KUALA LUMPUR, June 22 — Since the kiosk opened at Bangsar Shopping Centre this January, many have fallen in love at first lick with the velvety smooth gelato at Morelli’s Gelato.
Despite its Italian name, Morelli’s Gelato traces its origins to the United Kingdom where Italian immigrant Guiseppe Morelli started his business in 1907 serving gelato, which means ice-cream in Italian. “Those days they’ll make ice-cream in the morning by hand, stirring for hours and hours. They all had big muscles from hours of making the ice-cream,” recalls Bibi Morelli, the current owner and fifth generation of the Morelli family.
Her great-great grandfather would send his sons to sell the homemade ice-cream from the back of their bicycles. “The young boys weren’t allowed home until they had sold all the ice-cream.” Slowly they progressed to a cart and eventually in 1932, they opened their first cafe in Broadstairs, Kent, England. “That store is still there till today and still serving customers who have been coming to us for all four generations. Many elements of the store have been left intact so it’s a very retro historical place.”
Throughout the years, the brand expanded around the United Kingdom. In November 2003, Bibi’s father Marino Morelli opened their landmark ice-cream parlour in the iconic food halls of Harrods. Later this year, Morelli’s Gelato will be moving out from Harrods to their own space in London. “We have been in Harrods for 10 years but we thought it’s time to move on and actually get our own store,” explains Bibi. The new place will have their full range of sundaes and drinks. These include their coffee and ice-cream combinations like affogattos and the thick Italian hot chocolate.
Since Bibi took over the company, she has taken the brand global. “Each generation of the family has taken the business to another level.
I started off in banking law and I never thought I’d go into the ice-cream business. Then my father said he was going to retire. I was so upset as that meant the end of the ice-cream. So I quit my job and decided to take Morelli’s Gelato internationally.” Her push for the global expansion started in 2006 with an initial focus on the Middle East. Now Morelli’s Gelato is located at Doha, Dubai, Kuwait and Bahrain.
In Monaco, Morelli’s Gelato can be found at the famous Monte Carlo casino square, standing side by side with famous names like Cafe de Paris, Cartier, and Chopard. For their Asian expansion, they opened stores in Manila and Kuala Lumpur. According to Bibi, they’re set to open their first store in Georgia, Eastern Europe. “Later this year, we’re opening our first store in Africa and we have just signed an agreement to open in Mexico.”
In Malaysia, the Morelli’s Gelato franchise is brought over by the Naza Group. It joins their other dining concepts like Bubba Gump and Japanese casual dining Gyukaku. Naza Group’s director Nur Nadia SM Nasimuddin fell in love with Morelli’s when she was studying in England. “It is very sentimental for me. It used to be my treat after my exams. When I heard they were expanding overseas, I was like we have got to bring it in.” Her family including her brothers were a little sceptical about the brand at first since they had not heard about it. Nadia reassured them that they would love the gelato. “After I brought it in, now they’re all thanking me. Now they are addicted, they make excuses to have lunch here, so they can visit.”
Morelli’s Gelato prides itself for churning their gelato daily on site to ensure its freshness. “Our gelato is made fresh, every single day, at the store. It can’t get any fresher,” says Bibi. Starting from as early as 7am, the gelatiere (Italian for ice-cream chefs) churn small batches of the gelato at the kiosk to keep it fresh.
The soft vanilla ice-cream is their base flavour and made from a 107-year-old recipe. Unlike the typical gelato formula that uses cream, Morelli’s Gelato prefers to use fresh pasteurised milk sourced locally. “When ice-cream is cream based, you have a higher percentage of fats. The fat coats the tongue so to some extent it dulls the flavour of the product. In our gelato, you take a mouthful and the flavour is much more intense because of the lower percentage of fats,” explains Bibi.
For the multiple flavours, high quality ingredients sourced from all over the world are added to the base flavour. “All the ingredients are selected. The hazelnut is from Piemonte and the pistachio from Bronte, Sicily,” explains Morelli’s Gelato Head of Product & Marketing Gino Soldan. These ingredients sourced from the best producers makes the difference in the taste of Morelli’s Gelato. For instance, the pistachio is cultivated at Bronte, a small area near Mount Etna, an active volcano. The pistachio harvested every two years with its intense flavour is regarded as the best in the world. “As the soil is unique, it gives a particular flavour to the nuts,” says Gino who has been making gelato for the past 23 years. Each spoonful of the naturally coloured green pistachio gelato has a dense nutty taste, which can be simply addictive.
Even their caramel flavour is unique. “It’s not the usual burnt sugar but it’s caramel dulce de leche as it has condensed milk inside. Bibi is half Venezuelan, hence we gave a touch of Latin America to an Italian product,” explains Gino. In Kuala Lumpur, according to Nadia, their best-selling flavour is Nutella that combines chocolate and hazelnut. “Whatever you do all over the world, the best selling is always something with chocolate,” says Bibi.
Local tastes are also incorporated in the gelato offerings. “We have all these nice local fruits, so we should embrace them,” says Nadia. For the launch, they had jackfruit and longan gelato, designed by Gino. “One of the advantages of having production on site is we’re adaptable and flexible,” explains Bibi.
According to Naza Group Head of F&B division Simon Varughese, customisation of the gelato flavours is possible. All the interested party needs to do is request via their Facebook page. The requested flavour will be processed by their head office who will work out a recipe before it’s introduced. This March, the Kuala Lumpur kiosk introduced a customer’s request for salted caramel & macadamia fudge as a special flavour of the day.
Another fun aspect of Morelli’s is their sumptuous sundaes piled high with goodies. “From being in the United Kingdom for so many generations, there’s an Anglo-American approach to presenting gelato so it’s just not a scoop on a cone but these beautiful sundaes that we serve in Venetian glassware. And obviously all the toppings make it a fun experience,” says Bibi. Each piece of the beautiful Murano glasses is also unique and handblown by Venetian craftsmen.
This June, they have launched a new sundae menu with new flavour combinations, including two alcoholic ones. You can either order the pina colada sundae drizzled with dark rum, or the decadent Baileys, which combines gelato with a shot of the chocolate Baileys liqueur. The menu also retains the all-time favourite Bacio sundae, which combines chocolate, hazelnut and soft vanilla gelato with chocolate truffle, Piemonte hazelnuts, swirls of Magnum chocolate cup, wafer biscuits and whipped cream.
Eating gelato is all about fun, hence their slogan “awake the child within”, which was coined by Bibi. The idea stemmed from her previous career as a banking lawyer in Milan where she used to negotiate million dollar deals with banking lawyers and businessmen. She would see them eating their ice-cream on their lunch breaks, looking like kids in their suits. “Everybody when they have a cone in their hand and they’re walking along eating their cone, that moment takes you back to your childhood.”
According to Simon, the response has been good and they get an average of 280 customers per day. They have also been getting positive feedback from their customers. “I’ve also been getting feedback from the mall who say that everyone comes here because of the gelato,” says Nadia. For the set-up, the Naza Group invested about RM850,000 to bring in the equipment, coolers and even the kiosk’s specially designed tables and chairs.
In future, expansion is definitely on the cards. Nadia advises that they are in the midst of searching for another site, possibly in the Golden Triangle. “Morelli’s Gelato is premium ice-cream and I would not want to benchmark it against others like Baskin Robbins which you can open anywhere. It has to be somewhere premium so location is key for us.” She also does not rule out other areas like 1 Utama, Kota Damansara and Sunway, where there is high spending power. In addition to opening more kiosks and possibly a cafe in the future, Simon also advises that they will be rolling out their ice-cream cart business sometime in the middle of July. These portable carts are perfect to serve gelato at weddings or catered events.
Morelli’s Gelato, Lot GK9, Ground Floor, Bangsar Shopping Centre, Jalan Maarof, Kuala Lumpur. Tel:03-22820455. Open daily: 10am to 10pm. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Morellis-Gelato-Malaysia
