Gelato Festival in Florence, Rome

Author: Gayane Simonyan

On 1 May, 2014 Florence Gelato Festival opened its doors to ice-cream lovers at Palazzo dei Congressi gardens, opposite the Santa Maria Novella station. Gelato Festival was born 4 years ago in Florence and habitually the festival starts from Florence. It usually takes four days and at the end of the fourth day, the Best Italian gelato Parlour 2014 is elected.

“The festival is quite famous. After Florence we go to around ten cities in Italy like Turin, Rome, Naples, etc. and then we move to five cities in Europe: Paris, Cannes, Barcelona, Munich, and Amsterdam,” said Luca, the project leader.

The idea of the festival was to celebrate the Florentine origins of gelato and introduce it to the world. The creation of Gelato is attributed to Bernardo Buontalenti, after whom the biggest home -made gelato mobile lab ever built in the world is called.

“You can start your tour with buying a Gelato Card with 10, 12 euros, which you can use for tasting the BUONTALENTI, a bunch of different ice-creams and then a cocktail, water and then you can follow the activities held there. These activities include watching the cooking shows and workshops: how to make an ice-cream or what kind of ingredients to use with ice-cream. In other words everything about ice-creams,” he said.

 

Luca mentioned that some cities are not quite certain yet because every city has its own rule, for example in Munich they don’t allow to stay more than three days, so fare like this can’t be held in just three days; they need one week- 2 days to build up, 4 days to present and then 1 day to pack up.

“There is also a voting option at the festival- a possibility to vote for the ice-cream you liked most of all, and the winner flavour would get an award. So it’s a good opportunity for the ice-cream makers to become famous because we have also Social Media accounts, pages or just Media partners we share information with. That’s why many ice-creamers come here from different cities to prepare their best one or create a special flavour for the fare, to become known,” Luca added.

The project leader showed the glassy booth at the fare where the ice-creams are made and it’s open to public to watch the preparation system, the conditions, the machines, techniques and the like.

“We have a special high school for cooking called “Alberghiero” where you can learn everything about cooking- no matter you want to be a cooker or a waiter - just anyone in that field. So we offer the school to cooperate because the students don’t have an opportunity to have the practical part of their studies. So this is a great opportunity for them as well but we choose only the best students, the ones who are faster, cleaner, more professional,” summed up Luca.

He also told that in other cities they choose students and ice-cream makers from “local players”. The revenue stream mostly comes from the people who buy the card and also from the sponsors like Fabbri, Algida, Nutella Ferrero.

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