of flavours available and 1 or 2 kg of each is enough to help you to decide if it is the right prod- uct for your customers. Checking the ingredients list or ask- ing for the technical sheet is al- ways good habit to get into, especially if your future cus- tomers have specific dietary requirements such as Halal or Kosher restrictions. This simple way to produce gelato is the perfect option for restaurants and bars that want to start serving lovely cups of hazelnut, pistachio and vanilla gelato decorated with a fancy little umbrella and a topping of melted chocolate. The investment that is requested is not too big and you can easily upgrade later on, once the profits start to show. A GOOD CHALLENGE How to improve, step by step, your production of Italian artisan gelato. Gelato is known worldwide and popular enough that it doesn’t need any kind of presentation. Vanilla, chocolate, pis- tachio and not forgetting the fruit flavours, are so famously good that the mere mention of them makes you drool in anticipation. Maybe because it’s not difficult to produce or maybe because it has good profit margins, many people around the world have started producing fresh gelato on their own. Making good gelato can be very easy but can also be very challenging. ONE STEP ONLY If you lack experience and you don’t have time to re- search recipes, but you have the opportunity of mak- ing some money by serving fresh gelato, this is what you need: one small batch freezer, producing 1 to 2 kg per batch and a place to store the full pans of gelato. Don’t worry if you don’t have a good recipe or even you haven’t been given “secret tips” from a very good friend that used to work in a big gelato shop: just look on in- ternet for a UHT quality mix and 50% of the job is done. It’s quite easy to find a number of flavours packed in 1 kg tetra pack boxes with 6 months shelf life that should satisfy all our requirements. Internet is also a great place to find a local distributor of professional gelato equipment. There are however a couple of things you have to keep in mind. Firstly, buy only profes- sional gelato machines from someone you can By Paolo Cappellini