We are franchising a new type of ice cream parlor (again), which not only will serve European style, and quality, ice cream, but also espresso cafe as well as ready to eat, or to take home, Viennese pastries and deli items.
  
     These will include European bread, white and rye, as well as the finest sausages, which can be eaten heated or cold.  Anyone that has been to Europe and experienced these, will know exactly what we mean, and know that these types of delicacies are not readily available here.

    We started out in 1970, importing ice cream production machines from Italy.

    We tested our first machine in our office at the Cannery in San Francisco, by producing five Gallons of ice cream.  As that was too much to eat, we invited all the people in the building's 100 offices to come for a free sampling.

    A retired fireman, who had rented an office in order to have the peace and quiet to write a book, came into my office the following day and asked "Do you know what I am going to do?".

    I smiled "You will write a book."  He had talked about that before.

    "No," was his reply, "I am going to open an ice cream parlor."  And so he did.  Using the equipment I had imported, he started the first parlor at 201 Parnassus Avenue, and later started additional stores on Union and Clement Streets under the name of Gelato Classico Italian.

    One of his first employees, a young woman, after she parted company with her employer, approached me about opening an ice cream parlor in Berkeley, near the University, which she opened with 2 friends, and which became extremely successful.


    We opened a parlor in San Rafael (see above pictures) in order to test the machines, recipes as well as customer reactions to the product.  This was done in a building that had become available due to the failure of a mexican style fast food restaurant, which was made available to us on a month to month basis, until the owner had made his plans to do something with the whole property.

    The parlor was run by a bunch of  girls from the adjacent high school.

    Some of the anecdotes that came out of that were:

    A couple coming from South San Francisco, because they had heard of the 'whip cream like' ice cream.  They were not disappointed.

    Another time when I came on one of my visits to check how things were going, a man in his 30's was pointed out to me eating out of a quart container outside the store.  "This is his second quart", I was informed.

    On weekends I would often take care of business myself.  On one such occasion, an elderly couple that had become regulars, made the statement, that this was the only ice cream that didn't give them heartburn.

    In the beginning of operating that store, I would sometimes hear that there were initial complaints because the ice cream sold for a lot more than that of other stores'.  But once these people had tasted the ice cream and experienced how much heavier the product was than what they were used to, these complaints vanished.

    Some mothers would buy our ice cream for themselves, then go to the Thrifty drugstore next door and buy the cheap stuff for their kids (about $ 1.00 versus 25 Cents at the time).

    When we closed the store due to the loss of the property lease, there were many steady customers who when alerted to that fact, lamented the closure greatly.  Since at the time we had other irons in the fire that looked more interesting as well as profitable, we gave up on following this up.  

UNTIL NOW!